Toyota bZ4X Review

There’s a heat pump as standard for efficiency, and the batteries are water cooled for the same reason - Toyota feels that they’ve stepped up the game with regard to keeping their batteries in good nick over time, and it looks like there’ll be a 10-year/million kilometre guarantee, as long as the car has seen a Toyota dealer for an annual health check. That’s confidence inspiring. 

Range
Stick the bZ4X on a big charger and you could see around 160-miles of range in around 35 minutes (10 - 80%). The car with just front wheel drive and one motor will get 318-miles of official range, and the very slightly more powerful four-wheel drive 286 miles of absolute range. That's competitive with rivals like the Skoda Enyaq, VW ID.4 and Mustang Mach E. The trouble is that owners aren't seeing anywhere near those figures in the real world, especially in colder weather. Toyota is said to be working on a fix, mainly by updating the software. Apparently, there is an overly cautious buffer which means there is actually an extra 30 miles of range in the battery even after the meter gets to zero - but don't blame us if you get stuck!

Battery
Toyota reckons that the bZ4X’s battery hits a sweet spot at 71.4kWh, with 64kWh being usable. As far as it goes, there’s a heatpump on all models to help out, as well as water cooling to keep the battery in tip-top shape. But the company is confident; there’ll be a 10-year/million kilometre guarantee on the battery (as long as the car has had a yearly health check at a Toyota dealer), which means the company has confidence in its own product. 

Charging
Early cars got 6.6kW of AC charging initially, which is fine for most home wallboxes. If you want more, then later 2022 onwards models got 3-phase 11kW charging. Rapid charging has a bit more vim, coming in at 150kW DC on all models, which is slap-bang in the decent ranges. It’s not going to blow your socks off, but stick the bZ4X on a 150kW DC charger or above, and a 160-ish-mile charge will happen in around half an hour. That will get you on your way, even if it doesn’t match something like a Kia EV6 or Hyundai Ioniq 5 for speed.