Toyota bZ4X 1000 km challenge with new software part 2 

Where else in the world or even history of motoring journalism could you get in depth info like this, no matter if its an EV or ICE car tested? Dare I say, perhaps nowhere? Kudos Björn, as far as I know, you are number 1 with these kinds of things. Cheers.

OBD monitoring is the must accessory for this car. 😂

Wow, I am so happy with my Model Y, no need to think about the battery temperature, it's just charging fast while using much less kWh/km

With the new software you can limit the DC charging speed. The steps are: max, 125kW, 100kW, 75kW and 50kW (if i recall this correctly). I wonder, if the 1000km would be faster, if you limited the speed to 100kW. According to the Toyota website, the time needed to charge from 10% to 70% or 80% are quite similar with 150kW and 100kW. You should redo the challenge, maybe with the Subaru ;)

I hope your email to Toyota consists of a total overhaul and re think on their BEV strategy

Toyota, what a disappointment! Bjorn, stop making excuses; this EV is a POC for the price. They'll be 5K on the used market in just a few years. Toyota should learn some hard lessons from this debacle.

Way too complicated and Toyota design of this battery/charging system will not bode well for car sells. Noone wants a car that has this much complication.

Too bad a new software can’t fix the ugliness of this Toyota! 😅

For the average driver, barring the overheating thing, the throttling probably won't be much of an issue. But the mathematical gymnastics you have to perform to get the best out of the car on really long trips is... Most people aren't really up for that stuff.

How bad will the rapid gate be in summer, even on V2 super chargers?

Seems to me there is a fundamental flaw in the battery design with the physical pack construction or thermal management of the pack. That high delta between lowest and highest pack temperature..... Their throttling is seemingly there to mitigate those issues as a quick and dirty software fix for a faulty design. Born, you should ask Toyota some leading questions around that topic! Love your work!

Personally I think it’s still pretty useless that the car is limited to a random amount of “cycles”, which are also quite random. “Rapidgate” should also be a thing of the past in 2023. A good EV should of none of the above limitations nowadays.

A car shouldn't be that tricky and complicated to understand. I mean, Bjorn you're a power user, having a lot of experience and knowledge around EV cars. How about a random user? the experience should be easy and seamless, not a question of "cracking the code" For sure, the update brought some goods, but from a major car manufacturer, it's still clearly embarrassing. What is the goal here? Get people annoyed by EVs and switch them to hydrogen because they have spent a lot of money on this technology? I don't get the point here That and the issue (mostly a technical flaw) with the 12v battery draining when the car is parked (see the video from the @OutofSpecReviews around this), I mean, what the heck Toyota ???

Me and my family was sceptical before the update about if we’ve made the right decision about buying the BZ4X, before update we tripped only about 600 km during one day and it was pretty good, now after the update we went on a long trip and we’ve managed to drive 3200km in 4 days. The longest stretch were 1200km in one day and 4 stops were only made. We are using most of the time the “autopilot” at 140 kph and somehow in summer conditions the consumption is only 19.5 kWh/100km. I just wanted to say that the BZ4X is now pretty good car.

Bjorn just admit it Toyota just dont get EVs and charging back to the drawing board 😆😁😁

Once again a massive effort on your part Bjorn and good information for Toyota to use for their next update. A 2hr improvement is huge and most Toyota drives will not encounter some of these issues.

I don't agree you should redo the test to be honest you should be driving like a normal person without calculator at hand. So you just drive when you feel you need to stop your charge until charging speed drops alot. You are in favor of Toyota doing all those calculations.

Love all the comments on this video, like you're all driving 1000km every single day. A post full of tampon salesmen.

Bjorn you are hacking the car with OBD2 scanner the normal user doesn't use. I think you should drive car as a normal user. If the company is not exposing info about the battery temperature or the "penalty points", you should not have used that info. You should also use only the car's infotainment for finding chargers. This is the only way to expose how usable those cars really are. As a power user and using your own route calculations, you are showing cars in the unrealistic light of usability.

Very impressive! So you only have to be a battery expert and have a Toyota charging degree to be able to do road trips in a Toyota bZ4X ... easy peasy ...🤣

A real-world demonstration of the difference between "peak" charging and "the curve". EV makers advertise the peak, but hope we ignore the curve.

