all right so I'd heard I'd heard that Toyota is in fact making one fully electric vehicle I mean we know them to make all kinds of great hybrids but they are actually making one EV called the bz 4X but i' never seen them on the road I feel like it's super rare to actually see a bz 4X or a sutera which I'll talk about in later but I finally have come to understand why I've been living with the b4x for the past couple days about a week now and uh crazy thing is it's it's actually pretty nice in a lot of ways but there's one major flaw one major reason why I could never recommend it over others in its class so let's just jump right into that so this is the bz 4X right here it's this model yiz ionic 5 sized ev6 Siz you know crossover it's got the hatchback style it's higher off the ground it's got a good amount of storage and it's fully electric all right so Toyota being a pretty reputable manufacturer you'd think would have a lot of the fundamentals down and it does but the one flaw is the bz 4x's fully electric range is I'll put it right here it's about 220 mil I'm driving it in the winter it's showing me 199 mil of range on a full charge and it's not the fastest charging vehicle in the world that is its major flaw because as a crossover for $40 to $50,000 the rest of it is actually pretty solid it's a Toyota they know how to make good cars it's a good interior good space all that stuff but everything else I'm about to say is kind of in spite of the deal breaker range if you can live with that sort of tiny range then actually this is probably a fine commuter vehicle for you but yeah that that was a deal breaker for me but aside from that I mean look look at this thing it's got a fairly Unique Look I feel like it's actually a really good-looking car it's got these similar to the Prius these angular looking headlights that slant down here to the middle and it does have a lot of this black contrast uh which actually interestingly goes over this huge uh charge port door so that's kind of cool and then there's a whole bunch of black contrast back here and then this huge double spoiler back here and all the slanted glass I think it actually looks pretty nice this thing starts at $43,000 base and goes up to uh right into the 50s so $40 to $50,000 let's say which is the same class as ionic 5 and and ionic 5 has a lot of the same Styles but is a little bit of a weaker more plasticky interior but if you're just talking pure fundamentals you know power lift gate the premium trim has bigger wheels and a little bit more power but in general I mean nothing lacking here this big subwoofer in the back for the JBL sound system these hold flat you can see super easy ton of space for long items and uh always got to show the sub trunk here there you go a little bit of sub trunk now have you ever heard the term compliance vehicle before it's not a compliment but you know in the US especially we have all these regulations where the average of a vehicle lineup for an entire company has to reach a certain level as far as emissions and in order to keep making the cars that have more higher emissions they they end up making some that are way below the line to average it out better and usually you don't want to buy those way below the- line cars those compliance cars that bring the average down weirdly I don't think this is technically one of those cars for Toyota but it feels like they made an EV cuz they had to and then sort of just shipped it and didn't care too much I mean Toyota's strategy is pretty notably to ship a lot of hybrids and so that's what they're doing but this being their one EV it kind of feels like they missed out on an opportunity to show a really great EV drivet train or what it's like to build an electric car from the ground up but I say all that and I also think there's a lot of great things about the rest of this car just cuz Toyota's good at making cars they do a good job of making it feel like you get a bunch of different materials especially on the inside I'll sit in the back seat here and I do have a good amount of leg room it's not the most foot room ever but you get this uh heated seats in the back you get the USBC ports for power real physical air vents and a fixed sunroof but this uh cover here will slide forward if you want it to but hey speaking of USBC ports they're always great to have obviously but uh shout out to denix for sponsoring this video they make this right here which is a tire inflator but also a massive USB battery bank which I've just defaulted to keeping in my car all the time no matter what because it's just something I want to have with me everywhere so this right here it's a 15,000 milliamp hour battery and a compressor so it's all going to fit in this little box right here this is good for inflating up to seven standard tires which it can actually do at they're claiming like twice the rate of a normal portable tire inflator but then if you actually flip this little flap open right here that is a USBC port and a usba port and this thing will do up to 45 Watts out to fast charge whether you have a a phone or a tablet or literally a laptop so it's pretty clear how it works you can choose whatever PSI you want or go through a bunch of different presets but I think my favorite feature underrated back here on the back is actually a light it's like an ultra bright light like side of the highway finishing up inflating your tires super useful or a little camping light or an emergency side of the road light that'll blink red for you so all in all I'm not taking this out of my car anytime soon I'll leave a link in the description if you want to check it out but yeah that's it now back to the bz 4X but it gets even more obvious