2024 Lexus RX 450h+ PHEV Full Tour & Review
This episode of test drive is brought to you by elmech and their EV Duty smart home charger I say this pretty often here on test drive but we do love our electrified vehicles and Toyota really has been at the Forefront of hybrid technology they came out with the Prius
Over 20 years ago and since then a lot of their vehicles have had either hybrids plugin hybrids or they’re starting to get into full electrics and it’s nice to see a lot more options from the Lexus brand as well this is a 2020 for Lexus RX 450h plus it is a plug-in
Hybrid midsize luxury SUV priced as say at around $90,000 Canadian and almost $74,000 in the US it is more affordable than something like the BMW X5 that we drove a couple months ago when we took it to Detroit but this is also on the smaller side of the midsize segment so
Think of this as maybe competing with vehicles like the Cadillac xt5 the Lincoln Nautilus because this only comes now as a two row again now is a little bit smaller but still a very competent vehicle and this really is The Sweet Spot when it comes to a luxury SUV big
Enough that you can fit 4 to five passengers in it comfortably with tons of cargo room in the back that’s one of the reasons why the RX has been such a popular seller over the years and one of the reasons why I wanted to take this
This week and see how a modern one feels now under the hood we have a 2.5 L 4 cylinder engine with that plug-in hybrid system combined system output is 304 horsepower we also have an 18.1 Kow hour lithium ion battery good for around 60 km or about 37 Mi however during our
Testing so far we’re getting closer to 50 km and as you can see here today I’m pretty comfortable outside without a coat or a sweater it’s about like 11° CS so weather hasn’t been that cold but we’ll talk about some of the reasons why I think this isn’t quite getting that
Range on our road test but this is the top end trim and it comes fully loaded in the US you can add certain packages here in Canada it is pretty much fully loaded you don’t get to add those packages they just come with it we do
Get a lot of features on this vehicle including a 21 speaker Mark levenson audio system which sounds fantastic you have heated and ventilated front and outboard second row seats you also have front memory for both driver and passenger panoramic sunroof kick activated liftgate digital Rear View Camera 360 degree cameras keyless entry
And electronic door handles and when I say electronic door handles I mean the door handles don’t move there’s a little button on the inside that pops it open and then on the inside to get out there’s a little handle that you push to release it but it also acts as the
Emergency release should the power fail on the vehicle for whatever reason those buttons don’t work actually pull that mechanism outwards and it’ll manually unlock the door latch so it’s pretty cool overall I mean I like the way that Lexus has executed the luxury feel on this vehicle again we’ll talk about it
When we take it on the road because everything is just topnotch I mean they really have taken their time to think about what a luxury buyer would want at this price point and really gone to town with it I mean the interior on this is
Superb I have had a blast driving this R and it really helped because I picked this up after spending a couple hours on the airplane and spending a couple days out in Quebec so it’s nice to have a comfortable smooth vehicle to drive home after a very long weekend so without
Further Ado let’s hit the road we’ll take the 2024 Lexus rx450h Plus Plus on the road and talk about everything else you need to know if you’re in the market for a $90,000 midsize luxury plug-in hybrid SUV so we’re on the road now with the Lexus rx450 H+ and if you weren’t
Listening or necessarily watching one of the two you might not realize we’re actually driving because it’s so quiet in this vehicle has active noise cancellation but then just in general this vehicle has so many soft touch materials on the inside that it’s you can’t hear the outside of it it’s
Fantastic and I mean that’s what you’re greeted with this Serene interior when you come in first you’ve got this suede material that wraps all the way around the dash area like a you know almost like a cockpit of shuttlecraft from Star truck but then the seats have leather
And suede on the insides they’re dark brown they look fantastic especially mixed with the gray paint that we’ve got on here it looks really good cloudburst gray is what the exterior is called and I just I like it I mean it’s it’s just with this vehicle because it’s the
Hybrid because it’s the the plug-in the exterior design is just a little different than you would get on say a RX 350 or if you go up to the RX 500 so this does have a slightly Unique Look to it and I really like it I mean
Everything on the exterior is gray it’s all body color looks great I absolutely love the design of this and because it is sort of Rak back a little bit you do lose a little bit of space in the trunk and again just being a two row vehicle
