Lexus RZ 450E Luxury review - Is this electric luxury SUV right for you?

hi I'm Patrick and I'm Lev and this is the Maki Vlog we've spent the past few days in this beautiful Lexus rz450e we're going to tell you all about it today so let's go [Music] here we go [Music] [Music] okay I'm going to start with the front of the car this could be a little bit controversial I mean some people love it some people hate it partially I think it's because of this big front snoz on a lot of the lexuses they have that like big giant Grill there's no Grill here but it has a little bit of accents that remind you of a grill but then it just still has that big front area there very angular a lot of people don't like the two-tone colors or the cladding I think it all plays together very real very well in person when I saw photos and other videos I wasn't quite so sure but you know seeing it now I'm like it it looks pretty good uh overall and driving it around for the past week I've gotten so that I really like the look of it plus just some of the design elements like if you look at it individually like the two-tone paint might not appeal to you or whatever but like when it comes together like some of the angles here with the nose with the two-tone paint especially this blue gray metallic paint and then tying it in with the wheels down here it just sort of all comes together when you see it in person I think it looks a bit angular and aggressive and high-tech because of the the colors that are picked here and the two-tone nature of it a lot of people really don't like the two-tone but I think if you look at it in person it sort of like pulls everything together and looks pretty sharp now looking at the side profile of the rz450 it's pretty much just like a lot of other compact crossover SUVs it swoops down toward the rear of the vehicle instead of like coming and having a more boxy shape looks uh you know more aerodynamic and it is more aerodynamic by doing that one of the things that's a little bit unique is that of course this part here being black and then the other you know body paint here creates sort of like a different look and I believe makes it look a little bit sleeker and thinner than if it were all like body color so pulls that together pretty fairly well some of the like curves and stuff that you can see a little bit on camera right here give it a a basically a lot of character on the side so that it doesn't look just like a big flat you know surface and then as with a lot of other crossover compact SUVs they sort of use some black down low to make it look a little bit skinnier so that it is again a big fat piece of metal from the side one of the things that's really neat of course is this looks like it's a complete spoiler up here at the top but I can put my hand behind it it's actually it's almost like I've heard him called like cat ears because it just swoops back here helps direct some of the air but because there's no rear windshield wipe wiper or the wiper on the back be with that coming down at the angle that it does apparently helps keep some of the water off in the dirt and debris so you don't necessarily need that rear windshield wiper and the other element that I'll point out is some of the aggressive looking lights that are in front the headlights is also continued back here very nice angles some sharp Corners here and brings just a fair amount of Interest into like what could normally be just like a dull you know regular old brake light I sort of like the way that all looks in the the back part but overall it I think it has a relatively Sleek look with a lot of little interesting elements all of the little uh curves the creases and the little black accents basically give it a lot of interest if it's not to your styling you probably already stopped and watched this video but let's go and take a look at the very back so now this is a better angle the one in the middle that's a what they call a shark fin antenna that's basically providing your satellite radio reception and FM radio I believe through through those but you can get a better look at how the like aerodynamics are have been put into the rear of this and the little cat ears as as I've heard them referred to it looks sort of awkward but you know from the side it gives it that that spoiler look it looks pretty good and then back here it isn't really a spoiler but because of way that it's flared up and then on the top here is black gives it the look of a having a spoiler and with all of these compact SUV crossovers the butt always looks quite thick and this was no exception and that's offset a little bit you can't really see it in that camera view but down here is the bottom half is black so that makes again makes it look a little bit thinner uh very nice to see you know Lexus here rz450 direct 4 which is just talking about their all-wheel drive system just you know typical badging that you'll see on other lexuses that keep the brand consistent and again you know I'm liking that the the light accent there's a little bit of red that goes all the way across and let's see I want to adjust this it's not really the best way to see it but you can see down here it's like fake ventilation coming down through the the rear of the vehicle and gives it just sort of like a futuristic like I guess like aeronautic look if you ask me now let's talk about some basic stats of the car so the biggest one the biggest like red flag for people if you're looking for a long range EV is that the range on this one this is the luxury bottle with the bigger Wheels is only 196 miles that might be a red flag and a show stopper for you but if you're only going to use this around town that's more than fine if you're going to only do the occasional road trip you still might be okay so you know like one of the things I point out is like from here to Vegas it's probably about 300 miles so you'll probably have like one maybe two stops this one might take you just a little bit longer if you have to do it like once a month it might become a very big pain a big chore to take an EV like this you may want to look at something else but if you're doing that maybe twice a year don't I wouldn't worry about it too much if you live in cold climates that 196 miles will probably drop significantly so that might be another consideration so if ranges is a is a big importance factor for you that might be an issue now this shares a lot of the underpinnings that the bz-4x from Toyota and the Subaru soltera so they share a lot of the same components but this one actually has a I believe a bigger front motor same size rear motor may have got that mixed up but it does produce just over 300 horsepower means it does 0 to 60 at about 5.1 seconds so it is more powerful than either the bz4x or the soltera so if that's something that you're looking for that's uh what you can find in this this this uh rz450e the charging it's will Peak at 150 but the biggest issue with that if you get into the actual charging curve is like it will you know only hit about 150 or if you're lucky under perfect conditions but then it drifts down and gets a lot slower and then above 80 percent it gets significantly slower so those are all things that we you know look at when we're looking at EVs and if those are big factors for you that might be something that you know prevents you from buying this vehicle but there are a lot of reasons that this is still a good EV depending on your use cases get it into this cabin you can see that everything is quite driver focused it's all tilted towards the driver we have a pretty large center console here that in my case is a little bit too invasive for my left leg driving but it's not super bad we do have a front and back cup holder I am partial to the side by side but it's nice that these ones have pretty good grabbies and they've held on to my really tall water bottle really well the spinnable gear shifter is really fun I like it similar to the Maki really but Patrick likes to fiddle with stuff while he drives