If you’re buying an electric vehicle today, a Toyota bZ4X probably isn’t your first choice. It sports a mere 228 miles of range in all-wheel-drive small-wheel trim, offers just 214 horsepower on the high end, and its arrival was delayed by a stop-sale due to wheel bolts coming loose. It’s just not a competitive product on paper, and that’s before we get into the other annoyances.
Setting aside range, charging limitations, and the lack of battery preconditioning, the bZ4X also had some big issues just as a car. The dashboard packaging was weird, with a ton of space being essentially wasted for an enormous phone charger cavity covered in shiny black plastic. At the same time, the jog in the center stack crowded passenger knee room, the wings coming off the digital gauge cluster resulted in a very strange view, the lack of a volume knob was infuriating, and while I normally like fabric on dashboards, the textile Toyota chose looked and felt quite cheap. At the same time, a pronounced whine from the high voltage system cut through the serenity of an electric drivetrain, leaving a rather poor impression. I just couldn’t recommend the car to anyone, and Toyota isn’t taking widespread criticism of the model lying down.
Yep, the Toyota bZ4X just got a facelift, and it’s a big one. We’re talking updates to the interior, the styling, and the high-voltage system itself to make this electric crossover less of a last resort and more of a genuine option. Let’s dig into what Toyota’s done to give the bZ4X the specs and cabin it should’ve had from the beginning.
While an entry level model with a 57.7 kWh battery pack is available, we probably won’t see it in North America. Instead, the new long-range 73.1 kWh battery pack seems better suited to our landscape, promising 356 miles of range on the admittedly optimistic WLTP cycle. Want all-wheel-drive with that? Toyota touts a WLTP range of 323 miles for the dual-motor model, which seems competitive against the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Volkswagen ID.4. By the way, those drive units are also new and feature silicon carbide semiconductors, sending all-wheel-drive horsepower from 215 all the way up to 337 horsepower. Now that’s a serious jump.
While DC fast charging is still capped at 150 kW, battery preconditioning finally joins the party, and that ought to make a serious difference on long road trips. Best of all, it can be manually activated if you prefer to use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto for navigation rather than the native system, something GM executives are probably only now learning is possible. Also on the plus side, an available 22 kW onboard charger sure seems like a faster Level 2 option than the standard 11 kW Level 2 charger. Add in retuned suspension and additional measures to quiet the cabin, and suddenly the bZ4X seems a lot more competitive on paper.
Oh, but Toyota isn’t just focused on spec sheets. The brand also seems to have fixed the interior of the bZ4X by designing a completely new dashboard and center console while porting over some very Lexus-y infotainment. Those rotating physical on-screen climate control temperature knobs are pure Lexus, and would you look at that? Toyota’s put a volume knob in the bZ4X. It’s about time.
That new 14-inch touchscreen gets set into an entirely new dashboard that ditches the wings off the cluster, slims out the lower portion of the center stack, replaces cloth with more traditional materials, and brings in a healthy dose of Prius inspiration. The console’s new too, with matte finishes replacing glossy ones, conveniently exposed wireless phone chargers instead of covered ones that just bake your devices, and driving-related controls moved closer to the driver. It all seems more user-friendly and likely to age far better than the outgoing cabin.
Toyota saw and heard that further effort was needed to make the bZ4X competitive, and its designers and engineers put in the work. While the updates probably aren’t great for resale value of existing bZ4X models, the facelifted electric crossover should now be more competitive in its segment, not just as an EV but as a crossover. Needless to say, we’re excited to try the updated bZ4X once it makes the trip across the pond, likely as a 2026 model. If Toyota holds the line on pricing, it could be a serious candidate for the most-improved car of the year.
Top graphic credit: Toyota
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Is painting those idiotic black fenders to match body color some kind of admission of guilt?
Stop trying to make *black fenders* happen! It’s not going to happen!
Lose the black plastic exterior panels and find a new name, then it might be sellable.
Owners of the current bZ4X: “Yay. Great job Toyota. Thanks for listening. Sooo happy for you.”
No mention if they added a glovebox….which when I told my wife it doesn’t even have a glovebox her reaction was priceless. I mean that’s basic, I understand no frunk but removing the glovebox? How cheap can you go? Mitsubishi Mirage has glovebox for days, c’mon Toyota.
I had a car with no glovebox once, it was a last-minute running change to beef up a knee bolster to prevent the passenger from going under the airbag (pax airbags were still a newish thing, too). I still felt robbed. I had to stash my liquor under the seat frame!
Does this share a platform with the also-apparently-very-heavily-refreshed Lexus RZ in the recent article?
I believe so, yes.
The way they had made it sound it was going to be this huge improvement. Unless they have drastically improved the charging curve still the same Sounds like all the same power electronics just bigger battery. I guess it will take them longer to gleem information from the Chinese.
Now it needs a new name.
I propose Busier Forks.
which would lead into Busiest Forks in the future.
Two weekends ago, I rented its twin, a ’22 or ’23 Subaru Solterra.
