Quality delays that caught the world's largest car maker off guard will force safety upgrades to be applied to the new RAV4 before it is independently crash tested.
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Toyota will be forced to roll out crucial safety upgrades to the just-launched new RAV4 to ensure it earns top marks in ANCAP testing, after quality control delays saw it caught out by a switch to tougher criteria for 2026.
The car giant says it expects upgraded RAV4s due in the second half of 2026 to earn five stars once independently crash tested, but vehicles built and sold in the meantime will go ‘unrated’.
The vehicle’s structure does not need updating, Toyota has assured, despite the changes including improvements to “passive” safety, a word used to describe crumple zones, airbags, seatbelts and other aspects intended to protect occupants in a crash.
New RAV4s in dealers now cannot be retrofitted with the updates, and there are said to be no plans “at this stage” for an accompanying price increase, beyond the latest model’s $3180 to $5930 higher RRPs than its predecessor.
The new RAV4 was originally scheduled to arrive in Australia late last year, and was developed to earn top marks in the ANCAP and sister organisation Euro NCAP safety test criteria in place until the end of 2025.
Last-minute delays attributed to quality pushed its arrival to March 2026, meaning that it will now need to be tested under more stringent 2026 protocols, with tougher crash tests and more thorough assessment of its crash-avoidance technology.
It has forced Toyota to prepare upgrades to the RAV4’s “active and passive” safety systems to ensure it earns five stars under the more difficult tests.
Precise timing beyond the “second half of 2026” is yet to be published, but Toyota’s predictions of more than 40,000 RAV4 deliveries in 2026 could see 15,000 – or more – examples reach local showrooms before the safety upgrades kick in.
“We’ve communicated with our customers [at the] end of last year, and through obviously our dealer network that the [current] cars are unrated,” Toyota Australia sales and marketing boss John Pappas told media.
“But … the car's the safest car we've ever had in terms of RAV4, and we're seeing very, very strong order intake right now.
“For any of those customers that have a five-star policy like government, we're working with them when scheduling their orders, but the moment, a lot of our demand is in the private sector as well, and they're getting the safest RAV4 yet.”
Toyota executives declined to elaborate on the changes, beyond that they include “passive” upgrades as well as “active”, a term to refer to tech features such as autonomous emergency braking (AEB), which are intended to prevent a crash before it occurs.
“We can't really go into too much depth about it, but it's an enhancement to the active and passive safety systems. No new features, no structural changes,” a company spokesman said.
The delays have been attributed to ensuring the RAV4’s new systems and features work as intended.
“We were trying to launch the car obviously last year,” Pappas told media.
“Our number-one reason, actually, for the production delay is we always go for quality over time. Our number one priority was quality, and that's why we had production delays to launch in 2026, and that's our priority."
Toyota RAV4 chief engineer Yoshinori Futonagane added, through an interpreter: “The final adjustment to the start of volume production and release of the vehicle on this occasion was a reflection of our commitment to quality above all else.
“And this vehicle represents the introduction of a lot of dynamically-implemented technology, and the final stages of that took quite a bit to make sure that we were satisfied that we hit every target.
“So we adjusted the production timeline to hit that, and make sure we were delivering the best we could.”
The plug-in hybrid due after the middle of this year is expected to launch with the safety upgrades, something Toyota says was not an intentional delay.
“[The PHEV’s launch date is] due to global production timing on the plug-in,” Pappas told media.
“And we didn't want to wait to launch the hybrid, so we said we're going with the hybrid, obviously. We wanted to try and go last year, but we've got delayed into this year, so it's just, it's brought them closer together rather than having them further apart.”
Crash testing of the upgraded RAV4 will be conducted by European safety organisation Euro NCAP, with which Australia and New Zealand’s ANCAP has largely aligned its test criteria.
There is little to stop ANCAP purchasing examples of the current RAV4 to test, ahead of the Euro NCAP assessment, but it would need to foot the bill – approximately $800,000 for a full suite of crash protection and avoidance tests – for a vehicle only in production for a few months.
ANCAP has been contacted for comment.
Asked about a potential price increase, Pappas told media: “We don't have any plans at this stage.”
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Alex Misoyannis has been writing about cars since 2017, when he started his own website, Redline. He contributed for Drive in 2018, before joining CarAdvice in 2019, becoming a regular contributing journalist within the news team in 2020. Cars have played a central role throughout Alex’s life, from flicking through car magazines at a young age, to growing up around performance vehicles in a car-loving family. Highly Commended - Young Writer of the Year 2024 (Under 30) Rising Star Journalist, 2024 Winner Scoop of The Year - 2024 Winner