so we have noticed that he fiddles with this which is not great well I pushed and then that puts it in neutral while I was at a stop light and then you have to go to park I think first before you can go back into gear but you you literally like push this part down I'm gonna put it in neutral um I think that did not do it you push and twist basically so it has to be quite intentional my foot isn't on the brake so probably nothing's gonna happen but a lot of your controls are around here uh Patrick's going to go into the multimedia but something I do want to point out is that the camera control is there it is nice that the camera is there but I keep forgetting because I expect it to be on the screen somewhere yeah or something like that so every time I'm about to pull in somewhere I'm like uh um we have three USBC which is great this is plugged in right now and we have the wireless charging pad down there which seems a little sensitive I'm not super sure why but um and it makes like a noise like a little buzzing noise if you're not exactly on it yeah um so I'm not sure what that is but it does work does work well it does work and it's still nice and easy to have something where you can just fling your phone and I'm partial to ones where you can see your phone so if anything pops up and you're not connected to the car you can tell tell you screen brightens so onto the materials if you're looking down here this is all a sustainable interior this is faux wood it's not real wood it's beautifully etched to emulate some kind of Ash not really sure what it is I wonder if it's an actual thing that exists but it looks pretty gorgeous to me and the texture feels lovely and you also have this brushed metal which is it's plastic but I'm partial to brush finishes they're easier to keep clean we know like the piano black like this is a little more fingerprinting that's not too bad not too bad but it scratches easy after a few years excuse me and there is some piano black over on the dash a little bit yeah not a ton not compared to some other cars and there's a little bit up here and before we go too far let's just do this because I think it's so cool yeah since we're up here let's hop over to one of the really cool features of this interior and that is a little Boop of a button I think that's so cool the roof is no longer opaque we have electrochromic gloss on the roof here the roof is partitioned so the front and the back are separate but they both experience the electrochromic effect and there is no lag so if you're showing the front and back they both go instantly the same way it's so cool very cool and if you look at me I think you can tell the difference can you tell the difference oh yeah yeah so I feel like now I would need sunblock on but and it's a mostly activated not so cloudy day uh partially cloudy so when it's in the bright Sun it's even more it's even more noticeable more noticeable yeah so while you're in this direction let's look at some of the textiles this is faux leather it actually looks pretty good in leather the material around the steering wheel is also technically faux leather but it feels a bit like a neoprene to me on the side of the doors we have plush micro suede not real suede this I really love and it feels good on your skin when you're accidentally sort of brushing your elbow against the door it feels lovely now point up here this is one thing that's been bugging me and you can even see we didn't do that someone else's stained that material just a little this white headliner trim up here is not something I'm a fan of it's a cloth it's not the easiest to clean I imagine so if you're like me and you wear makeup then you're going to be brushing makeupy fingers or you want to reapply some lipstick and you're doing this while you're touching a light fabric that is not super easy or super protected against smudges and smears so I'm not a huge fan of that but the rest of the Interior is gorgeous and plush and now if you look in front of Patrick you may notice the complete lack of a glove box but underneath this material here is a heating element there's also one underneath the steering wheel so if you go over here you'll see like the little icon there when you turn on the heated seats I'm not going to do it because I'm warm on both sides it will basically turn onto heated seats as well as the heating element here and the idea is being an electric vehicle it could be more efficient to just run those at to you know heat your body and your knees up versus you know running the fan into whole HVAC system to try to heat up the entire cabin because that's a that's a lot of air all the way back there to try to heat up we did not run it much I did we did turn it on yeah we turned it on to just to see how it is very effective very effective yeah it's funny because even my mom said it was effective and she was sitting in the back seat so I don't think it was doing anything in the back seats again yeah and of course it does have a heating steering steering wheel and on both sides you can see in the front there are ventilated seats so very nice to see that's something that I wish that we had in our car everything else is fairly straightforward I wasn't going to go into the entertainment system uh I'll just say it's not bad oh you're adjusting things over there I am I just uh because I was like you have the steering wheel something that I love is that this is once again brushed metal these controls here they are not haptic or anything but they're very tangible buttons and when I'm swiping my finger here I'm adjusting between the modes of the vehicle so I'm going to go pop back into normal but something that is extremely cool about this is that as I'm just swiping my thumb on the heads up display yeah you can see it let's I'm gonna hit zoom in quick there you go on the heads-up display you can see that I'm swiping sorry for the flickering but it doesn't flicker like that for the human eye it does not it looks great for the human eye so you can see that I'm just resting my finger on eco mode and it'll say eco mode and there are different things Within These controls on the steering wheel that will pop up when you swipe on them and then you can select them like hit the button below the page button below nope that that one the page button oh and then that switched over to the driver assistance functions so it's like you can cycle through with that little keypad does our d-pad at first you could see it as clearly as we can see it because it's a really nice heads-up display honestly okay so going back over here uh oop where we're really zoomed in let's go back out so yeah it's uh one of the neat little features is the the temperature thing it has like a little screen in here that's showing you the the temperature that you're at uh otherwise uh fairly straightforward and normal like uh software here it isn't the best the the navigation this because it's trying to connect my Lexus account which I don't actually really have um navigation seems pretty good it has the thing if you call out the name of the brand it will do navigation does voice commands Okay voice activated navigation has a Serious XM radio we're connected to carplay now so I can go over here and then there we are we're in car play the only thing this is this is like not the only thing but one of the quirks that I don't like is once you get into the carplay screen it's not very easy easy to get back over to the cars system so the way you have to do it is you have to hit the icons here and then I have the Lexus app installed so I would tap that but sometimes what happens is like I'm on this screen and then I go over here and it'll come back to like a different set of icons and then I gotta find where to let the the Lexus button is I don't want to trigger the voice command thing but uh when I tap that now I'm back over into the car's native stuff so again like if I'm here like in maps then I have to like go and find it to get back over so a little bit quirky but uh you know I