2024 Toyota BZ4X review: Performance, Charging and Range Pricing and verdict

Toyota BZ4X Electric Car Review

What is the bZ4X?

Toyota bz4x, and despite what you may have heard, it isn’t Toyota’s first electric car. Back in the 1990s, there was a battery-powered version of the rav4 that was sold in limited numbers in California and won the 1995 Scandinavian electric car rally, so there you go, but semantics aside, there’s no doubt the Toyota is very late to the party with a fully electric modern car pretty much every other manufacturer has at least one in its lineup, but until now Toyota has been focusing on hybrids is the bee said forex worth the weight that’s what we’ll be finding out in this review so stay with us I’ll be telling you everything you need to know including what this car-like to drive how many miles it can do on a charge how long it takes to charge back up again and of course how it compares to all of its main rivals.

Toyota BZ4X Exterior Design

The design of this bz4x, so it’s got a very steeply rated rear window. This interesting spoiler design actually on the entry-level called the spoiler is slightly smaller, a huge light bar generally, this part I like what I don’t like so much is this bit here I don’t know why this isn’t body-colored when this is the top of the range model is this supposed to be a fake diffuser I think, so it looks bad doesn’t that though I do like the rear of this car down the sides this has 18 inches which are going to be too small I don’t like this cladding though once again I wish it was body also colored I don’t know why it cuts through the charging port cover there’s quite a lot of this isn’t that andy look you got this it just feels cheap and old-fashioned which is a bit of a shame

Toyota BZ4X Interior Design

Here on the inside the toyota bz4x is very interesting looking it’s futuristic this steering wheel the way it’s lower than the instruments and that looks good but for some people it’s going to be a touch annoying bit like in the same way that on a peugeot with a small steering wheel and the doors above depending on where you like sitting and having the steering wheel the actual rim can block some of the dials it’s just about okay for me and i quite like the quirky nature of it now quality in here is really really good i like it i like that fabric especially up there the seats are nice the engine level car gets a smaller screen this but the big screen looks pretty impressive.

however if i put this going to reverse the reversing cameras and the surround view cameras are like the lowest def i’ve ever seen in my life also it’s not quite as high tech as you think while you get wireless apple car play you don’t get wireless android auto you have to plug it in though to be fair i do prefer plugged in android auto than wireless because it’s just easier to disconnect your phone rather than having to, you know, disconnect your Bluetooth and wi-fi, you just unplug it any way.

That’s just me now. One thing that does annoy me specifically about this car is the way a lot of the functions are controlled through the screen and buttons on the steering wheel why is it that you can’t just control them through the car setting there’s hardly anything that you can do with this infotainment system really apart from saturn have music and stuff like that they put all of the systems through here odd i know it’s handy when you’re driving but you set most of things up before you actually drive anyhow practicality isn’t bad though.

so look under here look come on we’ve got some storage there’s some big cup holders there place there for your mobile phone and a wireless charging pad and it’s see-through i don’t know why they’ve done that because i think you should keep your mobile phone out of sight so it doesn’t distract you there’s your charging port there as well also like you’ve got diesel-sized door bins and some more storage under here with a 12-volt socket and two other charging ports and another place where’s my phone where’s my phone where’s my phone there it is where you can actually store your mobile phone though not my phone because it’s one of these galaxy folds which are a bit bulky would it feel like that will it will it yeah yeah that’s that’s less than perfect.

Rear seats and practicality

Well, as you can probably see, leg room is ridiculous to believe it or not; this seating front is set up for my driving position; I’m just over six feet and look, there’s loads of knee room and pretty good foot space as well the floor in the back here is completely flat, so it will be easier to fit three people side by side than it is in some rivals like the Volvo xc40 although most EVs to be honest do have a flat floor here in the back one thing that isn’t quite so good though is headroom because although this car does have headrests obviously for someone of my height, they’re pointless.

