Featured Lexus's First Electric Car Is Disappointing. The Lexus RZ450e Is Not Good and Here's Why.

Wow... And to think the head of Lexus is now the head of Toyota... Perhaps the only thing worse than insisting on selling hybrid cars instead of electric is to build an electric car based on hybrid systems rather than simplifying and redesigning the drive train from scratch.

If this is what Toyota thinks is a competitive EV product they're truly doomed as a car maker...

 

they can start with the front end:

 

Well, it is based on the bZ4X. Couldn't expect it to be radically different, as Lexus was stuck with what Toyota gave them, and their come to Jesus moment happened after these were designed.

I wonder if they plan on using that transaxle fluid in future power-split hybrids.

 

I had wondered why they went with the power sucking radiant heaters, and now we know.

The video is absolutely brutal.

 

what . . . . . . . it's not bodacious enough?

.

 

All that hate and yet he did not provide any real information about why it does what it does. He complained about running the SOC as low as he could and then taking 2 whole hours to bring it to 100% charge. I'd like to see him do that in his garage using the other cars that he claims to be very familiar with.

He seems to be saying that he'd rather that extra battery drain be spread over the remaining drive. That way he would not freak out until he was stranded and needed to call a tow truck to get to the nearest charger.

That's pretty stupid. The whole idea of the range meter is to predict how far you can go using current conditions. That's how it's worked for ages. A GM luxury car shows you MTE based on your current rate of consumption. If you slow down to the speed limit you often find that your miles to empty allows you to get to the next fuel stop.

And you guys LIKE this guy's "review"? Sheesh.

 

I've forgotten... which car have you designed and mass produced?

Exactly which part of the design of the hybrid system is, in your opinion, less capable than a home brewed first attempt by any particular startup? What would you ( Prius camper) have designed differently for a luxury EV and how would you manage to explain it to your board of directors? After all, refusing to use what you learned from 20 years of making electric cars would be considered wasteful.

The only ones who publicly crow about using a brand new design from the ground up are the companies that have no experience to build upon. Then they can excuse missed objectives by simply saying "it's harder than we expected to do it right".

 

It's absolutely something, anyway.

The only idea that would be worse than power-sucking radiant heaters, to keep the humans warm, would be a power-sucking air heater to try to heat the whole cabin space for the humans to be warm.

 

The only difference of substance between this and the bZ4X and Solterra is in it keeping the FWD motor in the AWD model. That gives it the performance someone looking at a luxury EV wants, but then it is still lacking in the range and charge speed.

Yet Toyota is cancelling EV models, likely scrapping eTNGA, and Toyotda stepped down, in order to do ground up design like those start ups, because their re-purposing parts for a BEV results in models that can't compete in the market.

 

The only company complaining about how hard it is... is Toyota. Other companies, GM, Mercedes, Ford, VW are supporting the rollout of infrastructure. Toyota complains about the lack of it without doing a damn thing to improve it.

And to your other point, which I didn't quote, Toyota leaned too MUCH on their hybrid experience and didn't properly scale it up. They never built up a supply chain for full EVs, which is why they're using second tier battery suppliers.

 

You obviously didn't watch the entire video, I did... You obviously have never designed and mass produced a car either, nor has any individual. This is the work of a huge team, of course from your previous posts maybe your ego is big enough to do it all by yourself?

More to the point... No one has been making Electric Cars via mass production for 20 years yet... But Nissan and Tesla will be the first to hit that milestone and Toyota will be the very last...

If you'd had actually watched the entire video we could have an intelligent conversation about the many design flaws of this horrific design for an EV, but you didn't so we won't.

 

You obviously weren't paying attention to the video... For it to say you have 70 miles of range left and have that dramatically change when you turn on some headlights? Or how about it showing 5 miles more range than it did when it was turned off the day before even though it hasn't been charged? That's straight up lazy or incompetent from the software designers... You have to address those discrepancies so the remaining range estimate doesn't come across as dishonest and unstudied as your comments.

 

Interesting point. What algorithm would you use for doing that? What would be its strengths and weaknesses?

If the driver has added a load, and that will reduce the expected range, how will you inform the driver of that?

If the driver then reacts by reducing that load, or reducing some other load, how will you help the driver understand how much the expected range has been extended by those adjustments?

 

plug in prius and prime reduce the range estimate when you turn the fan on, but not when you add a/c, the bloodsucker

 

Dinosaurs are complaining about too advanced electronic-safety systems.

For me, they are what make modern cars cars—anything less is obsolete technology.

 

If the non-emergency alerts are constant, they are deemed a nuisance, the system gets shut off, and it helps no one.

 

Or it means that the driver doesn't know how to drive.

 

You just add buffering... In Gen2 Prius language it's the difference between your real time MPG and MPG recorded as the miles go by, which have to be further refined by your calculation at the pump.

As in Toyota can use that rapidly moving data point on one screen, but they need a more stable primary screen. But something is broken at Toyota for them getting something so wrong that they've been doing right with the Prius since 2004. Obviously all that talent no longer works at Toyota or Lexus anymore.

What stinks about the entirety of this car is how they're trying to build it using their existing factories/supply chain and not redesign a drivetrain from scratch with a brand new in house factory. As in an old dog can't learn tricks...