got used to it but it you know sometimes it's like three or four taps to like get to where I needed to to get back over to this and and sometimes like uh swap back and forth between like carplay nav and the native nav just because you know sometimes no coverage in carplay for example with my phone but anyways the door handles were very confusing for the first time I got out because I was like you've got to pull it and there's like a little red thing here it's like pulled twice so that's like the the emergency release but then I just figured out you literally just push your thumb and the door opens and it's really really like intuitive like you that's exactly where I would grab if I were going to grab this handle push it and it's open so I like the interior door handles um but that was confusing for everybody that sat in the car so but on that note I think that most vehicles are confusing and their doors when you first use them I do think that ergonomically this is a fantastic way to do it because you don't need a great deal of control force or dexterity to be able to open the door there is a texture on the spot where your thumb touches and it is naturally where your thumb lies so multiple times my mom and my dad or other people in the vehicle were going like this to the door handle and saying how do you open it and I said just pinch your thumb press where your thumb is and then it automatically opens ergonomically fantastic now one place in which this door has been consistently difficult is in the closing it is harder to close it gently every single person who got into this vehicle did not close the door properly on the first try on the first try and always had to slam it again and then my mom and I got into my sister's car and my mom slammed the door and my sister was like whoa whoa whoa and my mom's like I'm sorry because of this so she'd like been trained now to close it harder and she didn't need to in that vehicle so that's open enough because it feels solid when you do it like and I think that's part of the car being solid to listen it's super solid it feels solid so I like it but it does it took everybody like I think your mom like every single time we had every time yeah can you close the door again yeah so that was a thing um I do have to show you one of my favorite things in this cabin is right over here so we have a huge storage space it's also really cushy and nice to lean your arms on but you want to get inside the storage not to worry you pop inside we've got a whole bunch of GoPros in there now I want to get inside oh my gosh how cool is that that we have a double-sided cubby space here absolutely love it there's no way to open it in this direction um upwards long ways whatever only side by side but that's perfectly fine super awesome and looking at some more storage space right underneath this Center cubby there's a pretty good space unfortunately it's a little closed off by the seat here so your access to this Gap is not as big as you'd like it but it is a good space and I think you'll notice that on the driver's side the lip is greater and that is to stop any bags or things from falling out into the driver's footwell which is really considerate and cool yeah I had trouble like putting stuff in from the driver's side and I didn't realize this site is a lot more open but that's that's a pretty neat idea it still is a little bit hard to get things in and out that are any decent size but um you know I think on our cart we have like a tissue box and it would be a very small tissue box to actually fit in this one but I like having that type of storage and that's the type of thing that you can do on EVS yeah absolutely since you're facing me my final input is on the seats if you're curious they're extremely comfortable they are extremely comfortable there's a whole ton of different support features lumbar um you can raise it and lower it can't you raised lower it's very good control the lumbar is excellent it actually isn't just uh you know like sometimes lumbar goes out that much it doesn't it looks like it goes out a lot yeah and we have three memory settings that are on the left of the steering wheel so you can't really see them but you know what they look like little buttons you can set uh record your memory I'm number one so it remembers everything about your seating um and it's really really comfortable if you were curious cushy and the final thing before I I hop out since we covered almost everything is looking at the screen here you can see what I was talking about there is not a percentage mark showing exactly how much battery you have left it's sort of like just like an old-fashioned fuel gauge it does show you on the left side there's like a power meter that if we were driving it shows like how much uh you know electricity is being applied to the motors to propel you and then you know when you're in a braking situation and using regenerative braking it'll show you like the negative going in for braking as well but but yeah sort of a little bit of lack of info as far as battery percentage but otherwise it's pretty straightforward um instrument cluster let's go check out the back seats okay first of all let me try closing the door sort of firmly but not slamming it like I probably would slam it more than that but my mother-in-law had a trouble with that and of course I can look back look up there and I can see that it says the door's not fully closed so you have to feels like you're slamming it to get it to close properly but um good amount of leg room here we got like a little seat pocket in front of us it's very soft materials here no plastic or anything like that but I do have to say it's like it feels like my feet are up high so like my knees are you know up off the edge of the seat right here if you have very long legs you may have the the room but it's like you're going to be in a little bit of a a fetal position as you're sitting in the the back seats I do like how it feels this faux suede feels very nice all the way across the back seat one of the things to note it looks like it may have a pass through here it does not there's no pass through to the rear storage area but there are two cup holders here we have a couple of more USBC ports here and we do have seat warmers in the back I didn't realize that and we have vents for the back so rear seat warmers again that's one of the things that may justify a little bit more costs in this vehicle and can help out with the fact that there's a lower range and there is a 12 volt back here so I know there's one in the rear storage area as well but yeah one thing to that I've noticed sitting back here is that this bar here sort of breaks up the expanse of the glass roof versus a lot of other EVS or just cars that have a glass roof that goes all the way front to back it looks like you're just looking up into the great expanse of the sky here with the bar it feels like there's like a little portal here and one up there so interrupts the flow of things a little bit but it's still letting in a lot of light so uh just something to take note of sometimes in vehicles it feels like you have to be really precise in where you press to open the trunk this actually feels really good like the button area is quite large you can see as this goes up there's a large area of space for me to press to open it up and once this is open this trunk is great it fits the wheelchair perfectly with no issues this is a hard cover and when you take it down which I'm not going to right now but as you can see it folds in the middle it comes down pretty easily but this all folds into one side so you have to store that somewhere like underneath but fortunately there's quite a good chunk of space under here you got my jacket you've got your jacket the trunk is well appointed and nice and spacious which is great because there's no frunk so and then I think this is the thing I was saying there's a 12 volt over here and it says max four kilograms on these hooks here there's a hook on both sides