Lexus NX450h+ AWD – PLUG-AND-PLAY

Lexus NX450h+ AWD

PLUG-AND-PLAY

It’s probably generational. Despite not remembering what I did earlier in the week (even if it’s still early in the week!), I can still do math in my head. To be sure, I don’t do it as quickly as when I ran the (math) bases in 4^th grade, and I’m not great with bigger digits, but if called upon for simple addition or multiplication I can typically pull the number out of my head before my wife can pull it out of her phone. It’s the math that brings me to this week’s test subject, the Lexus NX450h plug-in hybrid.

Call it the NX-US, as Lexus almost pummels its clientele with choices when shopping for its not quite entry-level NX. The base NX350 offers a Lexus level of luxury for comfortably under $50K; that price point, of course, is notable ‘cuz the current price of new car admission – on average – is just north of $50K. In 350 hybrid guise that stairstep will take you to about $53,000, while the bump to plug-in 450h+ jumps you to the mid-$60s. And that, kids, is where we sit today.

While sharing a lot of platform and engineering with Toyota’s RAV4 Prime, the Lexus sheetmetal is the difference between that girlfriend you’d take to meet the folks and the gal you didn’t discuss with the folks. I still have my reservations regarding the Lexus brand’s front fascia, but whether the design team has drawn it in or I’ve simply grown accustomed to it, the whole of the NX presentation works very well. And the footprint, with 183.5 inches of overall length sitting on a wheelbase of 106 inches, works extremely well.

Inside, you’ll find getting in and out pretty easy for both young mothers and/or your elderly grandmother. You don’t step down or up; rather, you simply step in. And once seated the front buckets provide you reasonable support in combination with genuine comfort. And the cabin is wrapped in an almost seductive saddle – hop-in and giddy-up! There’s adequate physical separation between driver and passenger, while visual separation is provided by the NX’s infotainment screen. And most of what’s on the screen can be discerned within a day or two of driving.

In back you’ll find comfortable legroom and headroom for two, but don’t regard this as a 3-passenger bench…unless all three are under 10. This is a comfortable, accessible cabin for four adults, while the available cargo’s 23 cubic feet will work for a young family’s long weekend. 

Remarkably (within the context of Lexus), it’s the driving that punched this clock, despite no pretense of this being a direct competitor of BMW or Audi. The NX450h powertrain combines a 2.5 liter four with three electric motors and a 18.1 kWh battery pack for a combined output of 302 horsepower, a 62 hp bump over the NX350h output. According to Car and Driver, that surplus drops a full two seconds from your rush to 60 – 5.6 for the 450h, 7.6 for the 350h – while the plug-in aspect provides you about 35 miles of all-electric range when fully charged. 

My take, having picked the Lexus up at D/FW and hightailed it the roughly 90 minutes to Granbury, is that the 450h goes about its business almost serenely, even when encountering the inevitable cowboy in his F-350. And while vacillating between 70 and 85 the dash continued to suggest 30+ miles per gallon! 

If there exists a hitch in this git-along, it’s the price bump you incur when wanting to have that 35 miles of all-electric driving, in combination with a 0-60 time of under 6 seconds. You’ll pay almost $10K for that privilege, and even at $4/gallon, you can buy a lot of gas – or hell, an upscale e-Bike! – for that difference. The folks at Car and Driver regard that bump as excessive, and I’m inclined to agree. With that, I sure enjoyed picking up the Lexus NX450h at D/FW – and regretted leaving it at Love…it was almost Love/Hate.