Water damage rear motor/wiring AWD models?

[Pogle]

I’m thinking of changing my 14 year old RAV for a nearly new version in the spring. I’ve read a few bits elsewhere about water ingress causing issues to the rear electric motor and/or associated wiring on AWD models. Most of this related to vehicles in the USA where there is a suggestion of a class legal action but there is also stuff relating to the UK.  I’ve done a search of this forum but not found anything so far (although I may not be using the correct terminology?).  Is it a known issue? My interest is purely to inform my decision making whether to go FWD or AWD next time.

[Nick72]

I believe this is a high voltage cable connector but could be wrong. Water ingress without egress. Basically, water gets trapped and corrosion occurs. I believe on later models they've fixed the issue. However, it's worth hearing other views here. 

[philip42h]

It is a known issue. It's really pretty rare - there aren't many reports of it on here. And while it used to be rather expensive to resolve, I understand that Toyota now have a cost-effective fix and would address the issue under warranty anyway. But there haven't been enough cases reported to know that is the case.

I wouldn't / don't worry about it at all ... 😉

[philip42h]

14 hours ago, Pogle said:

I’ve done a search of this forum but not found anything so far (although I may not be using the correct terminology?).

Here's the earlier thread:

There was a huge debate on the subject of warranty, but I doubt that more than two or three cases of the issue were identified ...

 

[flash22]

It a US thing, they salt the roads in some states with a brine-like formula add in dirt roads and you get 4 year old cars rotting in half

 

look on YouTube for rust belt cars

 

Americans will sue their own grandmother in heartbeat