a couple of tie downs here fairly straightforward and then if you did hear the car was like beeping and stuff and like why are you beeping I got the key here I don't know what you're beeping for this car beeps a lot it does do you not know what it's beeping for half the time we don't know what it's beeping yeah I don't know all right I think it's time to get on the road I'm gonna drive a little let's go so we were just talking about the fact that I'm trying to get used to using a heads up display as navigation instead of talking yeah we she likes having Apple play um speak the instructions I don't and I'm even without the heads-up display like in our car I just see it on the center screen and I'm good with that um but you know it depends on your preference I think the heads-up display is been pretty useful it has been I mean we don't have one in the Maki and it's not something I'm super used to but I think that this would happen quite easily um as a swear tone yeah it's a very very far back like entrance yeah it is yeah I I'd like to get some more experience with heads up displays because it almost feels like this one's a little high doesn't it it did not seem that way until you mentioned it I thought I did yeah um I really really do like the feature though and especially if we're gonna start getting away from instrument clusters and vehicles hopefully not yeah hopefully not but heads up displays are cool as far as the ride quality I really like this a lot like it feels a lot smaller also than it is because it's not that much smaller than the Maki is it very similar in size to the Maki overall um I I do think it's a bit like a bit bouncy which the like select and premium Marquis can feel a bit bouncy as well but overall it's it's like smooth and bouncy if that makes sense it's not like if a ride is firm and bouncy it's like jarring this is just a little bit like it's definitely smooth and bouncy and I don't know how noticeable the bouncy would have been if we hadn't had passengers a lot so we actually had family visiting this whole time that we've had the the Lexus and we had my mom and my dad in the back and they're older so if anything's wrong with the ride you hear about it very quickly so we heard that it's bouncy they had a lot of opinions about the car a lot of opinions some of it was just that they weren't familiar with the car but overall I think everybody that's been in it has liked you know how it feels um you know luxurious wise very nice seats um fake suede or vegan suede we'll say we will say fake and uh vegan or not even vegan like fake what do we call this non-animal free leather steering wheel which feels a little bit like neoprene like it almost feels like one of those uh covers that you get for your iPad or something it's kind of squishy I don't mind it though it definitely doesn't feel or look leathery though maybe on the dash more so it's well it's this is all like soft plastic this is not quite as soft but then the the suede on the doors the seats it all feels fairly nice and then uh even like the fake wood green um I think it's fake but it it all feels like very good quality materials I I like the yeah that's like the biggest thing that I've noticed is um quality of the materials and if you hear any rattles it's not the car we do have a you know filming gear and cables and yeah of the key but obviously we did a walkabout of the vehicle and we told you all about it this is very much about driving Impressions so if you know me you know that I am an amputee I'm a write-like MPT I drive with my left leg crossed over which I'm doing right now not super sure how much you can see but there's a big console right here on the sensor console and I'm pushing quite hard against it with my knee not super great if you are that really rare case like me and you drive with your left leg then you might experience this too but it's a little tight for me um if you like a little bit more spacious of a footwell whatever this is not it I mean it's not it's only not tights like some vehicles are um what do you call them like cockpit cabins yeah it's yeah definitely not like uh which is totally pit or the Thai cam yeah or even the pole star it's not that bad but it's invasive unfortunately uh regarding the pedal feel it's lovely uh it feels quite like an ice vehicle you can Coast really well the controls are on the paddles under the steering wheel there's no full on one pedal and Patrick and I are completely opposite each other in regards to one pedal usage so I turned it all the way off which is pressing the right all the way and he turns all the way on the benefit for me is that it defaults to off so when you start the car it's ready for me right yeah and you do have different driving modes so there's like normal sport sport has a little bit more regen by default normal is normal then there's an Eco which uh what that does is like limits the throttle response a little bit as well as limits the AC and then there's a range and that's because it completely turned off the AC or a heat and limits you to like 62 miles per hour 100 kilometers per hour so we like we don't want to touch that and right now we're in Eco um I'm quite comfortable in Eco personally it's by a really tight turn here oh let's fill the Turning oh so Patrick thinks it feels a little top heavy I can see what you mean compared to what you mean it has a lot of you know the battery weight at the bottom like most EVS but I think because we're sitting up a little bit higher it shifts that feeling of low Center or gravity up just a bit Yeah so on that like that was basically like a Switchback at 45 miles an hour I felt that a little uh but not too bad I suddenly don't think that this would be a play car up in the mountains but for what we're using it for Patrick is navigating to some random spot um for what we're using it for this is lovely which is driving in the city the suspension feels really great they're numerous bumps and potholes we've been doing this road a lot for testing vehicles and it's not the best but with this vehicle it actually feels great huh the road's not the best the road's not the best the car is good I which turn right here right thank you I I give it a I'm gonna I think I just think the suspension is really nice it's really good well you know it as always it's depending on um what you're looking for if you're looking for a sporty quick drive I don't think this is it if you're looking for something um fairly plush uh this is getting there it's not like a Mercedes eqs that we tested out with the air suspension um do I want the left lane um probably middle okay yeah I think plush is a great way to describe it and uh it's not the most amazing luxury thing it's not the Mercedes it's not super sporty but it's really really comfortable and this has been enjoyable to drive around the city and it feel you mentioned it feels like an ice bar and it really does it feels ice it's uh fairly quick though but not super quick um the throttle response you roll into the acceleration so it feels um I think a lot of people could adapt to this and then like the just the overall like the the controls and everything feel fairly close to like if this were just a regular Alexis yes agreed and so Patrick and I look for different things in our vehicles for example I drove the Sherry bolt Sherry the Cherry Bolt the Chevy bolt recently and for me that's perfect it feels like an ice vehicle it's very unthreatening this feels like an upgraded version of that a little more luxury version it's very comfortable it's very smooth it's very unthreatening it feels like a car you don't really focus too much on whether it's electric or not and like Patrick was saying the cabin feels unthreatening like it feels just well appointed and nothing's too overtly like techy um perhaps the heads-up display but oh uh well of course the roof that's like the roof is probably Beyond yeah it keeps on asking for the pin and that's because I have the Lexus app installed but I don't have it connected