Lexus UX 2023 review: 300e

The Lexus UX 300e sits at the top of the Lexus UX range, with a few hybrid variants below it.

The 300e electric SUV has two different versions available – the Luxury, which I drove, at a list price of $74,000 (MSRP), or the Sports Luxury top-spec model, at $80,691 (MSRP).

If you’re looking at those prices and thinking, ‘isn’t it a bit small to cost that much?’, you could well be right. A Hyundai Kona electric, which is smaller but has more EV range, costs considerably less (starting at $54,500 plus on-roads). And then there are new cut-price compact SUV rivals like the BYD Atto 3 (from $44,381 plus on-roads) and the MG ZS EV (from $44,990 drive-away).

I know what you’re thinking – those aren’t luxury small electric SUVs! So, rivals that are similar in size and price? The Mercedes EQA has a bigger range, but a pretty competitive price point (from $78,513 MSRP). The BMW iX1 will be coming soon, too, likely below $80,000.

Of course you get a fair bit of good stuff for your money in the Lexus UX 300e Luxury, including proximity keyless entry and push-button start, lovely leather seat trim, heated and ventilated front seats, a heated steering wheel, a 10.3-inch multimedia screen with sat nav and Apple CarPlay/Android Auto smartphone mirroring, LED lighting, 17-inch alloy wheels and more.

Buyers also get a free home charger installed, and three years’ of free public charging on the affiliated ChargeFox network.

There are 10 colours available for the Lexus UX 300e, including the no-cost Onyx black metallic seen on this car. There’s only one other free paint choice, Caliente red metallic. The other eight options cost you $1750 extra, and they are: Graphite Black, Celestial Blue, Mercury grey, Carnelian orange, Titanium silver, Khaki green, Sonic Chrome grey and Sonic Quartz white.

My partner Gemma asked me “why does it have a grille like the NX if it’s electric?”. That’s because we’d just had a hybrid NX long-term loan car, and she wasn’t a massive fan of the grille on it. And the question is valid… EVs offer designers the chance to really change up their designs, but maybe something with a big plastic mask wouldn’t have suited this little EV.

Still, I reckon it could be more assertively electric in its look, because unless you noticed that it has ‘electric’ badging on it, or that it has two filler caps on the rear quarter panels, you mightn’t realise this is an electric car (unless you heard it almost silently whizz by you in traffic).

Now, that two charge points thing is important. The standard ‘type 2’ charger can be plugged in only on the driver’s side rear of the car, while the passenger-side rear section is a CHAdeMO fast-charger. More on that below, but it does affect how you park it!

Now I keep calling it small, but it isn’t tiny. It measures 4495mm long (sitting on a 2640mm wheelbase), 1840mm wide and 1545mm tall. Or just a bit smaller than a Mazda CX-5. But it doesn’t feel anywhere near that big on the inside.

Further, the cabin design is a little outdated by modern Lexus standards. And interestingly, Gemma reckons the little controller to jump between menus on the screen (it’s not a touchscreen!) was “easy to get used to”. I guess we’re very different, because I didn’t like it.

I thought the Lexus UX would be too small for our family, but if I excluded my two dogs from that definition, it was actually fine.

Our (non-dog) family – me, Gemma, and our then 14-month-old daughter – could fit in just fine. I put in a forward-facing baby seat and it was no issue for me to sit in front of it, even at 182cm tall.

And we fit in her folding pram, with enough room for a week’s worth of shopping, too. The boot isn’t massive at 414 litres but it would certainly be big enough for a couple to head away for holidays in.

As mentioned above, the 10.3-inch screen isn’t a touch-capacitive unit, which meant that – for me at least – the usability of it wasn’t as good as the NX we’d had before it. But you can get the hang of that “remote touch interface” joystick thing, it just takes more thought than it should.

The other controls are all logically placed, and the interior practicality isn’t too bad up front. There are cup holders between the seats, a pair in the doors as well, and a few other small loose item storage spots.

In the back? Not so lucky. There are no door pockets at all, and just one map pocket. But there is a fold-down centre armrest with cup holders, directional air vents, and a couple of USB charge ports, too.

Those who don’t need a booster or capsule will appreciate the heated rear outboard seats, too. Though they wouldn’t want to be too large, as fitting four adults is tight (if they’re about my size).

The UX 300e has a single electric motor at the front axle through a single-speed transmission.

Outputs are 150kW/300Nm, which is plenty for a car of this size – enough to get it from 0-100km/h in just 7.5 seconds, according to Lexus.

The battery pack is a rather small 54.35kWh lithium-ion stack.