Because if I lean back my head hits the ceiling there now, I don’t know if that’s because this car has sunroof cheaper versions don’t get one of those, and quite often they lower the height of the ceiling a little bit so that’s something we’ll have to find out when we test more versions of this car back in the UK later on in the summer storage space is very good though, so the armrest that folds down has a couple of decent-sized cup holders in it and a small tray as well. The door bins are decent, and you also get a small tray for throwing coins or whatever else you want. Plus, there are some map pockets on the back of the front seats with the rear seats up the Toyota BZ4X has 452 liters of boot space for comparison, an ev6 offers 490 liters and the Skoda sneak a massive 585 liters in short luggage space is nothing to write home about, but there’s still plenty of room for a family holiday you also get a small underfloor storage area for the charging cables which is handy because unlike the v6 and the tesla model y the bz4x doesn’t have any extra storage under its bonnet.

Toyota BZ4X Charging and range

You can charge the 71.4-kilowatt-hour battery in under 13 hours by using a seven-kilowatt wall box at home or in ideal conditions at speeds of up to 150 kilowatts from a public ccs charger that’s quicker than a Volkswagen id4 although quite a lot slower than a model y or an ev6. You’ll be waiting at least 32 minutes for a 10 to 80 charge. With a full charge, you can officially do up to 286 miles in this all-wheel-drive
model or up to 317 miles in the lighter cheaper front-wheel-drive car. That’s not bad at all. It’s only slightly behind the ev6 and the model y, and as long as you take your car to an authorized service center every year for an EV health check, Toyota will guarantee a minimum of 70 of the original battery capacity for up to 10 years or 620 000 miles even if you’re an uber driver you’re unlikely to be doing that sort of mileage.

Driving impressions

But while you might be able to grumble about parts of the interior, and perhaps the bz 4x doesn’t charge quite as quickly or go quite as far as some electric SUVs at this price point, it is good to drive like all-electric cars. It has to carry around a big heavy battery, which often means that ride comfort is compromised.

It’s particularly brilliant, and handling suffers as well, but somehow they’ve made this car just as good to drive as many petrol diesel cars. The ride is very, very good. I’ve already driven this car on a few different types of roads in town on the motorway, and it’s dealing with bumps very well. It’s also a very quiet car on the move. There isn’t much suspension noise. There isn’t much tire noise either, and wind noise is very well contained even at motorway speeds.

So this is a much more comfortable and peaceful car to drive around in than something like a tesla model y. Interestingly, there aren’t many settings for the regenerative braking system; you can switch it off or on many rivals. Of course, you’ve either got paddles behind the wheel here that you can increase or decrease the amount of braking force as you’re driving along, and you’ve often got a one-pedal mode as well, which means that when you lift off the accelerator, the car brings you to a stop pretty quickly.

But I don’t think that affects the driving experience at all Toyota says that there’s no need if you get the setting right and you get the setting natural. You don’t need to offer people multiple choices, and Porsche has a very similar view, so you can’t adjust the steering weight on its cars, and the Tai can, which is another electric car far more expensive than this.

Of course, it doesn’t have 17 different modes for the regenerative brakes. You can switch them off or on, or there’s an auto mode as well, and I kind of like that, and actually, when you need to use the brakes, they’re good by electric car standards, so sometimes they can be quite grabby and unpredictable.

So when you slow down, all of a sudden, the braking force increases or decreases, and then you have to adjust how much pressure you’re putting on the pedal accordingly, but here it’s very natural. It’s easy to gauge how much pressure you need to apply when slowing down, so that is good now. This isn’t especially quick by electric car standards.

Performance

so as I said earlier, we are in the all-wheel-drive model that has two electric motors, one on the front axle and one on the rear, and together, they produce 215 brake horsepower the front-wheel-drive version that has a single electric motor on the front axle and that has a 201 brake horsepower but even this car the naught 62 times of 6.9seconds that’s not anything to write home about these days the tesla model y would annihilate this in a drag race, but that doesn’t matter this is an electric SUV it’s a family car, and I’ll tell you if you put your foot down it’s more than quick enough it’s way quicker than most petrol or
diesel alternatives.

Pricing and verdict

With a price starting at just under 42000, the bz4x costs about the same as our 2024 car of the year; the Kia ev6 that car can do a few more miles on a charge and accept more charging power, but first impressions are that the Toyota BZ4X is even better to drive it’s just as roomy. It comes with a similar amount of standard equipment. I reckon it will be a close call, and we’ll be comparing both of those cars against the ford mustang Mackie back in the UK in the next few weeks.

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