to the car because we're not authorized this is a older vehicle but of course we try to do all the things that we can do yeah I was trying yeah but yeah it like when we were having for me the in-laws hop in the car her mom and her dad they weren't like oh my gosh this is like a space vehicle or some like robot vehicle they I think they just treated fairly much like yeah I'm just writing in a regular car it wasn't like overwhelming with the luxury or the tech they did you know everybody did comment on the seats I think the seats are nice and I'm looking at the back yeah back seats are nice the the door handles from the outside pretty much normal my dad liked that um he finds the Maki a little confusing I think everybody does yeah uh and consistently people have liked the way it looks on the outside even my nephews so we have this cool experience of having an entire age range of people see this so my 15 year old nephew and then my 70 something year old parents will like oh nice and funnily enough my mom who's been in the Maki multiple times she was like um what did she say about it as though it was the Maki do you remember your mom wasn't really paying attention she wasn't paying attention but it wasn't so different in a way like it feels like the same class of vehicle yeah yeah yeah it's it's really interesting seeing different people's perspectives on things and like we really like the roof you can't really tell here but um oh wow every time it's surprising so the this is one of the the luxury things I think is just so cool because it's bright and sunny and we don't want to film so we can do the electrochromatic electrochromatic uh tint so it basically goes yeah uh it doesn't like darken as in shifter gray or black it's just like a really more opaque white heavily frosted heavily frosted that's perfect and uh I think it's actually great on a day like this where I wouldn't want the sun coming right in at my eyes we can flip that and uh you know I I this is the first vehicle I've been in that's had it I've seen it like on the tican and some other higher end Vehicles so it's really cool that it is now becoming available and that's those are the little things like you know we'll get into it a little bit um throughout the video about the the pricing of this and in some ways it could appear to be overpriced but it also has some features that justify that that expense like the roof I think is very very cool it's super super cool and you might wonder is it gimmicky or whatever uh no I don't think it is because so the Maki the glass roof is heavily tinted right so it's not heavily tinted in the sense that you can't see out it's heavily tinted in the sense that you're not getting UV rays you're very comfortable this glass roof by itself is bright it feels bright it feels like you're getting all the sun coming on in here and you're getting the full effect of the Sun so the photochromic electrochromic which word is it electrocarnate I think it's electrochromic is actually doing its job effectively and completely blocking out the Sun but then you get the full benefit of a glass roof which is just so cool although it's interesting you can see it in this view that there's a bar in the middle a lot of the other glass roofs are just like you know from the front to the rear and that bar across the middle isn't that big of a deal for us in the front seats but in the back seats you lose a bit of the the nice big glass roof feeling yeah I wonder if that's because they do the the electro chromatic I want to say that electronic electrochromic uh tinting and untinting because the bigger that stuff is the more extensive it is so maybe like two smaller panels is way easier Ed could very well be and another weird thing about the electrochromic let's hope that's the right word is that it's built quite well into this so it tends it's like a frosted white right it's very effective but it does it in a way that's not shocking so we kept trying to show it to people like the older generation and they were like huh yeah and they didn't realize quite how cool it was and I think that if it tinted black or something you'd be like oh whoa right whoa that's really bright it makes me want sunglasses it's pretty I just think it's so neat so what do you guys think about that is that like something that you want now that more people are doing glass roofs or do you just want to do like a steel roof with maybe a sunroof still roof stupid thing I gotta go back but uh we're getting into foster roads here you're probably interested in how this thing drives on the highway how all the all of the Adas stuff is Patrick is going to demonstrate a lot of that so we should probably switch and you should take over and do some some fun driving okay okay okay my driving impressions it can zip away from a stop light very easily and get up to the speed limit quickly so I like that uh yeah so my initial driving Impressions have you know we've had it for three or four days and they've changed over time um and I think that's because like I tend to look for like the Maki style a bit more aggressive driving and suspension and this is not either of those so it feels a bit odd to me but then you know as I get settled into it it's actually you know a pretty nice driving vehicle it does feel a bit more top heavy than other EVS that we've been in and I think that's a little bit what's because of the it is a slightly higher ride height but the battery is still below it so it's still pretty nice but I think also what gives it a little bit of that top heavy is that there's a little bit more body roll as we're going through some of these curves and um I think that's just because the suspension is a little bit softer it's not that firm suspension that's in like the ev6 or the Machi specifically the Maki GT which is pretty firm but it going over like railroad tracks and like I like I really like how this handles it it um does dampen it down pretty well so that you do get a little bit of the bounce but it softens it out and does it just keep bouncing so uh so far I'm liking the drive and I think a lot of people will like this like if you're more into a comfortable Lexus type driving style this would be great yeah it's interesting you saying that because it really is kind of an excellent car for that just a comfortable drive and there aren't many railroad tracks where we live because we've been visiting family and going back and forth they live across the the 101 where the coaster is so you go back and forth on the tracks it is noticeably really nice and it's really comfortable and even just sitting back here like Patrick's getting it I feel quite relaxed because the seats are really comfortable like this is high level comfort in the seats and I feel like they'd be really good on a road trip which is where it makes me sad because the range wouldn't be great on a road trip I mean you could do it you could do it just fine but you'd be charging every 150 miles yeah 200 something you know it's a big enough difference that it would be a bit more frustrating and we didn't do a full charging test we just charged a little bit last night just to sort of see how it is and it started off really well it was like at 140 kilowatts but then it just you know like the Machi will hold for a bit and it steps down holds that for a bit and then steps down this sort of just like drifted slower and slower um almost immediately like it it ramped up to 140 and it was like drifting slower and slower as we got we got seven good minutes yeah yeah it was seven good minutes um above 130 I think and then it then it went down and it was it'll continue to go down there's other videos where they do the full charging test and it goes slow and then it gets extremely slow above 80 percent and in other EVS they don't slow down quite as much before 80 and then because I think this one was doing like 39 kilowatts at 70 which is not great um the Maki is generally around 80 kilowatts then usually maybe slightly higher at 70 percent and then at