2022 RAV4 LE How-to Tutorial & Review: EVERYTHING You Want to Know!

Hi, everyone. I'm Jeff Teague in Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm Toyota Jeff. If you're new to the channel, please hit subscribe right now. Thanks so much. We do thorough and fun reviews today. We're talking all about probably way too much about 2022 RAV4 LE. RAV4 LE is the entry trim level in the RAV4 lineup. That doesn't mean it's lacking features and safety systems and technology. It has quite a bit. It's pretty loaded for what it is. And you can get one for under $30,000. So that might be the magic number right there. I'm going to show you three different types of LEs and the pricing right now. And then we'll get back learning all about this bad boy right here. LE gasoline version comes in front wheel drive and all wheel drive. This one here starts from the factory at $26,525. Then you add in shipping and any features and things like that. So $26,525 for $1,400 more. It'll be all wheel drive gasoline version $27,925. How high can I go? Then we've got the hybrid LE, which is the all wheel drive all the time. That one's $29,075. So it's very reasonable. And you still have three ladders to climb up on, to jump up on and pick your poison. I'm going to break this down into chapter form. So we can be looking at this exterior walk around because that's what we're going to do first. Then we'll look inside a first look at the interior and then we'll go section by section so you can learn as much as possible about LE. Follow along with the chapters in the timeline. And that way you can go to, oh, I want to learn about MPG now. I want to learn how to use the multimedia system. I want to know how the back door works. We'll show you a couple of hidden treasures, a couple of secret spots, a way to get extra storage. And we'll learn all about this. But the cornerstone here is going to be the black fabric seating. You can see rear air vents that we'll talk about. We'll talk about how many USBs it has, whether it has a power driver seat or not. Look at the multimedia system. And remember, this is the entry level. But it's extremely popular and a lot of people will have this in consideration for their next vehicle. So we want to make sure we give everybody out there wherever you are in the world and write it in the comments section. Where are you? We want to give you as much research tools so that you can make the best decision or learn more about your vehicle. It's a medium heaviness, not too light, not too heavy, shouldn't be a problem. It does have a prop rod. What I like about this one is it's all the way over to the left side. I've seen some manufacturers will have it closer to the center, which it gets in the way when you're doing DIY work. This is a two point five liter four cylinder engine, and it produces two hundred and three horsepower. One hundred and eighty four pound feet of torque. It's matched with an eight speed. Automatic transmission and it has multi link rear suspension. What does that mean to you? It means it's a relatively smooth vehicle, not too much road noise or wind noise. You will hear a little bit. You'll hear a little bit at the higher speeds, but I don't think it's anything that would be distracting or annoying. You'll have to try it out for yourself. Good room for front seat passengers, back seat passengers. I find on a beach trip, I've taken it with my family. Plenty of room to store your coolers, your chairs, blankets, all that kind of stuff. So I think it's a good vehicle for whether it's commuting or family road trips, just tooling around town. This is a small SUV, but it does have a pretty tall ground clearance so that you don't have to worry so much about curves that you pull up to. Maybe light trail work, that kind of stuff. Stump sticks, things like that. If you get the gasoline version, eight point four inch ground clearance. If you get the hybrid down to eight point one. So it has LED headlights, LED plane. It does have LED headlights. Daytime running lights has Toyota Safety Sense 2.0. So pre-collision system that picks up pedestrians, detects them during the daytime, the nighttime bicycles during the daytime. It has dynamic radar cruise control lane tracing assist that keeps you centered in your lane. Whoo. There's a lot it's got on it, right? Automatic high beam switches between high beams, low beams. There's a button in there that's easy to use to control that. And then you can even pick up road signs. It'll tell you the speed limit versus what you're going. It'll even alert you if you're going one mile an hour over. Three or five miles an hour over. If you want to be safer or just watch out for people giving you tickets, that kind of stuff. It picks up stop signs, do not enter signs and yield signs. That sun is right in my eyes. Oh, and this right here is a combination of color keyed accents along with the dark blackish trapezoidal front grill insert here. Black down below. This is nice because it's like a matte black finish. So it's not going to scrape up or scratch or tear up your paint. I like that part of it. And it looks nice, frankly. It's a tough, aggressive, pronounced in your face kind of grill. But it's cool and fun as well. The other thing you'll notice, it does not have fog lights. That's something reserved for higher trim levels. