The Lexus RZ contradicts itself. The range and charging specs suggest the RZ 450e is an undercooked attempt at an electric vehicle from a company that would rather sell you a hybrid. Yet the RZ 300e is the most efficient electric SUV you can buy, better than a Tesla Model Y or a Hyundai Ioniq 5. Take a look at the software, though, and it seems as if no one told the engineers they were building an EV. There’s no route planning. No charging rate or time-to-80% figure. No battery preconditioning.
It is class-leading. It is phoned in. Probably both, maybe neither. As Lexus, it’s remarkably quiet, comfortable, plush and full of high-quality materials, as luxurious as you’d expect from this brand. As an EV, it feels like something from the previous decade, not this one.
It is one step into the future for Lexus, with one foot stubbornly stuck in the past. It is opulent and refined, and it is still not the electric SUV I’d recommend. The company spent a lot of time making a nice car but nearly zero energy addressing EV-specific problems.
(Full disclosure: Lexus loaned me an RZ 450e for a week. It arrived fully charged and clean. InsideEVs paid for fast charging during the loan.)
Lexus RZ 450e Luxury Specs
Driving experience
The RZ 450e drives like an electric Lexus, which is to say “very well.” It is no athlete, burdened with 4,564 lbs to lug around, but the 308-hp all-wheel-drive 450e feels sprightly in traffic. All 321 lb-ft of torque are available from a stop, so 0-60 took just 4.6 seconds in Car and Driver testing. That’s quicker than a Volkswagen GTI. Don’t let anyone tell you your EV “needs” 500 hp.
I honestly think most Lexus buyers would be fine with the 201-hp base model. Per Lexus, the front-wheel-drive RZ 300e still hits 60 in 7.4 seconds despite its two-ton mass. That’s roughly in line with the base-model Lexus RX’s pace. I’ve never met a Lexus crossover owner who’s ever put their foot to the floorboard, but the RZ’s instant torque makes highway passing pretty breezy anyway.
Gallery: 2024 Lexus RZ 450e Review
Those owners value comfort and luxury far more than excitement. The RZ delivers on this front, with its buttery ride and quiet cruising demeanor. On the biggest bumps, I noticed the RZ’s extra weight, but Lexus has done a great job of delivering a luxury EV that doesn’t feel overburdened in everyday driving. It feels similar to any other Lexus crossover.
That normalcy is a blessing and a curse. While there’s no learning curve to the RZ, there’s also no unique selling point for the EV. There’s no one-pedal driving (though you can increase regen using the steering wheel paddles), no cool drive modes, no clever software tricks. It’s just a Lexus crossover, but electric. In the long-term, that’s a reasonable approach. In the short term, though, I think this is a key reason why legacy manufacturers are struggling to compete with the likes of Tesla. EVs right now are more expensive to build than their gas counterparts, and consumers have to navigate the messy, new world of public charging. To get people excited about the future, Tesla, Rivian and others offer new features, software experiences, and selling points. Lexus is offering its standard fare, electrified. That isn’t enough. It cannot just be “generic electric crossover, but from us.”
Range, Battery Size and Observed Efficiency
Lexus offers the RZ in two configurations, the front-wheel-drive RZ 300e and the all-wheel-drive RZ 450e. The single-motor FWD RZ gets a 72.8-kWh lithium-ion battery from Chinese juggernaut CATL. The dual-motor version uses a 71.4-kWh lithium-ion battery developed by Japan’s Prime Planet Energy & Solutions (PPES), which is a Panasonic/Toyota jam. The Toyota bZ4X, the Lexus’ more modest cousin, has the same battery setup. Both batteries can accept up to 150 kW of fast charging, though Toyota and Lexus EVs tend to rarely hold that peak rate for long. The RZ 450e’s charge curve—as I’ll get to—is unimpressive.
The RZ 300e is the range champ, going up to 266 miles in the EPA cycle if you opt for the base, “Premium” model with its 18-inch wheels. Luxury models get 20-inch wheels and 220 miles of range. That ties the all-wheel-drive RZ 450e Premium with its 18-inch wheels. Go for the RZ 450e luxury model, though, and your maximum range drops to a disappointing 196 miles.
Real-world range will likely be worse. EPA figures suggest an efficiency of 2.86 miles per kilowatt hour, but my real-world efficiency for the RZ 450e luxury was 2.7 mi/kWh. That was in a mix of 70-mph freeway, highway traffic and city driving in mild temperatures. That’s important here, as I’ve never seen a car report such a dramatic difference between its maximum range with the climate control off versus its maximum range with it on. With an outside temperature of 64 degrees, the Lexus said I could go 142 miles with the climate control off. I turned it on and the range readout dropped to 113 miles. That’s a 20% hit.
