Right before Thanksgiving, Lexus announced its (and, really, all of Toyota’s) first real mass-market battery electric vehicle, the Lexus UX 300e. It’s not really all that radical a vehicle. It’s essentially an electric version of the Lexus UX crossover, with a decent-enough range of almost 250 miles. Even though this seems like an ideal vehicle to compete with the swarm of modern EVs in America from Tesla and now Ford and soon Volkswagen, to name a few, Toyota is only planning to sell this in China, Japan, and Europe. I think that’s because they somehow are still really committed to hydrogen?
The Lexus UX 300e really isn’t all that exciting as far as EVs go—it’s an existing unibody vehicle with a lower frame and floor-mounted battery pack grafted on, but the end result seems decent, and, with its low-mounted batteries and drivetrain, is effectively following the rapidly-emerging standard design of modern EVs.
Toyota/Lexus has also beefed up the suspension to deal with the considerable battery weight, which they explain in this gloriously oblique way in their press release:
“The high-performance level of the GA-C platform is enhanced with additional braces and optimization of the shock absorbers’ damping force to match the dynamic changes of electrification.”
It’s all just fine, and I’m sure it would be a decently competitive EV option if sold here in America. I’m frankly pretty baffled why they’re not offering it here at all, and the only reason I can come up with has to do with this car:
Yes, the new, significantly de-uglified Mirai. It’s Toyota’s advanced, hydrogen fuel-cell-powered EV, and based on informal discussions I had with Toyota PR people and engineers at a recent event, they seem very, very committed to hydrogen.
Now, I get the appeal of hydrogen: you can refuel a hydrogen car in about the same amount of time as a gasoline car, sidestepping the sticky and painful issue of how long it takes to recharge an EV. There’s no battery degradation, and the only emissions a fuel cell vehicle produces is delicious, refreshing water. It seems great!
The problem is, as always, stupid reality. Hydrogen may be the most abundant element out in the universe, but here on Earth it’s actually kind of a pain to produce and ship and store, and as a result there’s hardly any hydrogen infrastructure to speak of, despite decades of development of this technology by Honda and Toyota and Hyundai and others.
It hasn’t caught on. The conventional EV charging infrastructure, while still nowhere near as comprehensive as it needs to be, has been growing far, far better.
Somehow, though, Toyota still is very committed to hydrogen, and I think that’s why they’ve taken so long to produce a mass-production battery EV, and why they’re now ignoring one of the biggest and most influential EV markets: America.
I think this is a really weird decision, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see these EV Lexuses over in the U.S. before too long as someone at Toyota wises up.