Lexus RZ revealed

Whoever · May 9, 2023

23 minutes ago, John Adams said:

I've just picked one up on a 3 day extended test

Wow! I just got an hour. The benefits of being a current valued customer I guess 😀

24 minutes ago, John Adams said:

One thing it didn't have -or at least I can't find it- is a gauge showing how much charge is in the car.

All i could see was this gauge when driving:

John Adams · May 9, 2023

40 minutes ago, Whoever said:

Wow! I just got an hour. The benefits of being a current valued customer I guess 😀

All i could see was this gauge when driving:

I must have been having a senior moment. There it is in front of me and I didn't notice. I won't tell you what my wife just said!

DBIZO · May 10, 2023

On 5/4/2023 at 9:38 PM, wivenhoe said:

Bit the bullet and confirmed I will buy the car. It’s at the dealers, still with the protective tape on it. Collecting it next Wednesday.
Had a lengthy test drive and my concerns were overcome - after the Range Rover I thought the seat height would be more like a saloon but it isn’t. It’s not quite as high as the RR but fine to step into. I’m 6’ 2” and there is enough headroom for me to raise the seat and still have plenty of clear headroom.
The fit and finish is classic Lexus. I was concerned what the Orage Ultra Suede would be like on my Copper / Black car - having had leather for 20+ years. It really felt prestige and is a good & practical colour. It goes ok with the copper / black externals.
My major concern was the range. Having done some research it all made more sense now. Lexus appear to calculate the range shown more realistically than some other manufacturers - they keep some back so even if the range is showing 0 you still have range to get to a charger. Lexus are the only manufacturer warranting that the battery will be no less than 90% capacity after 10 years.

When I got in the car (fairly warm day) it was about 80% charged showing 195 miles.
Putting the aircon on full blast shrank the range to 160. I have since found out that studies confirm that all EV’s loose between 11% - 17% when the heating or a/c is used. BUT if you precondition the car before driving and use the seat ventilation to cool it doesn’t affect the range. Similarly in the winter if you use the heated seats and radiant heaters after pre-heating then you don’t eat into the real range. Not very helpful if you regularly carry rear seat passengers !

Having learnt you can turn off the speeding bong and others the only snag I found was that the instrument cluster was a bit dark despite the illumination being on max. I found that my ‘reactor lite’ glasses were dark which hasn’t happened in previous cars with tinted windscreen. When I took them off the display was ok. I’ll have a pair of normal specs in the car for just driving.

The dealer has been great and matched a very good price for my Range Rover Velar and of course held last years price which is £ 3k below current list.
I took the dive to buy the RZ as not least it was available now - I am convinced that the used car / residuals are going to normalise over the next 6 to 9 months and if that happens I would lose a fortune. My px on a 2 year old car is 89% of what I paid, if the residuals normalise the car would probably draw no more than 50% at 3 years old so it would lose me £ 27k over the next 12 months - worth taking a risk with RZ then as I can’t see it losing 40% in the next year.

I hope I haven’t bored everyone with this long post. I thought it may be useful to all those waiting for a test drive.

Good details. The big issue some found is charging speeds. Any experience with how fast it is charging on fast chargers (50kW and above) from 20-80%?

wivenhoe · May 10, 2023

9 hours ago, DBIZO said:

Good details. The big issue some found is charging speeds. Any experience with how fast it is charging on fast chargers (50kW and above) from 20-80%?

I tried this afternoon on a 150kw charger and it was very slow. Rang the 'expert' at the dealers and he said if the Battery is more than 80% it reduces the charge rate to protect the Battery. He said that's why all the data refers to 10% or 20% - 80%. I'll see if he is correct and I'll go to the same charger with say 50% in the Battery.

My Battery was 88% and I was trying it only to see how pain free using a charger was - it was.
I am going to start a new thread for initial views of owners, rather than regurgitating articles from the web as my experience so far is a lot different to most of the web articles

John Adams · May 10, 2023

6 minutes ago, wivenhoe said:

I tried this afternoon on a 150kw charger and it was very slow. Rang the 'expert' at the dealers and he said if the battery is more than 80% it reduces the charge rate to protect the battery. He said that's why all the data refers to 10% or 20% - 80%. I'll see if he is correct and I'll go to the same charger with say 50% in the battery.