I do not think everyone needs a car that can go 500 miles on a charge. But the RZ 450e Luxury’s maximum range just isn’t acceptable for a $65,580 luxury SUV. Less than 200 miles of range is unacceptable for anything that isn’t a purpose-built city car. With the battery at 55%, the RZ told me I couldn’t make it to a destination 80 miles away. It told me I’d have to charge along the way.
Charging experience
What the RZ didn’t tell me was where to stop en route. The car doesn’t support route-planning. If your destination isn’t within reach, figure it out yourself. Or use the in-car navigation to lead you to your nearest charger. Because it isn’t true route planning, though, your nearest charger may take you in the opposite direction of your destination.
The RZ’s in-car navigation also offers precious little information about the charging stations it lists. You can’t see the maximum charge rate, and there’s no data about what stalls are open. The Lexus App promises more help in this regard, though I wasn’t able to use it during my test. Lexus says it can locate stalls, provide information and pay for charging sessions at certain stations. Don’t worry about finding a 350-kW charger, though. The RZ accepts just 150 kW, and it doesn’t tend to stay above 100 kW for much of its charging curve.
The lack of in-car route planning would be annoying in any EV. It’s infuriating in the RZ. Because the car has such a paltry range and because its charging performance is at the back of the pack, strategic route planning has never before been more important. Sure, you can use your phone to do it, but that doesn’t account for the real-time status of your battery, and won’t let you precondition it.
Perhaps the lack of preconditioning helps explain the poor charging performance. On the trip where I set out to cover 80 miles, I plugged in halfway there. The car was at 28%. It took 43 minutes to hit 85%. From 28-70%—which should be the meaty part of the charging curve—the average charging rate was 77 kW.
I’d love to tell you the peak charging rate, but the RZ doesn’t share that information with the driver. Other things you can’t see from the charging screen include the current battery percentage, time to 80%, current charging rate or time on the charger. It gave me just one number: Time to 100% charge. Anyone who has fast-charged an EV knows that is the least important number.
I can forgive not showing the current charging speed, but not displaying a time-to-80% estimate or, at the very least, a current battery percentage is indefensible. It makes it look like no one at Lexus has ever charged an EV, or asked an EV buyer what information they want. It did show an active range readout, at least, though that information wasn’t exactly comforting. With an 85% charge, the RZ predicted it could go just 126 miles with the climate control on.
Between the lackluster range, underwhelming charge times and total lack of supporting software features, I can’t recommend the RZ to anyone who plans to road-trip or fast-charge their EV.
Interior
Lexus did a great job with this interior. It’s the high point of the experience. The RZ 450e Luxury’s interior is plush, pleasant to look at and whisper-quiet. The software experience is a giant leap forward from Lexus’ old touchpad/mouse nonsense, and the screen looked well integrated into the dash.
I like that Lexus offers a variety of interior combinations, including some cool fabric interior options. My tester had a blue/cream fabric and faux leather interior that looked sensational. It felt great, too, with fantastic seats that I could sit in all day. If you’re going to have a long charging stop—and you are—these are the seats I’d want to be in.
It also gets a little tech-forward flair thanks to the electrochromatic roof. With the touch of the button, it goes from transparent to milky gray, and almost opaque. It does this instantly, and it’s very cool to watch. I’d still like to have a shade—as I’d like on a Model Y or anything else with a glass roof—but I like the bright, airy feeling it lends the cabin.
Tech Features
The dimmable roof isn’t the RZ’s only clever new bit of kit. It also gets a “radiant heating” system in lieu of a heat pump. Rather than warming the air, heating panels under the steering column and instrument panel radiate heat directly to the driver’s and front-seat passengers’ legs.
Lexus claims this is 8% more efficient than a standard climate control system, but I’m skeptical that a heating system that only targets the legs would ever replace convective heating. If both the radiant and vent heaters are engaged at once, I’m not sure if it’ll be more efficient than a heat pump, which the RZ doesn’t have.
Either way, the weather in San Diego was too warm to really evaluate the effectiveness of the heater. Given that the Lexus predicted a far greater range penalty for using climate control than any other EV I’ve used, it’s hard to give much credit here.
Infotainment & UX
The RZ has three main displays: A central 14.0-inch touchscreen, a customizable driver information display and a 10-inch head-up display. The head-up display is how you control things like skipping songs and tweaking the gauge cluster. You use the unmarked buttons on the steering wheel—which can control multiple functions—and sort through menus on the display. It’s fine unless you wear polarized sunglasses when driving.