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, are there changes here? No, not not too much. All right. Why did I sing that? Well, that's what I do. But also, it does not have a new headlight design that's reserved for XLE and above. It also does not have new wheel design or color that's reserved also for XLE and above. It does have a couple interior changes that I'll tell you about as we talk about interior specific. They're small, but you might like them. Jump around, jump around, jump up, jump up and get down. Well, I'm getting down for this because it's a tall, sturdy, rugged profile. Notice the wheels. These are not standard. That's one of the good things about what you can do with cars, trucks and SUVs. But it's also bad when I'm reviewing it, because you can't see what stock if it has upgrades already before it hit a dealership. This one normally has 17 inch styled steel wheels. We still have the same tires, 225, 65, R17. But in this case, it's been upgraded to this gloss black and metallic silver X-Series alloy wheel. Pretty cool stuff. Not stock. Unleaded H2O. If you want to know about MPG, well, it averages out to 30, 27 in the city, 35 on the highway, like that waterboy reference, 30 combined. If you want to go with more fuel efficiency, then get a hybrid. Then you'll be averaging 40 MPG, just paying a nominal fee upgrade in cost. So weigh that out, see what you want for MPG. And then tell me, yeah, you know me. Some other features. And RAV4 does a good job about this, making matte black accents along the fenders down below so that you're not going to scrape up the paint. And it's not obnoxiously an eyesore, we'll call it. It fits. I see good visibility all the way down to the windows. You'll see there's a cutout window right between the car itself and the side mirror by the A-pillar. That gives you good visibility from the inside. We'll see chrome accents around the windows to the walls. Black mirror caps in there. That's that cutout window I was telling you about. It really helps. This one does not have smart key push button start. It has a traditional key. Well, like one of those old switchblade cones that you used to have growing up. So then just like that on the back end, I'm going to find some pretty cool taillights that wrap around their LED. We've got a wiper. Then we've got chrome badging, chrome and black badging for the RAV4. And then Ellie is in chrome. The backup cameras hidden right here. And then we've got matte black bumper down below. This is single exhaust with two different chrome tip exhaust pipes for that cool look. It's a cool rider. And then we open it up. Either you can unlock it from the key. You can pop this little rubber grippy right here. But it is not a power liftgate when you go down. Use those handles. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. Let's go with backseat space. It's a nice tall opening. It's wide and it takes advantage of full space from side to side. I see tie down, some of them hidden. Some of them exposed. Public exposure right there, baby. Then we've got storage area here. You can put rope, bottles. Things on the road trip, LED interior lights, LED interior lights are now standard on every trim level of RAV4. Holla if you want a tonneau cover. That's that rollout cover that protects your valuables so people can't see them. It goes between there and here. This one has the all weather cargo tray or cargo mat, I guess we could say. And notice how that's a good accessory because it goes up over the back of the seat. So if you have the seats down, then you can put muddy sports equipment, camping equipment, things like that all the way up here. And look at this. I'm five foot eight. It's not going to fit the tallest people, but you can work a system where you pile up boxes and blankets and pillows and you can make a longer space for overnight camping if you needed to. Not most ideal, but it's something to think about. And then it's pretty tall here. I could probably be like this. Namaste. And be comfortable, although it's eye level, so I can't really see. So don't show me anything up there. This is a little trick to get extra storage room. You can use the carpeted side or again, if you don't have the all weather mat and you want to use this, turn it over and then you can just spray it down. Spray it down, spray it down. So now we've got a floor level or we've got more room. It's not much. But again, on a car trip, you might want just whatever room I can get. So put it down here in this track, the tracks of my tears. So then we've got this right here. Now we can stack up just a little bit more. I don't know how much that really adds, but it's there and it's kind of cool. Let's talk about how passengers are going to fit. If it fits, I sit. Well. I've got a seat all the way back and recline. So now look at this, I still have room. And then this one's the opposite configuration. Good, tall room here. And then I can recline my seat. It's over my shoulder down just a little bit more. But see, one or two inches more really does make an impact here. So then we've got this. The seat is very comfortable. This one is really soft. I just went. Very soft. OK, I like that. It's got a small hump of about this much right here for your feet. So you would have to either sit up with your feet on it or on either side of it. There's only one pocket here, not on the driver's side. It's in the passenger side. So the kids can share their pocket pocket. And then we can recline as