The Lexus RZ stopped at 157 miles in a winter test , what the El Prix losses mean for a UK commute

Lexus RZ's winter test shows 157-mile range, 94 miles short of official 251-mile claim in cold UK conditions.

Lexus puts 251 miles on the window sticker. In a February 2026 freeze, the RZ rolled to a silent halt at 157. That gap , chalked up over a single cold British day , is the number every salary-sacrifice commuter eyeing a Lexus RZ actually needs to understand, and it’s the one the brochure will never print in bold.

The figure comes from The Electric Car Scheme’s February 2026 winter test, which ran the RZ until it physically stopped. The dashboard called game over , 0% indicated range , at 136 miles. The car itself kept coasting on whatever was left in the cells and finally gave up at 157 miles, returning 2.5 miles per kWh in the cold. On a 64kWh battery, that maths checks out almost exactly: 64 multiplied by 2.5 lands you on 160. The car was honest about its efficiency. The official number simply wasn’t built for a British winter.

The dashboard lied before the battery did (winter test)

What unsettles me most here isn’t the 157-mile total , it’s the 21 miles of phantom range after the gauge already read zero. A driver watching that display drop to 0% at 136 miles isn’t thinking “I’ve got 20 more in reserve.” They’re white-knuckling it to the nearest rapid charger, or worse, they’ve already pulled over. The usable, plan-your-day figure is the one the dash shows you, and in this test that was 136 miles before the panic set in.

For a commuter, that distinction is everything. Range you can’t see on the readout is range you won’t dare use. So the honest working number for a winter RZ isn’t 251, and arguably isn’t even 157 , it’s closer to 136 miles of confident, eyes-off-the-percentage driving.

This isn’t a rogue result

If this were a one-off, I’d shrug it off as a flat battery on a bad day. It isn’t. What Car?’s January 2025 winter test put the UK-spec RZ on 20-inch wheels at 159 miles against an official WLTP figure of 251 , a 37% shortfall. The 2026 El Prix extreme-cold test landed on 157. Three separate cold-weather runs, three results clustered within a couple of miles of each other.

Three independent winter tests, three answers all sitting around 157 to 159 miles against a 251-mile official claim. When the real world agrees with itself this precisely, it’s not the real world that’s wrong.

That consistency is the point. A ~37% winter shortfall on the RZ is not bad luck , it’s a property of the car. The WLTP procedure simply doesn’t capture a heat pump fighting a frozen cabin, cold-soaked cells refusing to give up their charge, and lights and wipers running the whole way home.

What 157 miles does to a real UK commute

Run the numbers against an ordinary working week. A 40-mile round-trip commute , say, a market town to a city-centre office and back , burns through a winter RZ’s usable charge in roughly three days, not the five the WLTP figure quietly implies. That turns “charge at home over the weekend” into “find a charger mid-week,” which for a flat-dweller or anyone without a driveway is precisely the friction that sours EV ownership.

Stretch the commute to 60 miles each way and the picture gets sharper still: you’re charging more or less daily through January, and if you lean on public rapid chargers, the cold also slows the charging speed itself. The RZ doesn’t carry a vast battery to fall back on, so there’s no fat in the system to absorb a bad week of weather.

None of this dents the case for taking an RZ through a salary-sacrifice scheme on tax grounds , as of the 2025/26 tax year the benefit-in-kind treatment on electric company cars remains the headline reason these cars fly off the order books, and a winter range dip doesn’t change a penny of that saving. (Your own saving depends on your tax band and scheme terms, and this isn’t tax or finance advice.) But tax efficiency and daily usability are two different ledgers. The RZ wins comfortably on the first and stumbles on the second, and it’s the second one you live with every frozen Monday morning.

Does the 2026 update rescue it?

There’s a genuine improvement coming, and it’s worth being straight about it. MotorTrend reported in May 2025 that the 2026 RZ 350e front-wheel-drive model carries an EPA range of 301 miles on 18-inch wheels, while the dual-motor 450e is rated at 257 to 264 miles, up from 220 in the 2025 car. That’s a meaningful step , more battery, better efficiency, smaller wheels all helping the cause.

The catch for British buyers is twofold. First, those are EPA figures from the US market, and the EPA cycle is already tougher than WLTP , so they’re not directly comparable to the 251-mile WLTP number the UK car was sold on. Second, no UK-specific winter data exists yet for the updated cars. A higher headline range should, logically, drag the cold-weather floor up with it. But on the evidence so far, I’d want to see a British winter test before I assumed the 2026 update turns a 157-mile cold-weather car into a 220-mile one.

So would I sign for one?

Here’s where I land. If your driving is a sub-30-mile daily round trip with a home charger on the wall, the RZ’s winter range is a non-issue , you’ll never go near the limit, you’ll bank the salary-sacrifice tax break, and the car’s refinement is genuinely lovely. Sign away.

But if you’re a longer-distance commuter without reliable home charging , the 50-mile-each-way crowd, or anyone leaning on public rapids through the winter , I’d pause hard on the current RZ specifically, and I’d hold out for verified UK numbers on the 2026 350e before committing three years of monthly payments to it. The tax saving is real; so is the prospect of hunting for a charger in the dark every other evening. The thing that would change my mind isn’t a glossier brochure figure , it’s an independent British winter test of the new car landing somewhere north of 200 miles. Until that exists, treat 157 as the truth and plan your week around it.