when you sit in the front cuz you remember the Prius right the Prius is one of actually the most popular videos on this entire Channel but also one of the most recognizable common cars on the street and uh the driver's seat of the bz 4X has a lot of Prius to it so here's the driver's position of the bz 4X and right away you probably see what I'm talking about as far as you know there's some cloth up here and some plastic and some piano black I don't love all this piano black that cars are doing lately but this is what I mean when I say Prius like this is that display that they put up front right in your line of sight just like the Prius does you have a very Prius like steering wheel you have a power button right here and then you get the normal Toyota software which does do wireless Android auto which I've been using but it's actually pretty good software too and you jump up there and you can see all the stuff you'd normally want to see while driving right now what is it saying 60% battery 125 miles of range so 250ish Miles full that's it's a little generous in the cold and then here's your software so it's probably going to start showing yeah the music that I was listening to and then just looking around at materials I mean it's solid so again I'm going to compare this mentally to ionic 5 which had a lot of that fabric and that plastic here this is going to be showing me a lot of the same stuff but I've got some real physical buttons here which I like they're a little bit annoying that they're capacitive and not just like actual buttons but you can at least see them and they're in the same exact spot every single time and they're not horrible please don't make this piano black next time Toyota uh this is your drive mode selector you shift down and then turn or hit the button here to park and then you've got X mode which is kind kind of like a off-road mode you have eco mode you have a button to view the cameras quickly and the cameras are really nice it's got this clear top down view where you can see everything around the car but the car is clear it's really clever I like it and then this button right here is it's kind of like one pedal driving but not quite basically this button means add the liftoff regen please and then this button is your brake hold but it's not exactly one pedal driving you still will have to go down to like 2 3 mil hour and then use the brakes to finish I wish I could do full one pedal driving at least as an option in this car but it doesn't do it and then just as far as pure layout I do like the driver's position and all the stuff that's very Prius likee I don't actually love how wide this center console is it's really really wide left to right it does have this little spot where you can put your phone and it will charge almost any phone it didn't like agree with the positioning of the s24 Ultra it would turn on and then back off see it's not wireless charging but for the iPhone it would line up perfectly every time and I guess that's probably the phone a lot of people are going to have here but there's this storage underneath here very shallow but another spot for your phone up here and a USB port cool it's just really wide and so it makes it feel like this car is a little more uptight cramped than it maybe should be for this size but then you drive it you know it is a smooth ride the dampers are pretty soft I mean this is going to be a totally regular car to drive not in any fancy way um I'll show you this too cuz this a little bit unique huh huh um and then I'll say I do like I said I wish it had one pedal driving but visibility is really good you can I'm actually going to close this sunroof because the sun is shining directly on my forehead right now and I kind of wish it would open as a moon roof but that's totally cool that it doesn't I I think a lot of cars in this price range just have the fixed glass roof and the JBL speakers do sound pretty good they get quite loud and the volume on the steering wheel is right here and this is your forward and backward for your music overall solid fundamental so I'm driving this car around and the more I drive it the more I feel like it's more or less a Prius XL like this is a taller higher off the ground hatchback super efficient decently quick if you stab it but that range the Prius has like a bazillion miles of range if you fill it with gas and this one no solar no extra trinkets or tidbits about it it's just 230 is Miles absolute maximum and then find a public charger and good luck that's its weakness that's its Achilles but really the thought I'm left with after this experience is Toyota's strategy it's a fascinating one they are so Allin with hybrids I mean we all know about Prius Prime Rav 4 prime a bunch of other hybrids in their lineup I used to drive a a Camry Hybrid for a while and that's that's just what they do but meanwhile you look across the aisle you've got Hyundai you've got Kia you've got a bunch of others that are putting out a bunch of electric cars right now and it feels like they're flag shipping those electric cars they're really making a big deal out of them running tons of ads for them I think I may have seen one ad for the bz 4X but it's clear that Toyota's still in hybrid camp and I wonder if I wonder if that's the way to go right now because EES are still so young in their Tech and so expensive for what you get out of them and this feels like a good example of that only 220 230 miles of range when you can get a Prius right now that does a lot of the same stuff and for less money so let me know what you think hybrid camp and make an example out of the EV or EV forward let me know what you think thanks for watching catch you in the next one peace