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Video: 2023 Toyota bZ4X: Review
By Cars.com Editors
April 12, 2022About the video
We recently got behind the wheel of the 2023 Toyota bZ4X, an all-new pure electric crossover SUV from Toyota. How does it stack up against the competition? Watch the video to find out.
Transcript
2022 might just be the year that electric vehicles really start to enter the mainstream American consumer consciousness. Now, why is that? It's because automakers are starting to introduce EVs in categories that Americans actually like to buy.
We're not talking about tiny little compacts. We're talking about five passenger mid-sized crossover SUVs. We've already seen a number of them introduced. The Hyundai Ionic 5, the Volkswagen ID 4, the Kia EV 6, the Mustang Mach-E, and the number of entries has just gone up by one. This is the 2023 Toyota BZ 4X. Now what does that name mean? BZ is the beyond zero brand. The electric brand that Toyota is introducing. Four stands for Four. That's the model that they're saying it is. And X stands for crossover. So yes, here we have a five passenger mid-sized electric crossover from Toyota. Now, we showed you this thing back at the LA Auto Show last year. Gave you a tour of it inside now, but we hadn't had a chance to drive it until just now. So we've come here to San Diego, California to drive the new '23 BZ 4X. To see is it as good as a number of the competitors that have already been introduced? Driving the Toyota BZ 4X really isn't all that different from driving pretty much a number of other very similar mid-size crossover electric SUVs. You can tell that it's heavy, and you can tell that by the fact that despite the fact that it's got some pretty good size wheels and tires it is a little bit stiff. Not stiff like a Mustang Mach-E, but the ride itself, you've got some motions. You got a little bit of bouncing even on these really quite nice and smooth San Diego roads. It's just a little unsettled, and a little bit of motion gets through. It's not like I said, not nearly as bad as a Mustang which will rattle your teeth out and make you have to use a restroom every time you get outta the car, because it's been pounding at your kidneys for the past 10 miles. Now this is noticeable, but not really intolerable at all. Now the BC 4X will come in two varieties, and really the big changes are between the front wheel drive and the optional all wheel drive model. And there are little more different than you might think. They actually have two different batteries from two different suppliers and they have different characteristics for both of them. This one is a front wheel drive limited. It uses one motor, it's got 201 horsepower. The dual motor one is all wheel drive. It's got more horsepower. It's got more torque. It should be a little bit quicker to 60 more miles an hour as well. But there's an aspect to these vehicles that I really have to wonder about. You see, the peak charging rate for a front wheel drive version is 150 kilowatts, and the peak charging rate for an all-wheel drive version with a different battery from a different supplier is only a hundred kilowatts. Now that means that you can go from almost empty not quite empty to about 80% of charge on a DC fast charger, in what Toyota says is less than an hour. Now that would normally sound great, except that I know for a fact that the Hyundai Ionic 5, if you get the right charger on the the right land site charger that has a 350 kilowatt capacity can actually go from 20% of charge to 80% of charge in just 16 minutes. How do I know this? Because I've done it. So when this thing comes out it's gonna be competing against that vehicle, the Hyundai Ionic 5 and the Kia EV 6, which could do the same thing, but it's already uncompetitive when it lands because its battery doesn't charge nearly as quickly as the new Hyundai's and Kia's do. So is that going to be an issue? Well, for some people, if you plan on taking it on a road trips and charging it in public chargers a lot it might be an issue. If you only really ever plan on charging it at home and using it around town with the occasional longer trip, then it probably won't be a big deal. Now they tell me that the dual motor version is actually really quite quick but frankly, this single motor version with 201 horsepower and just a little over 200 pounds feet of torque actually is plenty quick all on its own. It's got really good acceleration. It's pretty snappy. And the one thing that it doesn't have, however, is true one pedal driving, which you see in a number of other competitor vehicles like Tesla model Y like the Volkswagen ID 4. It does have this button here, which activates a re-gen boost mode, which can improve the regenerative capability of the brakes and put a bit more charge back into your battery. But it's not true one pedal driving and it will not bring you to a stop. It does require you to actually still use the brakes when you use this re-gen boost. So it provides a little bit of additional stopping power without having to touch the brakes, but not all that much. The brakes themselves are not bad. They feel like electric car numb. They're not terribly communicated, but they're not incredibly artificial either. Like you'd see in say a Mercedes EQs. So all in all the driving experience is really pretty good. It's kind of really very much a Toyota electric car. It does everything very competently. It's not outrageous or outstanding in any one aspect, but for people who are used to things like a Prius or or a RAV4 prime, this is really gonna be, I think a nice step up. The interior layout of the BZ 4X is really kind