The infotainment system itself is solid. I hadn’t used Lexus’ newest generation of touch-screen infotainment and was pleasantly surprised. The menu layout was easy to suss out, and it was snappy enough by traditional automaker standards. Pinch to zoom on a map, though, and you can see that, like most car brands, Lexus’ hardware is still a generation or two behind the likes of Tesla and Rivian. At least the voice inputs are solid, since this is a Google-powered system. And it still supports wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
Plus, while many buttons have not made the transition to the electric era, there are still physical temperature dials for both front climate zones and a volume knob. Lexus has decided, like everyone else, that a new era of propulsion requires a new form of shifter. Fiddling with shifters isn’t my favorite trend, but Lexus’ is intuitive and predictable.
Safety & ADAS
I wasn’t a fan of the Lexus’ driver-assistance suite, which nominally offers lane-centering but is inconsistent in everyday use. This isn’t a car that can handle itself in a traffic jam. It offers helpful lane-tracing at speed but frequently lost sight of the lanes and offered no clear indication that it was no longer following the lane.
Toyota and Lexus’ “Proactive Driving Assist” is also, in my experience, the most confoundingly useless driver assistance technology on the market. It will automatically slow you—without input or cruise enabled—for things like slowing traffic and steep turns. Yet it won’t stop you. So it is constantly slowing you down at varying rates, adapting regen on the fly, but still makes you do the important final 50% of braking. It’s like having a skittish teenager operating only half of your brakes.
Lexus’ ADAS suite also monitors driver attention. I like that, from a safety perspective, but in practice it was frustrating. Even when I didn’t have the ADAS engaged, the car would flash an alert if I obstructed the sensor’s view by putting my hand on top of the steering wheel.
Those seeking the most sophisticated semi-autonomous tech have never flocked toward Lexus, and I can’t imagine that changing here.
Pricing & Trims
The Lexus RZ is available in four trims:
- Lexus RZ 300e Premium FWD, starting at $55,150 ($50,950 with Core Package)
- Lexus RZ 300e Luxury 4WD, starting at $60,880
- Lexus RZ 450e Premium AWD, starting at $59,850 ($55,650 with Core Package)
- Lexus RZ 450e Luxury AWD, starting at $65,580
The Luxury trim of either model includes 20-inch alloy wheels, a delightful 13-speaker Mark Levinson audio system and themed ambient lighting, along with other features usually included in the Technology Package. Confusingly, the “Core Package” actually reduces the price of either Premium model by $4,200, removing “standard” features like the panoramic glass roof, 360-degree camera system, park assist system, power liftgate, ventilated seats, memory seats and even the backup camera washer.
I understand that Lexus didn’t want to cut these features from the “base” model, but having to option down a “Premium” model is a confusing way to offer a lower base price. Regardless, I think the RZ to buy is the 300e Premium with no options. You still get the luxury interior and plush ride but with far more usable range and class-leading efficiency.
Verdict
Despite the litany of complaints I’ve issued here, I enjoyed my time with the RZ. When it wasn’t perplexing me, it was coddling me. It rode great, it looks different and it feels impeccably built. Had I driven a 300e with its agreeable range and stunning efficiency, I may have even liked it as an EV.
Editor-in-Chief Patrick George had an RZ450e around the same time as this test, and his first experience was getting stuck in a 3.5-hour traffic jam trying to leave New York City on a summer night. But at the end of the drive, he was “completely zen,” he told me. The RZ is just that pleasant and lovely to be in—it’s hard to be mad in this car, even if you’re sitting still. It’s as good as any Lexus out there at being a Lexus.
But despite its success as a luxury crossover, the RZ450e fails as an EV. I believe legacy automakers that treat EVs as “normal cars, but electric” are bound to fail, and this is a case study of why that’s true. It feels like they’d rather you just buy an RX hybrid, and frankly, I’d take one over this.
Lexus has clever, talented engineers. Yet none of them were tasked with solving any EV-specific problems. The company has avoided addressing any pain points. The 450e offers inadequate range and poor charging specs to begin with, then throws its customers to the wolves with software that won’t help them plan trips, won’t coach them into smart charging habits and won’t give them the information they need. Nothing here suggests this company is excited to offer customers a new experience.
Maybe that isn’t true. The 300e proves that Toyota can still run with the best of them when it comes to electric motor efficiency. But without the support of fully realized software tools and unique-to-EV capabilities, that isn’t going to convince any skeptics. We keep hearing that Lexus and Toyota as a whole are serious about EVs and have some truly competitive firepower coming soon. It would be nice to see that sooner rather than later, because the RZ ain’t it. After all, if the company isn’t buying into this idea, then why should its customers?
Contact the author: Mack.hogan@insideevs.com.