well. Look at all this room, though. This part here, I'm going to show the backseat. We'll show storage areas for drinks and bottles. That's pretty wide there, so it could probably fit a pretty tall one. We've got some metallic accents along with dark gray and black. Break up the all black. There's a 12-volt USB. The circular port, then we've got vents right here. Now, it doesn't have USBs in the back. They are in here. Two in there. Got one up there. XLE and above has five. Just FYI. So we've got this pulls down. That's all right. Decent size, it covers a wide area, so probably both people could use it. And then this is how you put the seat down or recline it. And look, top tethers. I'm the top tetherer. But yeah, you can tether your child safety seats right there. You can also clip them in right here, here, here, here. So they'll fit in just about any position. Now, let's look from the backseat at what we got going on here. It's a nice interior. Relatively modern. Remember, this was redesigned for 2019 model year. See the cutout window, that little triangle gives you extra visibility. Sometimes that a pillar is thick and wide. Harder to see. We've got LED lights inside now, remember, and the glove box is a little bit different as well. Yes, that's right, Ted. We've got a lockable glove box. That's right. Right there. All trim levels have locking glove boxes. Not that that's a huge change, but it's a change worth noting as well. If you're at the beach and you want to put something in here. Do it. Just do it. Then we've got a smart storage shelf. Storage there. See a USB, 12-volt circular. I don't know what you put in this little pocket here. It's kind of small. We'll talk about the driving modes as well. Here's some USBs. Everything's going USB-A, USB-C now. USB-C is the smaller one. Passenger seat. Got one of those levers down. Not power. And then here, this is the back of the seat. Can recline quite a bit if you want to snooze. So. Woo! Woo! Woo! Maxwell. Sorry, Mrs. A. From that pig commercial where he stuck that little window thing. I find good headroom here. And then this one here has a pump. We'll go down first. I feel like I'm operating a jack changing the tire. All right. OK, so that's as low as it goes. Taller people rejoice. Shorter people celebrate, because now. We'll celebrate good time. Come on. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Get ready for the wedding reception season, wedding crashers. Woo! Celebrate good times. Come on. So this is as tall as it goes. So it actually is quite a bit of difference. Not this much, but quite a bit of difference probably between high and low. So everybody should be comfortable. What about this? All right. We'll go back about, I don't know, maybe 80%, let's say. Now I'm going to talk about features on the front side of the vehicle, inside the vehicle. So we're going to show how to use these buttons, controls and dials, the mirror adjustments. It's set to either left, which is the driver's side or to the right, which is the passenger side. And then just use this keypad when you're on the right side, the correct side to adjust. This one here is lock and unlock. This one here locks out all the windows. So when it's green, the people in the other seat cannot control their windows. My beagle likes to sit in my Venza with his paw right on the window adjustment there, so I lock him out, not to be mean. I just don't want him to fly up. And then down here, this has upgraded optional all weather mats. This is for your automatic high beams. They're off. They're on. OK, and then this is for the brightness of the dash. Your. Light adjustments right here doesn't have fog lights, normally it would be right here and you split that and it would say fog or no fog. Some people don't know that. If you want your life always off, do that. Daytime running lights, parking lights, always on that kind of stuff. And then this tells us right here, see that a. And then the. There we go. When you've got that, that tells you the automatic high beams are set. It might seem basic, but this is where your flashes are. We're also going to check the horn now. All right, so let's look at these controls right here. This controls your information display up here. So if you've had this takes away a message, if I've got the door open. See that message there, this takes it away, but it's only for a short time. It'll come back, I promise. It's very annoying, so just shut your door, maybe. This is for volume. This is for voice commands. This is to pick up a call, to hang up a call. And so how we go through this. We just go to do each one of these. Imagine this is a filing cabinet and each one of these sections is a file folder. That might help you. So we can go down and show. I can reset it. My MPG by holding this down. Mine's low right now because I'm sitting here burning. So talk to me about it. This is your meter. That tells you how you're doing for fuel mileage, you want to be extreme on one side, but not on the other. So that'll tell you how you're starting up, how you're toasting or driving, and then how you're slowing down. Even you get better gas mileage, the better that ecometer read. How far to run out of gasoline. OK, so here this is for your radar cruise control and lane departure alert. And so this is cruise control is activated. And that's how you set your speed here at 72 and a 70. Boom. Now it's set for that. And