My battery was 88% and I was trying it only to see how pain free using a charger was - it was.
I am going to start a new thread for initial views of owners, rather than regurgitating articles from the web as my experience so far is a lot different to most of the web articles

Just a quick comment. I managed to use a 150kw charger today. I went on at 25% state of charge and watched it ramp up to 50kw and there it stayed. Very disappointed as I expected more. I will be writing a full report at the end of my 3 day demo

F.A. · May 10, 2023

27 minutes ago, John Adams said:

Just a quick comment. I managed to use a 150kw charger today. I went on at 25% state of charge and watched it ramp up to 50kw and there it stayed. Very disappointed as I expected more. I will be writing a full report at the end of my 3 day demo

Thats disappointing.

Did you pre condition the Battery?

Where there any other cars plugged in to the adjacent / same charger ?

John Adams · May 10, 2023

5 minutes ago, F.A. said:

Thats disappointing.

Did you pre condition the battery?

Where there any other cars plugged in to the adjacent / same charger ?

To be honest, I didn't know you could pre condition the Battery. Probably need to read the manual. I was just trying it to see how easy it was as well. This was a bank of new Gridserve chargers with some at 350kw. No one was plugged in next to me

F.A. · May 10, 2023

1 minute ago, John Adams said:

To be honest, I didn't know you could pre condition the battery. Probably need to read the manual. I was just trying it to see how easy it was as well. This was a bank of new Gridserve chargers with some at 350kw. No one was plugged in next to me

Ah ok. Maybe that will help. It should get the Battery to an optimum condition / temperature for faster changing.
On our Genesis, you input the charger in to the Sat Nav and it will precondition the Battery accordingly. On our MG4 you have to manually activate the preconditioning.

I’ve been relatively disappointed with the charging speed at our local 120kw shell recharge station. However Ive consistently achieved up to 148kw at the MFG stations and up to 200kw at Ionity in our Genesis GV70.
I’m surprised that the new Gridserve stations are not achieving higher speeds, but they do vary greatly.

wivenhoe · May 10, 2023

2 hours ago, John Adams said:

Just a quick comment. I managed to use a 150kw charger today. I went on at 25% state of charge and watched it ramp up to 50kw and there it stayed. Very disappointed as I expected more. I will be writing a full report at the end of my 3 day demo

John - just a thought. Have you checked the DC Power limit - according to the manual, for some reason you can change it to 50kw and in stages up to 150kw. Hopefully that was the cause.
I’ll be checking mine in the morning. Owner Manual coverage is :-

John Adams · May 11, 2023

10 hours ago, wivenhoe said:

John - just a thought. Have you checked the DC Power limit - according to the manual, for some reason you can change it to 50kw and in stages up to 150kw. Hopefully that was the cause.
I’ll be checking mine in the morning. Owner Manual coverage is :-

I've just checked at it was set to max as per the default setting. So disappointing that I only got 50kwh on a 150kwh charger

wivenhoe · May 11, 2023

Range update. Got in the car with 100% charge and 248 miles showing. Drove 95 miles of 50% 70 mph dual carriageway and lanes & town. 14C outside with intermittent use of the air con (front only). Range at the end was 140. So 140 + 95 = 235 so intermittent a/c & brake reg reduced the range 13 miles. I would probably use the a/c more if I wasn’t experimenting.
The dealer is looking into why the ‘over speed’ notification returns to visual & vibration default after journey is over.

wivenhoe · May 15, 2023

I never realised that the charge rate given by all EV manufacturers is a bit misleading. I naively presumed that a 150kw charger would charge at that speed from start to finish. Couldn’t be more wrong. Below is the charge curve for the RZ - this is not a Lexus document. Whilst the speed drops rapidly once the Battery is above 30% it still means 20% to 80% is achievable in about 30 mins - so I am told.