The official combined cycle efficiency number for this EV is 15.0kWh/100km, and if you achieved that, you’d be doing very well.

Over my three weeks with the car, I couldn’t get it below 19.0kWh/100km. It was cold those days, but the car was being driven in the conditions you’d expect it to do well in – peak hour city driving with more than a bit of stop-start for those regenerative brakes to do their thing.

Lexus claims the range for the UX 300e to be 360km – but that figure is taken from the notoriously lenient New European Driving Cycle (NEDC). Over several weeks of driving, the best I achieved was 280km from a full charge.

That was achieved over two round trips from home in the lower Blue Mountains to the Sydney CBD without a top-up between them, and just 5km of remaining range. And because I don’t have a wall box at home (which you get when you buy a UX 300e), I had to plug in to a 10-amp 240-volt charger, and was greeted with a “time to full – 68 hours” message.

So I gave it an hour on the juice at home, jumped in and went down to the local DC fast-charger with a CHAdeMO plug, where the battery refilled to 80 per cent at a rate of about 44kW in about 60 minutes. Then I took it back home and topped it off. (The maximum charge rate on DC is 50KW).

What I liked was, over the three weeks we had the car, I set it up to schedule charging every night from 10pm onwards. That would usually replenish the battery from about 140km of range remaining back to about 280km by 8am the next day.

With the free wallbox that charges at 32-amps, you could see your battery filled up from empty in 6.5 hours. So it’s a pretty reasonable option, if you can deal with the range.

I will say, though, that finding a CHAdeMO DC charger is harder than finding a type-2 combination fast-charger plug, so make sure you check whichever EV mapping app (like Plugshare) if you’re heading away from your usual stomping ground. The type 2 plug on the Lexus is only capable of ‘slow’ charging at a max of 6.6kW.

The UX 300e was a lovely commuting companion for the weeks we had it. And look, we did a bit of commuting.

The UX spent three days of each of the weeks we had it on the M4 motorway from the lower Blue Mountains to the Sydney CBD and back, and with the crashes and traffic snarls you’d expect at peak hour times, too.

And it was really, truly, a nice thing to spend that much time in. Gemma described it as serene and relaxing, because it was so quiet on the road. Not just the lack of engine or transmission noise (the electric motor is virtually silent), but also the fact the UX 300e has very little road noise and wind noise to contend with, too.

That also allowed the sound system – a 13-speaker Mark Levinson stereo – was allowed to take centre stage, and it truly performed brilliantly in the compact confines of the cabin.

The motor offers great grunt from a standstill, but I did find the front tyres could be easily overwhelmed by the torque trying to get to the tarmac. They would spin and scrabble at the surface – more notably in the wet – proof that a front-wheel drive layout for electric cars can be a little compromised.

The braking system can take a little acclimatisation, too, as the regenerative braking feel through the pedal and reactiveness when you drive it in the most aggressive setting for the regen setup isn’t like a ‘regular’ car. There is a “B” drive mode that allows you to then choose how assertive the regen is, with four modes selectable via the paddle-shifters. Level four is pretty much one-pedal driving, while level one is more mild.

Other nice points were the steering, which was light and accurate enough for parking moves, and solid feeling on the open road.

The suspension was also nicely sorted, though the run-flat tyres offered up a slightly hard edge to the ride over sharp edges.

When it came to parking, the large mirrors did tend to get in the way at times, and the camera system was okay, but certainly not brilliant.

The Lexus UX range carries a five-star ANCAP safety rating from 2019, and it applies to the petrol, hybrid and electric versions of the car.

The UX 300e has all the requisite safety features you’d expect, including auto emergency braking (AEB) with pedestrian and cyclist detection, auto high-beam lights, lane keeping assistance, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, and a parking brake system that should stop you bumping into objects at low speeds (front and rear).

There’s a reversing camera, parking sensors front and rear, and adaptive cruise control with road sign detection that can adjust the speed of the car for you, if needed.

There are eight airbags including dual front, dual front knee, front side and full-length curtain airbags.

Lexus offers a five-year/unlimited kilometre warranty for the car, but furthers that with a 10-year/160,000km plan for the battery provided it has a battery health check annually after year five of ownership.

Servicing is due every 12 months/15,000km at a cost of $295 per visit.

One of the big Lexus perks for this car is that you get three years’ access to the brand’s Encore Platinum ownership program, which allows you to swap to a different car for up to eight days at a time (you can do it four times over three years). So, EV range anxiety or pre-planning longer trips mightn’t be such a concern.