Yeah it’s a little bit smaller than something like the X5 that we took to Michigan a little while ago but again focusing back on the inside here you’ve got a cockpit style setup here infotainment on the right and then you know you’ve got sort of this it’s
Different I mean I don’t see too many cars that have a interior like this very large bezel all the way on the outside but we’ve got our vents on the left with certain controls things like your memory seating the fuel door trunk things like that they’re all on the left side of the
Bezel and then you’ve got your HVAC controls and everything with your infotainment now most of the controls are in the screen we don’t like that normally at least they’re pretty much always there you can hide them if you want but then you can keep them on the
Screen so you can get into your seat controls like heated ventilated seats easier you’ve got automatic heat and ventilation which the car has been on and and it’s been working pretty well but I do usually like to control it and then the S flow system that we saw last
Week when we were driving the Toyota Grand Highlander that allows the air system to know where people are sitting and only direct the air flow there so I always have that running so for example right now the vents are only working on my side but if other people get in the
Car they should all work but we do have Tri Zone climate control so the rear seats are comfortable and again ventilated and heated seats back there so good stuff we don’t usually see that across the board it is nice to have plus passenger memory on this different location than it’s located for the
Driver but still nice to have so those are really good features an overall feature Rich on the interior of the Lexus RX and comfort I mean these seats are great you do have some extended thigh support I do like it you know I can sit a little bit further back I can
Sit much closer if I wanted to I have a good seating position I have a little bit of extra Headroom here so overall that the interior on this is pretty superb but again the thing you really notice is just how quiet this vehicle is even doing about 80 km an hour here and
We’re going to be going over some train tracks let’s see if I hit these tracks there’s a big pothole in there oh my God but no that worked out great like I mean you barely feel it you definitely don’t hear much it’s really really good so I like that now again the horsepower
And torque numbers on this not super great compared to again something recently like we did the BMW X5 but that’s fine this vehicle isn’t meant to be performance oriented you want Speed and Performance go for the rx500 if you want something that has the fuel efficiency go with this
As I mentioned Lexus says you should get about 60 km fully electric with this vehicle so far we’re only seeing about 40 45 at the most during our 100 km test Loop we got about 40 45 km before the engine kicked in and it doesn’t quite
Drain the battery all the way because it uses this more as a hybrid which I like so you’re getting a good mix and we ended up only averaging 4.4 L per 100 km during our test Loop so good numbers overall not as good as the BMW which I
Believe did it in 3.1 L per 100 km but that’s also a bigger battery it’s a 25 KW hour lithium ion battery compared to this which is only an 18.1 so smaller battery on this yes it is a smaller vehicle and less power but still kind of
Even out makes sense so I’m not knocking it for that but there is one thing that I think would have improved the overall range on this you do have scheduling for the charger so you can tell the car when you want to be heading out or when you
Want the C of schedule so if you live somewhere here in Ontario like that where you have you know different rates depending on what time of the day it is then you might want to use that so then that way you can say Hey you know I
Don’t want to be charging during the peak hours which I’ve been doing I’ve told it I want to leave by about 8:30 in the morning and and it’s good to go means it’ll make sure that the vehicle is charged up right up to that point so
That I’m using the least amount of money as possible but there’s no climate scheduling not only there no remote starter on this vehicle there’s also no climate scheduling which means I can’t tell the car to start going hot or cold depending on the temperature so I woke
Up the other day when I you I set everything up finally and I came out thinking hey you know it’s like -2 – 3 degre outside I’d like to have the the vehicle warmed up so I I already told it you know I leave at about 8:35 in the
Morning it was pretty cold inside the car cuz there is no scheduling now maybe there’s something in the Lexus app but we don’t get access to that from the Press Fleet so I can’t tell you if the it’s it’s just locked down on the mobile app but it there’s nothing here there’s
Nothing in the owner’s manual I went through the whole thing which is online and I went through all the infotainment system can’t find it just doesn’t exist there’s no remote starter so basically I got to go outside start the car up and then let it warm up if I could schedule
