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Old 11-20-2017, 03:42 PM   #10 (permalink)
elhigh
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Location: SE USA - East Tennessee
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Josie - '87 Toyota Pickup
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I think the market is ripe for a proper hybrid compact CUV. The current range of choices are pretty big, minivan-replacement sized.

Subaru made a go of it briefly with the Crosstrek (XV if you're outside the States), but it's not available as a hybrid anymore and the numbers it whistled up were merely fair. The new Lineartronic CVT-equipped Crosstrek does as well as the hybrid model did.

If we could have something along the size lines of a second-gen RAV4 with the AWD provided by conventional front drive and as-needed electric drive out back, that would make the packaging easy peasy. Toyota already has experience building exactly such a beast, this would just be a matter of scale.

Thus equipped, the front engine could be made small enough to be adequate. The battery pack needn't be overlarge, AWD generally isn't one of those things you're using all the time, just when one end or the other is starting to slip. Give it limited slip diffs fore and aft and such a rig would be everything 95% of AWD buyers are looking for: the capacity to get themselves inescapably stuck when the snow flies. And the rest of the time, the capacity would be there to give them big engine power when it's wanted, decent economy the rest of the time. Make that engine a small turbo unit that can turn its output down to something even more in line with what's needed, and it just gets better.
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