of unique. In our initial up close video at the LA Auto Show we talked about how this gauge cluster is really quite up high on the dash. This car doesn't have a heads up display but it honestly doesn't need one because that display is so high that you actually look at it over the top of the steering wheel instead of through the steering wheel. Now that's allowed them to put, I think a slightly smaller steering wheel in. So it does have an unusual driving position in terms of where you've got your hands, where you've got the wheel but you get used to it pretty quickly. This car has the 12.3 inch screen with the new Toyota audio multimedia system. It's brand new system for Toyota, and it's a far cry better than the old one they used to have. It debuted on the Tundra, and it includes a lot of voice commands that normally work pretty well. Eh, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, but that's pretty much the standard with all voice controlled systems. In my opinion, I would rather just punch a button and figure out what it's doing. One thing I actually lik about the BZ 4X is that there aren't any weird noises. There's no added spaceship, whoosh noise. There's no odd South Korean dishwasher noises on start or shut down. It just feels like a car. And it works very well in that regard too. It feels normal. It doesn't feel anything outrageous or super high tech. Which is kind of the point when it comes to a lot of Toyota products. They aren't necessarily going to be the most outrageous, they are gonna be a state of the art kind of thing necessarily, but they are going to appeal to a wide range of people. And given the fact that Toyota is still the leader in terms of electrified vehicles in sales, in this country over the years, starting with Prius and going up through all number of different hybrid vehicles. It's pretty sure bet that this thing is going to be successful. Again, you can tell that the BZ 4X is probably rather heavy for a crossover because the way it handles. Steering feel is, well typical for what I would experience in most Toyotas. It's not all that communicative. It is fairly numb, but it's reasonably accurate. And again, you're not gonna be taking this thing on twisty's. This is not a Mustang Mach-E. It's not trying to be a sports car like the Mustang is, it's just being a crossover SUV and for your commuting duty or your family shuttling duty it will do just fine. It may look like a low slung SUV from the outside, but it really is a fairly tall vehicle. It has quite a bit of head room in here despite the fact that it's got a fixed glass panel as standard on either the XLE or the limited trims. Now it doesn't open. It's a fixed glass panel. It's not an actual Panoramic moon roof, but this extra headroom also shows up in the cargo area where you've got a lot more cargo room. At least it looks like than a Hyundai Ionic 5. Ionic 5 has great passenger room, you've got plenty of width especially for both front and rear passengers. This doesn't necessarily have the width of the Ionic 5, but that extra headroom really does make up for it. Both in terms of passenger headroom and extra cargo space in the back. It is also relatively quiet while driving. You get some tire noise out of this thing but really not that much. Now, admittedly, we are on these fairly smooth Southern California roads but even with these 20 inch tires on the limited model it's still reasonably quiet in here. Even at 55 miles per hour. I have to give mixed reviews to the Toyota audio multimedia system. It's clear, and it's concise, and it works decently well, and it's a site better than the old Toyota in tune system, but there's no home button. Which I find to be kind of unusual. And that's, you have to go hunting for things in terms of what you wanna find. Yeah. There's buttons for audio and phone, and vehicle settings and whatnot, but there's no one home button that'll show you just a grid of the various options that you have. And that honestly is frankly helpful when you're driving. I am thankful that they do still have actual buttons in here. They've got a good panel of them here. Activating things like camera view, eco mode, drive mode. You can have one here, that'll hold you in position. And there's also the re-gen mode is all, is is down on the center console as well. The climate control, however, is completely touch by panel capacitive touch. And it's actually not so bad. It's easy to see better than some previous efforts. And it works reasonably well, I suppose. There are essentially two versions and two trims of the BZ 4X, you can get it either in standard front wheel drive or optional all wheel drive, and you can get it in either the base XLE or the up market limited trim. Now, my choice is actually this one, this is an XLE all-wheel drive. The all-wheel drive version is actually noticeably quicker than the standard front wheel drive version, which really wasn't much of a slouch to begin with. But the XLE comes with smaller 18 inch wheels on taller tires. Now that means that the ride on the XLE is notably better than it is on the limited version. And it really doesn't do much in terms of sacrificing handling powers because handling powers really wasn't this vehicle's strong suit to begin with. It starts at about $43,000 for a base XLE front wheel drive, and can go all the way up to just over 50 grand for a loaded limited all-wheel drive. Now they're starting to appear in showrooms in early April of 2022. And if you'd like to learn or about the new BZ 4X, or where you might be able to buy one yourself you can look everything up on cars.com.
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