Toyota, like many from its homeland, has a long-standing reputation for improving stuff. Making it work better, making it last longer, or packing it full of interesting features, whatever the case calls for. Point is: when some average schmo company makes a mousetrap, Toyota comes along with a smaller, more efficient, technological marvel of a killing machine that strikes terror into the soul of any rodent that lays down one paw on the premises. Metaphorically speaking.Sure, but improvement is just bettering someone else's creation, say the critics. When it comes to original ideas, Toyota couldn't invent something to save its life, right? Think again. Despite what Honda might tell you, it was Toyota who, nine years ago, brought the first fully functional hybrid automobile to planet Earth. You know, the contraption that, compared to the pure electric cars that preceded it, is about 90% as efficient and 900% more practical? The car that gives something for nothing (in a sense)? The transportation fad of the decade? Yes, that invention.Toyota has decided it's time to combine one of its inventions with one of its improvements. That improvement would be the "crossover" SUV - the term for any tall-riding box that's made out of car parts. The RAV4 was the first of them and the Highlander was first in the mid-size segment; it's the latter that Toyota has opted to electrify. Looks like the Prius was only the beginning.