then you can tweak it. Seventy three, seventy four, seventy five down. Seventy four. Seventy three. Seventy two. Seventy three. Seventy four. Seventy five. Seventy four. Oh, that was hard to say. Anyway, this is AM FM, Bluetooth, Sirius XM. And then you can go through. Your stations that way. OK, how do you change the distance between you and other cars? You use this right here. If it's got more bars, that's a farther distance. It'll keep you away the radar closer. It keeps you closer to the car. All right. So when we have on the lane departure alert as well, then we've got LTA lane tracing assist that'll keep you centered in your lane. Some other things we could see here. Let's keep going through our file folder. We're going to go down now. Higher pressure. Trip distance. And go over here. Settings. Lane tracing assist. Hold that down. You want your lane center on or off steering assist on. That's what guides you back into your lane. I want these on for the next person. Do your sensitivity and your sway warning. If you're going outside your lane too much, it'll let you know. Hey, you might want to take a break or something. Pre-collision system. Hold that down. OK. And you can change the sensitivity. You can even turn it off. But you want to have that on. I don't see why you'd want to have it on. Road sign assist. You pick up those four types of signs I told you about. It's off. It's on. Hold it down. Now we can check the notification method. Above speed limit. Do you want to be notified when you're above the speed limit or others? Visual, visual and audio. These are things that you might not see if you buy your vehicle and just don't know they even exist. Notification level. Push that. Do we want to be notified? Let's say the speed limit's 45. Do you want to be notified? Hey, I'm going 46. I'm going 48. I'm going 50. Preventing accidents, unsafe driving, and tickets. These are all important, but. OK, so vehicle settings. Hold that down. OK, you know you do hold it down. OK. Tire pressure warning system. Rear seat reminder. When you turn the car off, and it's like, let's do that right now. Turn the car off. If there was something there, it would tell you, hey, you could have left a child or your dog or your laptop. Anything that has weight. I'm not saying that most people would forget something super important like that. But that's why they put it in there, because we do see news stories about it and it's awful. So settings for preventing that. OK, you don't just push it, you hold it. What language do you want? English, French, Espanol, Alvaro, Pajarito, Junkie? Spanish? C, or English. Unit. You want kilometers, miles? You want your meter on? Fuel economy. You can change your trip average, total average, tank average. So these are all things that we could do with our settings. And then this would tell you if you have low tire pressure, or maybe maintenance is due soon, et cetera. This right here, your wipers. We know the wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish, but what about in a RAV4? You can tweak it up for one swipe. You can go down, intermittent. You can have them always on slow, always on fast, or just off. And then rear, you turn the stop. Talk about connectivity here. Captain captivity in connectivity. 12-volt circular port. We've got the USB-A connector right here, and then we've got two of the smaller USB-C's. I find that more of my devices use USB-C's now, so I've had to update my equipment to compensate. Nice, deep cup holders here. They hold bottles, cups, cans, everything. Sport drink stuff. Find something to go in here. I don't know what. Maybe my subscribe button, so you can hit subscribe there. That's the only thing I can think of. Yeah, maybe that. And then eco gives you better gas mileage, normal, gives you normal driving. Sport gives you faster acceleration. So this is eco. Eco right there. We'll go to normal, and then we'll go to sport. So red, green, or plain. This one right here, electronic parking brake, when you put it into reverse or drive, it goes off. When you put it into park, it comes on, and you'll hear it, it goes, whoo. Listen, I don't know if you can hear that or not. Brake hold, the only way to get this to work is you have to have your seat belt on the driver's side clip and the driver's door shut. It holds you in place for about three minutes at a traffic light, so you can stretch your legs, rest them, just kind of get the kinks out. By the way, do you like my Admiral Ackbar It's a prop, it's a prop. This button right here turns traction control off. If you push that, it'll say traction control turned off. We want that on, that keeps you on the road, going in a straight line, keeps you safe. This one right here, nice chunky, so if you're wearing work gloves or driving gloves or just gloves on because it's cold out, you can control that just fine. That's the temperature, speed. This is where it comes out. If you want the coldest air, you'll have on air conditioning recirculated. Otherwise, it's pulling in fresh air from outdoors, whether it's hot and stuffy or cold, max is this way and it'll do whatever it needs to do to get you to max. Front defroster, rear defroster, yada, yada, yada, my friends, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. And then up here, we have the seven inch multimedia touchscreen. To use your Android Auto or Amazon Alexa, needs to be plugged into the USB port