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Driving Experience

It seems however that Lexus has poured all of the RZ’s excitement into the car’s design, because it doesn’t feel like a particularly stirring car to drive. Its noted strengths come in the areas of refinement, as is expected from Lexus, with its reasonably smooth ride quality and all-round quietness. And yet strangely the car is not completely silent, with fairly audible wind and tyre noise while on the move, which feels a tad disappointing coming from a brand noted for its excellence in these particular qualities.

It does feel remarkably composed however, and the 309hp and 435Nm of torque coming from the dual-motor setup gives the car some pretty brisk acceleration pace. There’s a great sense of stability, perhaps due to the fact that the heavy batteries sit at the bottom, like most EVs do. But the RZ in particular feels like the kind of car that can handle long distance highway driving all day every day without fuss or complaint, and the car generally feels unruffled even at high speed.

Handling-wise, the RZ is mostly capable, going through the corners capably with decent body control. But it comes across as a bit boring, and it lacks that sort of engagement as you’ll find in, say, a BMW iX3. As a regular daily driver, there’s little to complain about here, but the RZ is not really a car that would set your pulses racing or heart rate spiking.

As an EV, the RZ is pretty much average too. Range is quoted at 440km, which is just about on par for its class, although in the real world that is likely to drop to somewhere in the 300s given the average 20kWh/100km consumption figure we got, just slightly above the official figure of 18.7kWh/100km. And yes, the RZ now has Type 2 CCS fast charging socket, and Lexus claims that it will take just 30 minutes to charge the car up on a 150kW DC charger.

Nevertheless, the RZ marks a far better attempt as an EV than Lexus’ previous effort with the UX. But a potential stumbling block could well be the RZ’s price tag of S$406,800 inclusive of COE, even accounting for the S$25,000 VES rebate. That puts it well above similar-sized rivals like the BMW iX3 and Audi E-Tron, and at that price point, the RZ does seem like a bit of a hard sell. Still, at this rate of progress, Lexus is very much well on the right track towards catching up on its rivals in the EV sphere, and knowing the capabilities of the Japanese, it would be foolish to rule them out just yet.

Lexus RZ450e Luxury

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