Living with a… Toyota bZ4X
How does Toyota’s large electric SUV shape up during a six-month test? We find out...
Words by: Catherine Kent
Published on 5 November 2026 | 0 min read
The Toyota bZ4X is an electric family-size SUV to rival the Skoda Enyaq, Tesla Model Y and Peugeot E-3008. It has chunky looks, a swooping coupe-like shape and an official range of up to 352 miles, but how far does it go the in real-world? I’ve got six months to discover exactly what the bZ4X is like to live with; how many motorway miles will it do in winter, how comfortable will it be in boring traffic jams and will it be less frustrating than the Toyota Urban Cruiser I lived with previously? Let’s find out…
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What is it?
- Model: Toyota bZ4X
- Version: 73.1 kWh
- Spec level: Design
- Options fitted: Precious Metal Premium Paint - £965
- Price as tested: £46,760
Who’s testing it?
We like
- 280-mile motorway range
- Smooth and easy to drive
- Flappy paddles for regenerative braking
We don’t like
- Very grey interior
- Annoying driver monitoring system
- Reflection of ambient lights in the wingmirrors at night
Month 1 – Cheap to run and easy to live with?
Catherine says: “My off-peak energy tariff cost just 3.33 pence per kWh, so a full charge is less than £2.50”
How much has it cost you?
£57.84 on public charging for a work trip to Gatwick. Other than that, my off-peak energy tariff costs just 3.33 pence per kWh so a full charge is less than £2.50. However, we only get six hours of off-peak chagring a day, so it takes two nights to fully charge when the battery is low.
Where have you been?
In my first week with the car, I covered over 500 miles driving from Manchester to Gatwick, Gatwick to the Cotswolds and then back home to Manchester. Sunny September weather resulted in a solid 280 miles of motorway range, so I did it the whole journey with just two short rapid charging sessions, plus a helpful, though not strictly necessary, slower overnight top-up at my destination for good measure.
This month I also had a fun day out in the Yorkshire village of Masham for the annual Sheep Fair. It’s about 90 miles from me so I could easily get there and back without even thinking about range. It would have been a little tighter in my husband’s Renault Megane E-Tech although I think we’d have also managed the journey without needing to stop to charge.
On top of my longer trips, I have also done a handful of local ones including a day out with my parents at an aviation museum and a morning at the garden centre. In total I’ve already driven around 750 miles in the bZ4X.
What have you been carrying?
My parents and some plants from the garden centre.
Delights?
This is the first electric car with nearly 300 miles of range I’ve lived with and while I find public charging relatively straight forward, it does mean I can save time and money by doing most of my charging at home.
Frustrations?
A warning saying “Plug-in charging system malfunction – visit your dealer” is not what you want to see pop up on your EV’s display, but on one occasion after I’ve public charged this very message appeared on my dashboard. I wasn’t too worried as my car clearly had charged and the warning only showed up after I’d disconnected the charger.
I contacted Toyota and was swiftly sent a statement explaining this was a known software bug impacting cars produced between August and early December 2025 – my car was registered in November 2025.
Apparently, the warning sometimes appears if you unplug the charger too quickly, but the car is absolutely fine and all you need to do is turn the car off and on again three times. I did this classic bit of tech trouble shooting and low and behold the warning disappeared!
An easy fix but it could easily spook owners, so hopefully Toyota has now sorted the software in other bZ4Xs.
This month in a nutshell
Slight software glitch aside, the bZ4X is proving very easy to live with so far.