um 80 this will drop down to where it's almost equivalent to just plugging into a level 2 charger so that like the last eighty percent can take over well over an hour to get to 100 if you need to do that uh which most of the time you're gonna not gonna do that at a at a DC fast charger but when the range is 196 miles there's going to be more often where you're going to need to do that to get to a certain charger charging station so you'd actually probably stop every 100 miles yeah which is uh something to consider it's definitely something to consider like you know if you could handle that I don't actually think that I could having to stop every 100 miles it changes things quite a bit yeah and I was just looking it up today for another reason but like Green River Utah to Salina Utah is 107 miles so that's that's pretty much all you got and and granted whether we're in the Maki or this we're going to probably make that stop but like in the Maki we have the option of like skipping Salina and going to Richfield um and you can't probably can't do that with this car or yeah you know so uh because you lose you're basically losing that top 20 in this car so it's it's uh you know the big you know thing that we don't necessarily want to harp on too much because if you're using this as a local commuter the car is fine if you're doing a road trip this probably isn't the best option for you or lots of road trips but you know your use case and we don't need to harp on that too much otherwise this is great like and for commuting I'll go ahead and turn on the adaptive cruise control this is not like a pre-map road or anything it's a Hands-On system it has the the sensors that are monitoring my eyes my hands on the steering wheel but it's actually steering for me it won't stop at red lights but it will stop if a car in front of me stops I find it to be a pretty competent system the only area where it was a bit of an issue and I'm gonna go ahead and hit break here because it will stop for this car but it usually stops a little bit later than what I want the only the only issue that I've run into and a lot of these systems that are basically Lane centering systems have is when you're going on the freeway and you're in the right lane or the slow lane and there's an exit an off ramp or an on-ramp and the road like wides up or whatever it tends to like follow the center of that and then all of a sudden it realizes oh that's not where I want to be over to the left and then it readjusts so it feels disconcerting disconcerting to the uh the passenger as well as the driver a little bit um but there are some some features that are really do like about this and the next time we get up to speed I'll show you some of that but uh otherwise it it's see it's still asking for the pin but so we actually uh had dinner last night with some friends that we made through EV stuff and uh Kevin he owns a Maki you may have seen us in one of our Maki meetups and in Vegas and they still have a hybrid and they were talking about how they road trip with the high bit and his Maki is what he runs around Vegas in and I'm sure that a lot of people who are doing that right like you're you're if you're a two-car family um which is not crazy if you have a family and you're two adults and you have kids whatever so if you're too family having won an electric car for the city and then you have your ice vehicle or your hybrid for road trips because as the whole charging thing shakes out it's Gonna Get Easier and easier but it's definitely challenging like we've gone tonight that it's there are things to consider obviously we road trip just fine with the things to consider so you may once an EV just for City Driving in which case anything that we say about the range is inconsequential it's totally fine so if we're not thinking about the range of this vehicle I actually really like it it feels small but it's actually not tiny so if you want one way or the other you're kind of in the middle which is great it's Nimble enough it's comfortable and cushy and the seats are great it's pricey yeah it's a bit pricey it has some you know very nice feeling interior components the roof the stereo system sounds fantastic um so it gets to that point of where like you see what you're paying for and it's up to you to decide if that's something that you care about like these the soft touch plastic is that nice um for you or do you not care the other the other thing where I think you know your money is going towards is it is a very solid vehicle it's like very quiet driving down the road yes even the motors for like the the windows and the windshield wipers pretty darn quiet so you know you can see some of those advantages and going back to the the Ada system I'm going to turn it on and one of the things I like it's like uh some other systems where if I want to change lanes I turn on the blinker it turns on turns it off when I turn the blinker off it says okay I'm gonna take back it resume doing the lane centering so um one of my pet peeves are the systems where you're in one lane you turn your blinker on you get to the next lane and then you have to reactivate the system this does automatic reactivation love that the other thing is is like if you know there's a little bit of like a pothole or debris in the road and I want to go within my Lane but go around it I can sort of steer around it um and then like here well did you see that we wobbled a bit that's one of the things I was talking about it widened to a multiple lanes and the car didn't get confused it was just trying to figure out where to Center itself but going back to the previous thing like if I want to I can um like nudge it around like a pothole or something without completely disengaging the system some systems if you try to swerve around something it's like oh you're in control and then you're 100 in control of this I could go like let me get around that and then it'll adjust me back to the center gradually because it's handling the steering and here's a case where the light's turning red so I have to use the brakes to come to a stop because it does not recognize the the stoplight but but yeah I you know fairly competent um system I've really been enjoying it when we've been on the I-5 and there's not so many stop lights um fairly smooth on curves handle has handled the curves there's some construction on I-5 not not anything serious like a bunch of cones in the road or anything like that but they just sort of have Lane shifted over and there's some confusing slightly confusing markings for some systems this has been handling that fine like it's uh I think if you you know have a daily commute where you're doing um freeway driving back and forth it would be to really be nice to have the system here yeah it's very it's very comfy and plush and when Patrick mentioned that it's quiet it really is it's actually like a noticeably quiet cabin so we'll play some footage right now of us on that construction area in that construction area and what it sounded like even though the the pavement was grooved and had issues it still was isolating a lot of that yeah noticeable for us so let's go first time on the highway on the Lexus in the Lexus RZ 450e with outer mics or anything we just wanted to see we testing to see how noisy it is turned off the HVAC system turned off the radio the pavement's a bit grooved so we're getting some hand away from that let's show you guys uh this is nitty-gritty selfie camera nothing special because this way you can actually see what it's like that's not bad yeah what do you think okay we know this road um this is very constructiony you can't really see that but I'll show you again it's very constructiony it's not great um and there's like grooves and stuff of the road which I'm hearing that with the tires but I think just a little bit down the road it'll be even quieter we may test it out there as well yeah so far we're just doing a first drive we're actually going to my mom just arrived in San Diego so we're going to