New Delhi, Oct. 16 -- At higher speeds, warning lights come on, and then the plug-in hybrid system in Toyota's newest RAV4 either drops into a limited fail-safe mode or shuts down entirely, taking drive power with it. Toyota has told federal regulators that every one of the 30,978 2026 RAV4 Plug-in Hybrids in its latest recall carries the software behind that behavior.

a shutdown means "a loss of motive power while the vehicle is being driven at a higher speed, increasing the risk of a crash."

The fault sits in a motor generator control unit, an inverter assembly made by Denso, which may not finish its motor initialization correctly. When that happens, the control mode used at higher speeds is simply unavailable. How Toyota found the pr...