The climate like a normal plugin hybrid then I I’m sure I would be getting closer to those 60 km cuz even right now I mean we haven’t used much I basically woke up this morning drove a little bit around town and then came to film this
We’ve only got 30 km of EV range left which means I should be at about 50% but I’m at like 80% so I’m just not getting it so this car was so close to Perfection I I really especially after driving it for about 250 km to come home
With it you know really got to understand this car and I got to understand the type of buyer who would be looking at this car and I thought wow like this really is first of all it’s one of the reasons why Lexus is so popular and why they sell so
Well like these cars are truly designed for people because everything makes sense everything’s laid out where you want it to be the materials are high quality the fit and finish is superb the materials like I said everything just fantastic on the inside and exterior of this vehicle and then they just kind of
Fumbled it there at the end when it came to scheduling so that’s my only real negative when it comes to this car is there’s no scheduling and again you know taking away all the buttons it’s a bit of a bummer but you kind of get used to
It so if they just had the way to schedule your climate this would be perfect like I don’t like to say that too often but it really would be because everything else works so good that that’s the only thing that’s missing and especially when it comes to a plugin hybrid you really want
That right cuz the vehicle’s plugged in you want it to be pulling off the grid as as you’re starting it up you know 20 minutes before you go you pay a couple bucks or whatever not even really it’s like 10 cents to during that period you want to make sure that the vehicle’s
Warm that way you extend the range so aside from that everything else about it it’s been great rear seat as I mentioned you’ve got lots of room back there the trunk tons of room back there the ride is great yeah I’ve kept this thing in eco mode guys like I’m not I’m not
Putting it in sport mode but for you since you’ve made it through to the uh end of the video here I will put it into sport mode so I kind of feel things have changed up a little bit uh the infotainments gone red so if I if I done
It okay there’s really nothing going on there if I change this into hybrid mode engine kicks on okay yeah it it picks up there you go but again you’re not buying it for that you you really I keep this in Eevee mode and I keep it in eco mode
And I’m I’m happy as can be I mean I’ve spent next to nothing to keep this car on the road it’s like three bucks so far I think I’ve spent in electricity and I I did use a little bit of gas obviously coming here so I got to put a little bit
In but no this has been extremely good so if you’re in the market for this you know again the RX kind of sits on its own because the the you know RX has always been sort of a midsize it was a compact before it became a midsize and
Then they added the L which was the extended wheelbase three row version that’s now been replaced by the Lexus LX that’s been replaced by the Lexus TX and that really is the Lexus version of the grand Highlander that we drove so if you’re in the market for a bigger
Vehicle then you can take a look at that but this as it’s as a two row you know four passenger vehicle really good you definitely want to be considering it again it’s less than the BMW not getting quite the same experience that you get with the BMW but I think really if
You’re in the market for say a Lincoln or Cadillac you want something that isn’t over-the-top performance but you want something that is truly luxury class comfort then the Lexus RX is the way to go I like it quite a bit I’ve enjoyed my time with it it’s going to be
Sad to to say goodbye to this one but luckily you don’t have to say goodbye to it because you get to watch this video you can watch it as many times as you want and if you have any questions about this video or anything else that we do
Here on test drive don’t hesitate get in those comments leave us a message below let us know what you think of this vehicle let us know what you think of this episode if you haven’t subscribed to the channel then we also invite you to do that as well as like the video and
Share it online but until next time thanks for watching and take Care [Applause] Oh
The all-new 2024 Lexus RX 450h+ PHEV shows us what happens when Lexus puts together a PHEV, but there’s one major feature missing from this SUV keeping it from being the perfect luxury vehicle.
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On this episode of TestDrive Spotlight we hit the road in the 2024 Lexus RX 450h+, a mid-size luxury plug-in hybrid electric SUV priced around $90,000 CAD. The Lexus RX has been a top-seller for the brand since it was first introduced, and this generation comes with a number of different engine choices, this being the PHEV. We go over the technical specs, pricing, and features of this vehicle, then hit the road to talk about the overall drive, ride, and comfort, along with our real-world fuel economy test results.
TestDrive is proudly produced in St Thomas, Ontario, Canada.