grab her and we weren't going to film anything but it is noticeably quiet so I give it a hopefully you can tell that that at least to us being familiar with that road was noticeably quiet and um cushions like silent cabin okay speaking of sounds that is one of the things that has bugged me about this vehicle we're trying to get some highlights of that but even that it's like it's a very uh the sounds that it does use first of all remind me of like a 90s video game or something is like and it's also very alert happy which can be good or bad you know depending on how you drive but you know for example one that was bugging me is like every time like I'm in a double left turn lane and uh we start going I have my blinker on I'm turning left because I'm in a double left turn lane well it sees that there's a car in the lane next to me obviously and it warns me it's like because it sees that card I'm like yes I know we're both making a left turn it's okay um another one that bugs me is like if you come up to a stop sign on like a busy street and you're like oh I need to Edge out a little bit so I can see a little bit further anytime you let off the brake and it sees that there's traffic coming it makes audible tones and I'm like I get it it's sort of nice to be warned that there's going to be that there is some traffic there but it it's just weird to me like I know I I just got to get out so I can see a little bit more so that it starts making noises I'm like and maybe this is an opinion thing so please share your opinion on if you think that it's appropriate for sounds to be heavy in that situation but another one that will play for you now is the backup sounds so it's only inside the vehicle although it did make a sound the other day and I tried to catch it but it stopped so so far we only hear it inside the vehicle that when you go into reverse gotta love technology the GoPro just overheated so hopefully we had everything but the specific sound that I'm thinking of the most weirds me out a bit before you get to that let's just show some sounds oh yeah oh this it's like [Music] let me adjust the fan speed now to be fair there's got to be a way to disable it we just haven't found it yet so I haven't looked for it but I it just we try to experience it this is what the default setting is and this is very much like it's not a first drive because we've been driving it the whole week but it's definitely um a first look at the Lexus rz450e so there are those sounds and then the backup sounds which will play for you which I get making a couple of those sounds but then it goes for the whole time that you're backing up and it's alerting you on the inside so why do you need to be alerted that much on the inside that on the inside of the vehicle that's your backing up especially like I selected the on the shifter to go into reverse the screen shifts into the reverse camera like I know that I'm backing up now I do appreciate that because someone could do it by mistake an animal could a child could um but then like once you're it's pretty um I don't know actually what do you think what was that what has happened because I was looking down oh that's good see that's good and that one was good because yeah was important to let me know like hey look up and pay attention to what you're doing yeah yeah this is this is interesting but we'll play the sounds for you and what it looks like now foreign [Music] the backup camera and all of that stuff is awesome I really like that the 360 camera I like that it's transparent you know it's not like a solid vehicle uh it's it's quite cool oh and you notice that it projects the road under the vehicle so the cameras are getting the lower view yeah it does some really good AIS type thing but it's really just using uh camera history to show like what's underneath the car as you're moving and backing into a space pulling into a space so pretty neat um there before we end our driving segment and this goes back into the charging something that I did want to note um it doesn't show you the percentage of your battery which uh maybe that's not a big deal but every EV we've been in you can show percentage of battery this shows just like a normal gas gauge and it's just like with the gas car you don't have like that that vague of like well it's not a eighth of a tank but it's not a quarter of a tank it's somewhere in between it's the exact same way there's an empty there's a full there's actually a gas pump icon at the halfway mark which I think is funny but everything else is like these little iterations that are little notches and I could probably count and figure out what the percentage is but uh just from our EV Driving Experience I want a percentage number it does give me the range left and we're at about again about 50 maybe slightly higher I'm not sure but it says we have 85 miles of range which just seems crazy and uncomfortable yeah that it's 85 miles and we're about 50 percent yeah but that's all driving impressions for this why don't we go park somewhere and give you guys our final thoughts well that is it that is our time in the Lexus rz450e what do you think about it Patrick mixed uh I don't think that we would buy this there there are some reasons why that I like it and I could see why people would buy it but I don't think it would suit us personally it does have a lot of pros and a few cons what is what's your biggest Pro on this one I like driving it I mean on paper I wouldn't buy it because it is too expensive to me for everything that you get driving it it's really Pleasant it it drives like an ice vehicle it's not uh two Zippy too powerful not intimidating it's not intimidating yeah uh just like the bolts it's really comfortable and unthreatening and unintimidating to drive so driving style I'd get in this and be like oh this is great what is this I like this uh knowing how much it costs I wouldn't buy it which is it cost about 65 000 for the luxury trim level we actually don't have the window sticker a lot of times we get the window sticker we can tell you exactly what the price is and what features and options it has we didn't get that on this car so we're sort of it's about 65 000. um yeah I think there are some big Pros I I like some of the little um like comfort features the lumbar support the nice material I love the the sunroof that tents I'm going to do that again just because I think it's quite warm okay we won't do that wow it's actually yeah look at our face yeah hey there's sunlight my hair is too bright there I quite I like this it's actually a nice filming studio and I hate to say like it's hard to say we like if I say I wouldn't buy it I'm not saying you shouldn't buy it I'm saying that for for us or for me um I it's not the car for me but I really like driving it and if you are curious about it I would encourage you to try it because it's a really enjoyable drive so if the cost is not a factor if the The Limited range isn't a factor which it really might not be it it reminds me of it's good we were driving around the other night her mom was riding with this and I was like oh uh 130 miles of range and for me that was like a negative because it was still like 70 full or something like that and in my mind I'm like oh it's only 130 miles of range and her mom was like wow that's fantastic 130 miles and for her she's never going to go on road trips or her boyfriend will will drive in his car she just won't drive on freeways she's driving around town locally I think she does like maybe 3 000 miles a year or something ridiculously low so for her 130 miles is plenty plenty far so it would be fantastic for somebody like her it doesn't have to be an extreme case like that so um again like we we know people that they have one car that's EV they use around town and then they have like a hybrid or a gas car that they they take on road trips so there are a lot of use cases where this is nice it feels like a Lexus it feels you know has a lot of nice features um there's some quirkiness in like how you