2007 Toyota RAV4 from North America - Comments

I absolutely hate the features on Toyota vehicles that does not allow you to lock your vehicle while a door is open.

The car doesn’t let me lock the doors with the remote if any one of the doors is open. And it blares an annoying sound at me for pressing the lock on the remote.

I am someone who doesn’t have enough hands to carry everything out of my car while juggling the keys in my hand. So I always lock the door with the remote and put my keys back in my purse and then collect my belongings and shut the door.

It is beyond annoying that I have to fish the keys back out of my purse everytime. I can't even pull groceries out of the back of my car and leave the keys inside, because I have to come back to lock the stupid door!!!

I don’t understand why the feature exists when there is no possible way to lock my keys in my car (which is why I suspect it was designed) when I am pressing the button the remote and a door is open.

It is the dumbest feature of all time. The worst part is that Toyota can't even remove it for this very annoyed customer.

That feature is only there so you don't lock the keys in your car!!! It has been like that on several cars in the UK for years!

That's why people test drive a car before buying. Clearly, this features annoys you enough to write a whole article about it. I, too, tend to believe that we've been brainwashed into thinking we need a lot a gadgets on our cars. However, before one buys a car, they should try all those gadgets first, and do a full test-drive under many conditions: city, highway, traffic jams, with and without passengers, with/without luggage, long/short haul trips, night/day/dawn/dusk, rain/sun/snow (if possible), etc. Best of all, if you're buying a new car, consider renting that particular model first for at least a few days to see if it's exactly what you're looking for. My guess is that if you had rented a RAV4, you would've eliminated it from your choices. In the meantime, you can easily have that feature disabled, but you'd probably have to got to an independent mechanic to have it done (which could be questionable for a vehicle under warranty). Good luck.

Let me see if I can understand this: it's to keep you from locking your keys in your car. The keys that are on the same keyring that is attached to the remote. Which is in your hand. Not in your car because then you couldn't be pressing the button. On the remote.

So, the feature was designed to keep someone from pressing the remote to lock the car with the door open, then throwing the remote and the key back inside the car and closing the door, thus locking the remote and the keys inside?

And you say cars in the UK have had this feature for several years? Do people in the UK put their keys back inside their cars after using the remote to lock it?

It is possible to lock all the doors with the electric switch button on the drivers door when any or all doors are open. Then when you shut the doors, they will be locked. Just be careful the remote key is with you and not inside the car on the seat. I did that once and was happy I had a spare key in the house!

If this is the only complaint about this vehicle than we are all lucky.

I don't think the system is designed to keep you from forgetting your keys inside the car. Rather, I think it's to keep you from thinking you have left your car securely locked when in fact one of the doors is not properly closed, and thus vulnerable to burglary.

I have had three Toyotas (Matrix, Yaris and Sienna) and this particular feature is something I am thankful for, since I park on the street every day.

That is the problem with the Rav4, we really don't have much to complain about! My pet peeve, the doors don't auto lock when you put it in drive. Solution, for $10.00 and 15 minutes of your time, a solenoid will correct this problem. I live in NYC and need my car door locked to protect me from the out of towners.

I don't believe this is a very useful review. You've only covered one tiny feature of the car that you don't like, and give absolutely no other information about the car. This would be an appropriate complaint to toyota's website, it shouldn't be on a site like this.

What is stopping you from getting your groceries, and then going into your house with them, and once you are inside locking your car with the remote when you have your hands free. My car remote works from a very long distance, and is great as I live in a two story house.

They should have a way to turn this feature off in the owners manual.

I think this is a ridiculous complaint.

As stated earlier, this feature keeps you from locking the doors when one might actually be open or ajar.

I think it's better for you to put up with this little inconvenience, than to go to where your car was parked and find it gone, or the contents of the interior gone.

My wife has this feature on her Lexus, and I think it's great.

If that's your only complaint, consider yourself lucky.

Have to agree with the original poster. I have a 6 month old child. When she (with or without the car seat) need to be taken out and the doors locked, it's very annoying. What is desired is to open the back door, immediately lock the car, put the keys in the pocket and start unbuckling etc. My BMW and Mazda before that and every other car I've ever rented etc work this way. So, now I have to unlearn this via the blaring noise that never stops. I also can't stand all of these "features" intended to help us. Thank goodness the car doesn't have the "auto lock" feature another poster asked for! That one has showed up in rental cars, hate hate hate it.

One other peeve, the seat adjuster goes down and back at the same time. I just want to move it up and down between driver changes. Memory seats would have solved that problem and should have been there. But I knew about that one.

Otherwise the car is great of course. That's why I bought it!