Starting around 60% state of charge, fastest I got it to charge was 40kw at an EVgo 350kw charger that I previously was able to repeatedly get > 125kw from with a rented Mach-E under similar weather and state of charge. There were 8 dispensers and I was the only one there, I even switched dispensers to see if that was the issue, and it was even slower.
After a day trip to the beach, I got less than 20kw charging speeds starting at the same ~60% state of charge and the same charger.
Google tells me that this isn’t usually for these cars, and if they haven’t fixed that, it would be a deal breaker to me.
Also, the one-pedal driving implementation sucks, because it won’t actually come to a complete stop if you take your foot of the accelerator while moving, it will only hold if you’re already stopped.
About time they moved past the compliance car.
Still Fugly!!
Does it have the stupid yoke like the Lexus?
You can see the steering wheel in one of the photos.
Do we have 22kw home chargers here in the US?
At best, it would require a 92A draw to support a 22kW charging. I guess if you have a powerbank at home and are somehow able to utilize that to exceed a 240V limitation, you could lower the amps, but I’m not sure how all that works.
I have 400A at my house, so I could make this work I guess? But yeah, basically you’d need a 100A breaker which would be pretty impossible for homes with 200A service.
Not that I’m aware of. The most powerful Level 2 charger I can think of is Ford’s 19.2kW (240V@80A) bi-directional charger for the Lightning, where it allows the house to run off the Lightning battery in a power outage.
There are a couple of other 19.2kW chargers from Porsche and Lucid, but none higher than that.
I wonder if beefing up the level 2 inverter brings support for bi-directional charging.
The Tesla generation 2 wall connector supported up to 22kw. They realized it wasn’t practical or used at that capacity for most installations so the generation 3 wall connector only goes up to 11.5kw.
IMHO, 6kw is fine for most garage at home charging. Most of the time my wife and I are only adding 10-15 kwh to the cars every night. It would take one heck of a commute to need 22kw of charging at home.
yeah, my mk1 Leaf only supports 6.6kw, but the charger I have will do 11.5, that’s why I saw the 22kw and was like holy shit that seems like a LOT.
All electric vehicle attempts by manufacturers seem to follow this modern video game like production strategy. Release something functional as soon as possible and then keep working on it until a more complete version emerges a few years later.
Everyone that had to have the new thing right away helped the company start making money back from development and now they have a competent product a few years later that more people would be interested in.
Not my favorite strategy because it cashes in on a manufacturers goodwill and reputation which can quickly run out (looking at you Nissan)
Minimum viable product
That’s the phrase I was looking for. Terrible strategy, making your customers the beta testers!
Toyota was purposely late to the EV game and I would almost expect these types of issues from a launch vehicle.
One could make a strong argument that the original Bees Forks was less than viable.
With this thing I’d settle for LVP (Less Visible Product).
Hopefully they will start offering a factory, color matched vinyl kit for the black plastic cladding.
Seriously, they all look like they’re halfway through rust or collision repair
At the very least I wish they would go all Harlequin and throw a rainbow of random colours at the parts. The ersatz and misaligned angles would still be annoying though.
Inject this straight into my veins!!!
The one nice thing about the old ones being awful is that they’re stupid cheap. Here’s a 2023 with 8000 miles for $23500, possibly less than 20k if you can get the tax credit. I’m tempted but I’m not sure if it’s worth the compromises. https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/inventorylisting/viewDetailsFilterViewInventoryListing.action?#listing=407228724
Like the Bolt, it’s likely a compromise worth making if you use it exclusively around town and for commuting. This is not build for anything but the most inconvenient road trip.
There are plenty of Ionic 5s (a far more competent product) in my area around the same price point, so the Toyota tax still applies to mediocre product.
As a general rule EVs depriciate like crazy
If you don’t plan on road tripping it, drive less than 100 miles a day and can charge at home, they are absolutely worth it if you need to buy a car. The same advice goes for the Chevy Bolt.
If you want to road trip an EV, I recommend anything with access to the Tesla Supercharger network, especially cars with 800V architecture.
Why does the front of this kinda look like a photo negative of the Lexus version? It’s like the silver & ✨piano black✨ sections have just been swapped.
Maybe we will start seeing the fruit of the Toyota/Kaizen iterative design and refinement process.
And yet, it still looks like that.
They didn’t consult our Bishop…
I’m a tad concerned that removing the wings from the cluster could lead to sunlight washing out the visibility of the display. I’d want to test drive in a few different times of day.
What’s the upcharge for the remaining cargo area that they chopped off? 🙂 (and on top of that hack job, pun intended, they also threw in some shelf booty)
I mean, if I’m going to drive an objectively ugly Toyota, at least give me more utility, especially when batteries take up so much space.
Would have been nice to add some side-by-side pics to show the differences. Looking forward to this, good on Toyota.
PamSamePicture.jpg
Now if only they had allowed the designers to fix the exterior! Heck, they could have just stolen the Bishop’s plans and sent it, no need for their in house folks to do anything. That unpainted front fender is seriously the worst thing about these!
Agreed… It looks much better in black.