Today in South Africa, the Japanese giant owns this landscape. The lion’s share of its passenger applications have a hybrid offering – and the same can be said of its more urbane sister brand’s offering, the Lexus UX 250h.
Naturally, when the UX compact crossover (the most minute in the Lexus stable) first saw the light in 2019, it featured an electrically assisted petrol powertrain option. Four years, however; in the current era of tech-transitioning mobility is worth a lifetime in evolutionary terms: whereas there’s been a degree of head-scratching from OEMs in deciding what form the next-gen fuel source will take, the digitisation of active safety and in-car entertainment has roared on relentlessly.
By example, as a mid-life upgrade the UX 250h was recently updated to include a large 12-inch infotainment screen, cloud-based navigation with real-time traffic updates and Apple Carplay/Android Auto, albeit of which strangely only the former can be interacted with wirelessly; thereby necessitating the inclusion of a pair of USB-C charging points below the dashboard.
The introduction of a touchscreen tablet presents a welcome breakaway from Lexus’s infinitely unwieldy and clickable trackpad operating an on-screen cursor (try that while navigating washboard surfaces), equipped in the previous-gen UX; and others. Killing the makeshift mouse has cleaned up the transmission tunnel to make space for seat ventilation (heated and chilled) controls and the EV-only mode button. The drive and traction mode selectors, still inelegantly reside as turndials on either sides of the top of the instrument binnacle like a pair of bullhorns.
The UX lineup has further grown by an additional entry in the form of a bi-tonally hued flagship F-Sport derivative (R958 100). This comes fitted with a full active safety suite essentially consisting of a pre-crash system, lane keep assist and adaptive cruise control – and bookends the range that starts at R808 600 for the entry-level 250h EX. Adaptive suspension is also now fitted as standard on both F-Sport models.
As the engine and drivetrain is unchanged, so too has drone from the engine at high revs, marred by slack from the CVT (which behaves acceptably when free from duress). On the other hand the understeer-prone UX is lower than a rival such as the Volvo XC40; and therefore rolls less, yet still dynamically significantly behind a BMW X1/X2 and its only other hybrid adversary, the Alfa Romeo Tonale, when the curves come calling.
On the showroom floor, though, the UX’s biggest competition isn’t from the opposing dealership down the road, but within the family itself. A top-spec Toyota RAV4 VX is bigger, has the same safety gear and can also be had with more powerful hybrid propulsion as well as AWD; all for less than the cheapest Lexus UX.
The power of incumbency is a mighty sword. It clearly can also cut two ways. The baby Lexus gets tech treats aplenty; untouched hybrid and CVT re-affirms it’s more suited to Silicon Valley than Silverstone.