Now Lexus plans to launch 20 electrified models by 2025, some still hybrids (for not all countries have committed to ban them like the UK) but with more emphasis on what Lexus says is an accelerated programme of battery-electric newcomers like this concept. The future electric line-up will include models from sports cars to chauffeur limousines, it says, and put the company on a path to carbon-neutrality by 2050.
But today it’s all about the LF-Z Electrified, a 4.9m long, 2.1-tonne five-door with dual electric motors and clever new all-wheel-drive system. It can dish out 0-62mph in 3.0 seconds, a top speed limited to 124mph and range of 373 miles (600km) – good but increasingly what any manufacturer of electric cars in this class will say.
It’s all based on bespoke battery-electric car architecture, Lexus’s first. The 90kWh battery packs are built in under the floor as part of the structure, like all the best BEVs, in the cause of a low centre of gravity and platform rigidity.
The twin motors produce a combined 536PS (400kW) with 700Nm (518lb ft) of torque, all of it metered out to individual wheels via what Lexus calls Direct4. This controls front and rear drive wheels independently, allowing combinations of front-wheel-drive, rear-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive to suit the situation.
That sounds doable, perhaps unlike another of the LF-Z Electrified’s claims to fame: its steer-by-wire system that does without any mechanical link with the front wheels. Steer-by-wire is nothing new in concept cars and while the carmakers want it, the safety legislators take a different view.