Driving the 2026 Lexus RZ 550e F Sport AWD

Now, this is more like it.

I drove the first electric vehicle (EV) from Lexus, the RZ, when it was brand new in 2023. At the time, I remember thinking it felt like a first draft.

It would have worked well for a family looking for a second car. But a surprisingly limited range, slow charging speeds, and a strange lack of storage made it impractical as a replacement for your main ride.

But I just spent a week driving the refreshed 2026 Lexus RZ, and the editors have been hard at work. [Sean, what are you implying about our usual routine?– ed.]  The second draft of the electric compact SUV from Toyota’s luxury division has longer range, more power, and a unique simulating shift setting that mimics the feel of a gas-powered car when you want it.

Storage is still oddly lacking — there’s no glove box here — and the RZ has a quirk that might frustrate drivers who spend a lot of time on the highway. But it’s a much more polished product than it was three years ago, while retaining the cocoon-like luxury you expect of a Lexus product.

I used the RZ for daily driving in a fairly urban setting and one daylong highway trip, during which it proved to have more range than its onboard computers estimated.

Which Trim Level

Lexus builds the RZ in six trim levels. They can differ from one another more than you might be used to with gas-powered cars. The base RZ 350e claims 221 horsepower, front-wheel drive (FWD), and a range up to 301 miles. Midlevel trims are all-wheel drive (AWD) and offer 308 horsepower and 257 miles of range. My tester, the top-of-the-line 550e F Sport AWD model, has a sports-car-like 402 hp, AWD, and a range of just 229 miles because of the added power.

Favorite Feature

Simulated shifts in an EV are admittedly a gimmick. But who doesn’t love a good gimmick? They’re optional in the RZ. In most drive modes, the steering-wheel-mounted paddle shifters do nothing. But switch into M Mode, and the paddles give you the surge of power you are used to from a downshift.

It’s something I’d rarely touch if I owned the car. But on the twisting roads out of Shenandoah National Park after a long hike, I had fun shifting like I was in a sports coupe. What other EV gives you that option? Very few.

What It’s Like to Drive

If Lexus is known for anything, it’s a compliant, smooth ride in a quiet cabin. From its earliest days, Lexus left performance driving to BMW and Audi, and carved out a groove for itself as a builder of sumptuous interiors that swaddled owners, insulating them from the stresses of traffic.

In recent years, the company has challenged its own legacy, building tough off-roaders and true performance cars.

Now that it’s good at multiple things, it’s built most of them into the RZ. Cool trick.

My 550e offered five drive modes: Normal, Eco, Sport, Range, and M (for manual). The car performs quite differently in each. Fully charged, range varied from 231 in Range mode (which includes no air conditioning) to 208 in Sport.

It even exceeded its predicted range — I once left for a trip with 208 miles on the meter, drove 193 miles, made no effort to conserve, and arrived home with 55 still on tap.

But the car has one quirk that bothered me and another KBB editor who tested it. In Range, Normal, and Eco modes, it does not want to exceed 60 mph. It will hold at 60 until you tap the accelerator all the way to the floor, then surge forward, as if it has to be convinced the local speed limit really is 65.

Drop below 60, and you have to repeat this routine. It’s likely there to preserve range, but it could easily result in motion sickness. I eventually kept it in Sport mode on the highway just to maintain highway speed without having to repeatedly accelerate to 60, then accelerate again to get past it.

Steering effort is among the lightest I’ve ever experienced in a car. If you’re a fan of feedback in steering, this car doesn’t have it. But, in a parking lot, it’s as low-effort as they get.

Regenerative braking can be aggressive in range-preserving modes, but stopping is reliable and simple when you need it.

Interior Comfort and Technology

No luxury car’s cabin is truly no-frills, but there’s a simplicity to the layout of the RZ’s interior. The driver faces a large instrument screen, with a large 14-inch central touchscreen canted slightly toward the driver’s position.

Ultrasuede-trimmed seats are supportive and grippy in the corners. Lower trim levels get NuLuxe upholstery — an excellent faux leather that holds up well over years of ownership.

Buying the upscale 550e F Sport AWD model limits you to black Ultrasuede, but blue contrast-color stitching helps it feel something more than basic black. Still, if color is your thing, less-powerful trim levels have more interesting interior options like Thunderstorm blue and a Palamino tan-and-cream scheme.

Lexus persists in offering the RZ without a glovebox. That’s odd, as the dashboard seems to have room for one. The center console’s storage could hold your paperwork, but the decision to go without the usual storage option feels inconvenient.

There’s an electrochromic roof in place of a sunroof. It always starts out opaque, which helps keep the cabin from overheating in summer.

Rear seat accommodations are adequate for two adults, with reclining, heated outboard seats. The back of the center console includes a pair of USB-C ports and one conventional 3-prong household outlet.

The cargo area is perhaps a touch small for a compact SUV, offering 53 cubic feet of capacity with the rear seats lowered. That’s a concession to efficiency — the sleek roofline leaves it with slightly less cargo space than you’d find in a more conventionally shaped SUV.

Limitations

That strange highway speed limiter might be an annoyance if you drive mostly on highways. Keeping the car in Sport mode works around it, but limits your range. This one is best suited to those of us who do a lot of stop-and-go driving, where it won’t come up.

Key Considerations

The RZ has more competition than ever, as most luxury automakers now offer a compact electric SUV. I’d pit this against the BMW iX3, noting that, oddly, the M shift capability might make the Lexus the more fun option, while the BMW wins easily on range. That’s not a sentence we expect to write often.