get in and out of car play that bugged me a little bit but otherwise like I think a lot of people would appreciate that and that sort of goes back again we were talking about that bugs me and her mom's like what's carplay I never I never connect my phone I don't want I don't want my phone connected to the car so if you don't like carplay then it's not an issue so there you know it's sort of like uh you know pretty much every car we review I go take it for a test drive see what you think yeah yeah honestly and I mean I this really does get a thumbs up in a lot of ways and by the way when you said gas carbler I did want to say if you're driving an old or a used gas vehicle or if you do not have the economic situation or the housing situation AKA access to charging whatever don't feel bad for driving a gas car and please don't ever feel like we're trying to make you feel bad they're fine they're great EVS are awesome but they are more expensive right now even with tax incentives so um used cars are awesome too I love used cars so don't feel bad this is a pricey fancy luxury petite SUV would we say midsize it's still small compact crossover I don't know compact I mean there's going to be some smaller ones we hope coming out but it's it's uh you know Ford Escape Maki model y I mean those are the competitors for this and it feels it feels smaller than I think it is it's really comfortable to drive the suspension is great the seats are really comfortable so you'll have to let us know what you think of the Lexus 450 the Lexus RZ 450e that's a lot of things and stuff let us know what you think of it down below have you driven it are you curious about it is there anything we missed and I'm curious um from our Colorado friends they love the soltera because they you know Colorado has a thing about Subarus um I'm not sure anybody's excited by the bz4x but it's cheaper than this so like which one of the three sort of like sister uh EVS from the Toyota conglomerate do you like already crossed them all off your list and uh you know like as I was talking about the outside you know there's controversial things like the two-tone paint all the black cladding uh just the weird angular nose on this one uh we you know it's it's always funny because it's like when I first saw it I wasn't like that's a great looking car but the more I look at it I'm like it actually looks pretty neat and I love the color combos on the outside and inside and I think that's one of the things that um sort of can distinguish like a well put together car is like how the materials are designed and I know you appreciate like some of this stuff inside very much so and I was trying to remember what the color is ether ether yeah on the keys yeah it looks really good and I have to be honest I wasn't expecting to like this car uh definitely not as much as I did um I'm automatically kind of put off by things when they're like unnecessarily expensive so I begrudgingly say that I really like the drive but it does make you make me curious to now Drive the solterra and the bz4x because perhaps that will be completely different or really similar in all the best ways and and cheaper well and then so and going back to like me looking at this I start doing this and sometimes I go the wrong way I go with start more and more expensive options like if I like I wanna the iPhone 14 but I want the bigger one but I want this camera and then all of a sudden it's like the biggest one with the most cameras on it so with this one I'm like looking at competitors and I'm thinking well this sort of reminds me of the Audi Q4 e-tron so they're like uh well I think I would go with the Q4 e-tron but then if I look at the Q4 e-tron I'm like it's sort of just like a stepped up uh id4 and id4 is a lot cheaper so then I would look at that and then of course the Tesla with the model y has done a lot of price Cuts so it is significantly cheaper than this one if you don't mind you know the sparse cabin the lack of a driver screen the lack of car play and just some other things that that oops excuse me that that may be eliminate Tesla but it's sort of like you got to make those decision factors for yourself and like the driver screen the lack of a driver screen some people don't see that as a negative at all for us we do for you it might not be a big deal but this obviously has a driver screen and a heads up display and a 14 inch multimedia cluster so it's it's really nice uh surprisingly I enjoyed my time on this yeah it's gonna be like I pretty much regret always giving these back to to the uh the manufacturer for even the loan comes to an end um because I I do like checking out like all the different Interiors this one is like one of the nicer ones that we've been in yeah and if you're curious I think this would be an excellent Excel Implement to the lucky it doesn't feel quite equal to the Maki uh the Maki is aggressively styled and playful looking it has more range it has in our case the GT performance Edition has more playfulness this year I'm getting tired I just sort of like keep bouncing it but anyways okay so yeah the Maki has more playfulness so this is not a carbon copy this is has a different space and a different place and it certainly would feel like an excellent City car for us to have as a second vehicle so if you're curious I could see this being a good addition to the stable well in that and that sort of you know going back to the comparisons it's like uh so the Maki GT performance Edition I forget the word the price is now because I know they just dropped the price I think it's back down to 69. okay it might be 68. so then if you're talking about like maybe three thousand dollars price difference and the Maki gets at least a partial credit so then therefore this one the Maki GT performance Edition is about the same as this yeah I don't think there's any yeah it really depends on your preference though it's like if you don't care for the power then why why is it worth it it's not worth it and if you wanted a tinted roof and a heads-up display why would you get the Machi GT performance Edition but if you want 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds you wouldn't get this yeah so again uh I know that you may have tuned into this and you wanted like a yay or nay or you know our opinion we gave you our thoughts but it's really still up to you you're gonna make the car payment on it so yeah do you want to yay or nay I don't know but probably not I don't know I think people like confirmation that they're making the right choice that's so hard isn't it I mean that's why these are like some of the biggest purchases in our lives so that's part of why we love sharing this stuff is that we get to like dig into just like whether it's worth it which is so hard which is why we talk too much so on that note we should stop talking before I drop the camera before I drop the camera thank you so much for joining us for this video in which we checked out the Lexus rz450e and spends a lovely week with it let us know what you think about it down below and if there's any other vehicle that you would like us to check out a huge thank you to our patrons whose names are scrolling across the screen thanks to you we'd be able to do things like get this tripod thing that Patrick is holding it's actually kind of cool looking um and he filmed some of this stuff outside because my leg is sore so yay thank you very much for letting me sit down and make him do all the work um and on that note just remember that whatever you drive whether you can tent the roof with the Press of a button or not and show the ride bye I'm gonna be cool if we could like press the button and it goes

Channel: Mach-E VLOG

Views: 1,586

Keywords: electric lexus, electric lexus rz450e, electric suv 2023, electric suv reviews 2023, lexus rz, lexus rz 450e, lexus rz electric, lexus rz review, lexus rz450e, lexus rz450e review, rz450e, suvs

Id: 3VfoB_ONco8

Length: 70min 41sec (4241 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2023