Toyota bZ4X
REPORT 5
£54,410 OTR/£54,410 as tested/£519 pcm
WHY IT’S HERE
Is Toyota’s e-4x4 behind the curve, or better than we think?
DRIVER
Tom Ford
IF YOU THOUGHT THE BZ4X WASN’T PARTICULARLY NOTICEABLE, then rest assured that you can’t miss the TopGear version now Those masters of vinyl craft down at Mission Motorsport’s livery department missionmotorsport org have taken my childish scrawls and transformed the previously UN White Toyota into something much more visually excitingslashludicrous Lee Winstone and his team took a look at the vintage Toyota stripes inspiration and came up with something that while honouring my intent took the idea to a whole new level It’s also more complicated than it seems the bZX is actually more textured in terms of contour lines than it looks in base white so Lee has had to wrangle the plastic in three different colours and cope with a complicated bodyshape to make this thing straight And it looks fabulous
There’s more to come but I’ve been bombing around doing various stories for the past few weeks so getting things sorted for the miniproject has taken a backseat Which let’s face it is the story of every project car mini or not as far back as anyone can remember
Still in the course of said adventures I was in Japan looking at some of Toyota and Lexus’ new products and delving a little bit into what comes next And the future looks really bright with Toyota’s next generation ‘prismatic’ batteries More on that over on topgear com
In the midfuture there’s also apparently solid state battery tech on the way in / which should be leagues ahead again Faster charging safer more efficient greater energy density the list of why solid state could change the game is long There are also strides being made in terms of efficiency the more miles you can get from every kWh the less battery you actually need The revolution isn’t over we’re still in the middle of it After a slow start it looks like Toyota is finally stepping up its game