How serious is Toyota about its *$50 million investment in Tesla? Serious enough to market it in the trip computer start-up message in the Toyota RAV4 EV. The electric RAV4 debuts November 17 at the 2010 Los Angeles auto show, and Toyota released two teaser images of the show car today.

Toyota announced it was testing protoypes of the RAV4 EV, co-developed with Tesla, last summer; the production vehicle isn't due to hit public roads until 2012.

*Fifty million dollars is kind of a drop in the bucket, of course, when you remember that Tesla just reported a loss of $35 million for the third quarter of 2010.