Lexus RZ 2026 UK: the steer-by-wire electric SUV, and whether it’s worth £67,795

Lexus has built the first car you can buy in Britain that has no mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the front axle. Turn the yoke in the new RZ and you are sending an instruction down a wire, not tugging a column. According to Auto Express, that steer-by-wire system arrives as part of a wholesale technical overhaul for 2026, with UK deliveries beginning early this year and order books having opened late in 2025. It is the kind of headline feature that makes a press release sing and a buyer hesitate, and the hesitation is the more interesting half.

Let me be plain about what is new here, because “steer-by-wire” gets thrown around loosely. The RZ deletes the steering column’s physical link entirely. In its place sits a yoke-style wheel with a 200-degree lock-to-lock range, which means you never cross your hands: a quarter-turn each way covers everything from a motorway lane change to a multi-storey hairpin. Autocar notes the system is pitched at sharper response and a clearer view of the instruments, the column no longer being in the way. On paper it is genuinely radical. The question is whether radical is what an SUV buyer in this bracket actually wants.

The numbers that matter, trim by trim (steer-by-wire)

This is where the RZ range earns a serious look. The flagship 550e F Sport produces 402bhp, dispatches 0-62mph in 4.4 seconds and claims a 280-mile WLTP range from its 77kWh battery. That is brisk for a two-tonne family Lexus, though the range figure is the giveaway: performance and efficiency pull against each other, and 280 miles is the price of the power.

Step down and the maths flips in your favour. The 500e AWD offers 376bhp and a 311-mile WLTP range on 18-inch wheels, while the front-wheel-drive 350e drops to 221bhp but stretches to a quoted 353 miles. If you want the longest legs between charges, the entry powertrain is the one that delivers them: a useful reminder that in EVs, more money frequently buys you less range, not more.

Charging is competitive without being class-leading: 150kW DC rapid charging takes the battery from 10 to 80 per cent in around 30 minutes, and there is a genuinely useful 22kW AC onboard charger for those with three-phase or fast destination charging. That AC figure is the quiet hero. Most rivals cap at 11kW, and if you charge at a workplace or a well-specified home unit, the RZ will drink twice as fast off the kerbside.

What steer-by-wire actually costs you

Here is the catch, and it is a big one. Steer-by-wire is not available across the range. It is standard only on the F Sport and F Sport Takumi grades, the two most expensive of the five UK trims, which run Premium, Premium Plus, Takumi, F Sport and F Sport Takumi. If you want the defining feature of the 2026 RZ, you are buying it at the top of the ladder.

And the ladder is not cheap. Auto Express lists the F Sport (550e AWD) from £67,795, with the F Sport Takumi at £69,995 in standard paint. Add the bi-tone finish and you are looking at roughly £1,100 more: £71,095 for an F Sport Takumi Bi-tone. So the cheapest route into a steer-by-wire RZ is comfortably the wrong side of £67,000, and the fully dressed version brushes £71,000 before you have ticked a single dealer extra.

Steer-by-wire is the RZ’s signature, yet Lexus has bolted it exclusively to the two priciest trims, which makes the most interesting car in the range also the hardest one to justify on the numbers.

There is one more flourish reserved for the very top: Interactive Manual Drive, Lexus’s virtual gear-shifting system, is fitted only to the 550e F Sport. It simulates the steps and shove of a combustion gearbox, paddle changes and all. I find it a fascinating piece of theatre, an answer to the criticism that EVs feel inert, but I would want a long drive to decide whether it is a genuine engagement tool or a party trick that wears thin by the second tank-equivalent.

Where the RZ sits against itself

The honest tension in this car is internal, not external. The trims that make the strongest rational case, the 350e for range and the 500e for the balance of pace and miles, are the ones without the technology that defines the 2026 update. The trim with the technology is the thirstiest and the dearest. Lexus has, in effect, asked you to choose between the sensible RZ and the interesting RZ, and priced the interesting one as a £67,000-plus proposition.

That is not automatically a bad thing. Cabin quality, refinement and Lexus’s ownership experience have long been the brand’s trump cards, and a 22kW charger plus a 311-mile mid-range option make the everyday case stack up better than the flagship’s 280 miles would suggest. For a buyer who charges at home or at work and rarely strings together 250-mile days, the RZ is a quietly convincing premium EV regardless of which steering system sits behind the badge.

The bit that would make me sign, or walk

If you are shopping the RZ purely as a luxury family EV, I would steer you to the 500e: 376bhp, 311 miles and the better-judged blend of range and pace, without paying the F Sport premium for a feature you may not love. If, on the other hand, you are the kind of driver who buys a car for how it talks to your hands, then the steer-by-wire F Sport is the only RZ worth your money, and you should treat the showroom test drive as non-negotiable, because a 200-degree yoke is the sort of thing you either click with in five minutes or never do.

What would change my mind on the flagship is simple: time behind that yoke. The spec sheet sells the idea brilliantly, but steering is the most personal control in any car, and removing the mechanical link is a leap of faith Lexus is asking you to take at a premium. Until that yoke has proved itself back to back with a conventional RZ, I would not spend the extra to leap from a 500e to a steer-by-wire F Sport. The technology is the headline. Whether it is worth the money is a question only your own wrists can settle, and at £67,795 to find out, I would make absolutely sure before signing.