John Adams · May 15, 2023

On 5/11/2023 at 5:05 PM, wivenhoe said:

Range update. Got in the car with 100% charge and 248 miles showing. Drove 95 miles of 50% 70 mph dual carriageway and lanes & town. 14C outside with intermittent use of the air con (front only). Range at the end was 140. So 140 + 95 = 235 so intermittent a/c & brake reg reduced the range 13 miles. I would probably use the a/c more if I wasn’t experimenting.
The dealer is looking into why the ‘over speed’ notification returns to visual & vibration default after journey is over.

Bob, do you happen to know what the miles/kwh is? I find this a more reliable indicator of range for me

talaipwros · May 15, 2023

On 5/11/2023 at 5:05 PM, wivenhoe said:

Range update. Got in the car with 100% charge and 248 miles showing. Drove 95 miles of 50% 70 mph dual carriageway and lanes & town. 14C outside with intermittent use of the air con (front only). Range at the end was 140. So 140 + 95 = 235 so intermittent a/c & brake reg reduced the range 13 miles. I would probably use the a/c more if I wasn’t experimenting.
The dealer is looking into why the ‘over speed’ notification returns to visual & vibration default after journey is over.

Actually that is not bad and it is much better than what most reviews suggest.

What wheels do you have? 18 or 20 inch?

wivenhoe · May 15, 2023

4 hours ago, talaipwros said:

Actually that is not bad and it is much better than what most reviews suggest.

What wheels do you have? 18 or 20 inch?

20” with the air on only the front.

wivenhoe · May 15, 2023

5 hours ago, John Adams said:

Bob, do you happen to know what the miles/kwh is? I find this a more reliable indicator of range for me

According to WLTP tests 18” is 4.3 m/Kw and 3.8 m/Kw with 20” in perfect conditions. With heating / air on these reduce to 3.3 and 3. These are from the site I got the charging curve from. This also has their own results and in perfect conditions it’s 2.7 and with air on / heat it’s 2.5. I use ‘display 3’ with the consumption in the middle - today doing 70 down a dual carriageway (15C) with seat vent and intermittent air on it was displaying 2.8.

I am having a tracker fitted next week which will give me precise journey distances and I intend to run the Battery down to below 20% and see what the real time is to 80% on a 150kv charger And then see what the consumption is.

The site has the figures for most manufacturers EV models. Makes interesting reading if you have the time

https://evkx.net/models/lexus/rz/rz_450e/rangeandconsumption/

I am getting used to the fiddly controls for the auto driving etc. on the steering wheel and really enjoying the car - despite some bl**dy beeping ! I took it in to have a personal plate put on it and the guys there said it looked a stunning car - I have the copper & black but they thought it would look good in the other colours as well.
By the way, the lack of a rear wiper isn’t prob - in reasonably heavy rain it stayed clear

wivenhoe · May 17, 2023

On 5/10/2023 at 8:59 AM, DBIZO said:

Good details. The big issue some found is charging speeds. Any experience with how fast it is charging on fast chargers (50kW and above) from 20-80%?

See photo - I was at about 20% and went on a 150kw charger. It ramped up to 140Kw and took it to 82% in less than 30 mins so as per brochure.

talaipwros · May 17, 2023

2 minutes ago, wivenhoe said:

See photo - I was at about 20% and went on a 150kw charger. It ramped up to 140Kw and took it to 82% in less than 30 mins so as per brochure.

Great, what was the range shown whan you plugged the car for charging at 23%, and what when finished at 82% do you remember? Cheers

wivenhoe · May 17, 2023

8 hours ago, talaipwros said:

Great, what was the range shown whan you plugged the car for charging at 23%, and what when finished at 82% do you remember? Cheers

It was about 45 and 195 with only the ‘concierge’ aircon on. I think a lot of the reviews are inaccurate as the reviewers rarely delve into the owners manual and so miss what Lexus have done to minimise the effects of the aircon & heating. You can set the aircon to only cool front occupied seats - no passenger then it senses that and only the driver is heated / cooled. The seats heating / ventilating doesn’t seem to effect the range and there is the Climate Concierge which heats / cools to reflect the interior and outside temperatures rather than setting a temperature - I think all the reviews that say 150 miles range have the aircon / heating on full blast which does definitely reduce the range by about 40 miles - as other EV’s. The temperature today was about 17C and the ‘concierge’ seemed to keep it reasonably cool without dragging the range down too much.