Toyota bZ4X Touring (2026 - ) review

All versions of the Toyota bZ4X Touring are powered by battery, so they represent the lowest-possible running costs if you need this sort of size estate car. If you have a home charger and can avail of low overnight electric tariffs, then regular domestic top-ups ought to see the Toyota costing only a matter of a few quid to run – not to mention that it’ll qualify for all the usual taxation benefits that running a zero-emission vehicle brings to the party.

Toyota has a good reputation for reliability, and as the bZ4X Touring is an EV then there’s even less that could potentially go wrong on it anyway. Furthermore, the Japanese manufacturer offers an impressive ten-year, 100,000-mile service-activated warranty on all its cars, while it’ll also guarantee its high-voltage battery packs on electric vehicles will maintain at least 70 per cent of their capacity for the same decade-long period – but with a whopping 650,000-mile level of cover dolloped on top.

Although the Toyota bZ4X Touring and its related Subaru model, the E-Outback, have not yet been subjected to Euro NCAP’s testing routine, other closely related EVs from both companies have picked up the top five-star safety rating so we’ve no reason to suspect the Touring would fail to achieve the same thing. Furthermore, even the base Design specification comes with the Toyota Safety Sense suite of advanced driver assistance systems (otherwise known as ADAS), so the bZ4X Touring should be a dependable family wagon.

Although both models of the Toyota bZ4X Touring use the same battery pack, one version has a single motor and the other two – so there’s a difference in range between the two, with the all-wheel-drive dual-motor flagship not able to surpass 300 miles of driving capability without needing to visit a charger. However, we mention this because the 366-mile single-motor bZ4X Touring only comes in the lowlier Design specification, which in turn means 18-inch alloys instead of 20s – and that makes it even more comfortable, quiet and smooth for both ride quality and refinement. Thus specified, the electric estate is a thoroughly easy-going companion for day-to-day driving duties.

As we’ve already touched upon, the quoted WLTP range of the Toyota bZ4X Touring line-up is anything between 297 and 366 miles, which is OK but not groundbreaking in the current EV era. It is, though, a spacious and practical machine – the boot on it measures a huge 669 litres with all seats in use, which makes it (by volume) one of the biggest and best wagons for swallowing the accumulated clobber of life. Nevertheless, while equipment on the Design-grade car is fine, luxuries such as a panoramic roof, heated and ventilated front seats with heated rear seats, and a synthetic leather interior are all reserved for the pricier Excel trim of the all-wheel-drive model.

You don’t really need any more performance on the roads than the single-motor, front-wheel-drive Toyota bZ4X Touring serves up. It’s perfectly swift and can run 0-62mph in comfortably less than eight seconds if you need it to, while the effortless power and torque delivery ensures it can easily keep up with everyday traffic flow. However, if you do go for the dual-motor bZ4X Touring, you get one of the fastest-accelerating Toyotas ever to make production – it uses its excellent off-the-line traction to record a supercar-like 4.5-second 0-62mph time.