right here and then that needs to be connected to your phone. Sounds pretty obvious, but some people don't know that. So make sure that's how you get it and then just follow the prompts on your phone and on the screen to allow it. So if I want to change bass, treble, mid, I like it right there. If I want to fade it front and back, left and right, send it to the rear, or automatic sound levelizer, what that does is as you're going faster, the engine sounds louder, so do you want to compensate the radio, low, medium or high? So you make the right call. Options, let's look at some of these. Play around with some of these buttons. The preset, how do I change this one? It's a default right now, so hold this one down and it'll be number SiriusXM 15, just like that. And then source, which of these four do you want? I'll get it in SiriusXM. And remember, if you want to expand, this gives you three pieces of information. If you want to expand it, just hit one of them. Now, how do we adjust that home screen? You go to Menu, Setup, Customize Home Screen, and then you can customize the layout. Right now it's set for three different things, two different things, and then now it's two. I'll keep it there, let's keep it at four. So now you've got four things. Holla! All right. How you program your phone? Hit Bluetooth. Hit Phone. It'll say there's not a phone connected. Would you like to say yes? And then just follow the prompt. It'll ask you, is this the right code? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you're set up for Bluetooth, which is wireless in this case. But remember, it's not wireless CarPlay and it's not wireless Android Auto. Okay, Tuning Buttons. Hey, it's got Tuning Buttons. Look at that. You go to 80. Eight, six, seven, five, three, oh, nine. You know that's about somebody wrote her name on a bathroom wall, and so that's what it's about, calling. So funny. Now this one, Map, it does not have built-in navigation, but with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, you can plug in Google Maps, iPhone Maps, Waze, set up your own stuff. This does not have the auto-dimming rear view mirror, but you can pull that. And then I'll just show you, there's my iPhone. I'm using my iPhone today. That should dim the light. Dim all the light, keep darling. Okay, so then we've got Sunglass Holder here, Safety Connect. You get a free trial with that one. But you have to, if you wanna push that or set it up, just push that initially and they'll tell you about activating it. But that will alert you if you're getting in an accident and your airbag goes off, let's say, they will call you to make sure everything's okay. If you answer, they'll make sure everything's okay. If you don't answer, they'll send emergency personnel. You can also track a stolen vehicle with Safety Connect. LED, LED, let there be light. If you want them always on, you can have it always on. If you want them open, when I open the door, hit door. Some people will never change that, but I like having that on. And then here we've got Lighted Mirrors. But the real question is, do we have sliders? No, we do not have sliders. So there'll be that little bar, that little chunk right there that the sun could get in. Just not available on the LE model. Got Grab Handles on all four sides. And here's a feature that you may know or may not know. When your seatbelt's clipped, sometimes, depending on your height, it's in the way of your neck or in the wrong spot. So you can adjust right here and tweak it up and down. It's good with younger drivers who might not be so tall or just people of different heights. Right now. Time to look at the window sticker so we can learn what's standard, what's optional, and what the price is on this thing. LE Front Wheel Drive Ruby Flare Pearl made in Ontario, Canada. Really good safety ratings. Here's the fuel mileage I was telling you about. Remember, the RAV4 Hybrid goes up to 40 mpg. Here's standard equipment now. Safety Sense 2.0. Eight different airbags. Star Safety System. LED headlights. Daytime running lights. See, it has 17-inch steel wheels. I'll show you how we upgraded those. This is the regular audio with six-speaker system. Then we've got the starting price, like I said, $26,525. Special color price. Ooh. Then we've got an add-in delivery charge. And then here, we've got some options that were upgraded. The 17-inch wheels. Then the all-weather mat, all-weather cargo mat, paint protection on the door seam. That puts it still under $30,000. $29,502. Everyone, thanks so much for watching. I hope this was helpful to you. I hope you learned a little. Maybe we're entertained just a bit with my dumb references to pop culture. It's what I do. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate you all. If you're new and you've been here a while, thank you guys so much for being a part of my channel. I love your opinions and comments and thoughts. It really helps make the channel five-dimensional, we'll call it. It helps it a million times. And if you're new, hit subscribe. I have over 1,000 videos now dedicated to Toyota how-tos, comparison, reviews. You'll see everything on this channel, even a few goofy ones, some parodies too. Those are my favorite, but they don't get as many views as something like this. So, thank you guys. If you wanna follow me on my other social media, whoo, baby! 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