🤣 6years old classic Ioniq with 28kWh battery is smiling for those improvements 😜

Would be awesome for both Toyota and their BZ4X costumers if they made a software that limited the battery guarantee to maybe only 5y / 500.000 km, and charging/battery usage is less throttled, and when you choose this software you have to sign for the limited guarantee 🙂👍

As a Toyota fan Im kinda sad seeing how they are doing with EVs. This brand has a special place in many people' hearts and I certainly am afraid for its future.

This car... Almost make you wonder if Toyota has an ulterior motive here.

I love the fact that Bjorn always discloses his finding in such great detail so people could make up their own mind depending what they’re looking for. I also feel manufacturers should be required to disclose more detailed charging performance/limitations other than mere 20-80% time and WLTP range, instead of us needing Bjorn to find out.

As a Toyota driver I would be perfectly happy with this result. I would be a little worried though about the large temperature delta causing uneven battery degradation. Not a deal breaker though

what a dedication ! a big thank you for re-doing the test. Toyota seems to understand you are a fair person

Why on earth are they still limiting charging?!? Nobody is going to use the car this way all the time! Leave it unlocked Toyota! If they do one time in three years, so be it. Sigh!!!

Very good video. Very poor performance from Toyota…….. Would never buy that car.

should do it again, by driving it as if it was a Tesla or other EVs, and no OBD scanner. And see if the time would be the same!

2:55 Funny, my 2013 Chevy Volt with 305K miles and a 16.5KWh battery (when new) can do up to 60KW regen at highway speeds

Ohhhh 💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩😅😂

If I want punishment points, I can see a Dominatrix for a lot less!

40KW charging isn't that bad of a throttle, better than L2 but still bizarre algorithm. EDIT: US CATL chemistried BZ4X is way worse

I remember saying that toyota was doomed, because they clearly were very reluctant to go BEV, and lost resources on H2, and were 10 year late to the other manufacturer. Got an angry reply, telling me, that toyota is investing a lot in BEV, had a lot of project, and would bank on the experience that the other got during the 10 pas year. And here we are, with rapid and cold gating + charging limitations.. In 2023... Problems solved 10 years ago... Good work guys.

This car is so many years behind.... is Toyota using Internet Explorer to design it?

My brain hurts from calculating when i need to charge, how much to charted and how often. Why would anyone do this to themselves? And pay money in the process?

I don't understand why Toyota throttles the charging. Is there a technical reason or do they just not like selling cars ?

Ride on the 45 kW wave. I heard that before, in 2015 when you tested Nissan Leaf's 😂

Incredible amounts of mental gymnastics to help the car do the best time. I understand that Toyota is working to protect the battery, but they design of the battery and the software should be doing all this work. Normal drivers will just get frustrated with all this.

Two hours less...it does means that if toyota re-do the software could make a different "car" with the simplest software possible

I suspect that the people that this car appeals to will not be worried about the complex restrictions on charging 3.8/ 266% or whatever as they will either charge at home or once a week as they just don’t do the distances in a 24 hour period that would break the rules. There’s are way better options for those whose daily driving patterns exceed the “formula”. I would sooner have this than a Fiat 500, Mini Cooper S E (which I have ) or a Honda E where road trips are really out of the question. This car would actually work for me as my Mini is basically an electric supermarket trolley doing a 32 mile round trip 2-3 times a week and charging either at home or on 50kW public chargers

I'm thinking about rapid gate and charge limit. What if the car would limit the charging based on the charge limit? Let's say you have it set to charge to 100%, it will charge slower to not rapid-gate. If you limit the charge to 40% or something low it will charge with higher speed.

Poor Bjørn. And I feel with people who are uninformed and buy/bought this atrocity. And for all the people who will be queueing behind ‚fast‘ charging Toyodas

Can you show on the info screen how to identify that the car has the software update?

Dear Bjorn... I have an bz4x and I trying that ABRP start to work before 30 days end.. first obd readers was nexas 5.0 Bluetooth and didn't work, today arrived new one obdlinkCX and still ABRP don't connect to the car... It's works with Toyota or not? Asking because you may know? You are wiser

Bjorn, surely it can't be energy efficient to drive at highway speeds with Regen Boost on. The benefit is optimised in city driving or slow traffic. Well, that's what Toyota advised me. My experience, if I am doing, say 100km/hr and I switch boost OFF, it's like putting it in a sport mode and it accelerates off.

Toyota was in the lead with Prius for decades, but didn't develop the tech. Now they are behind in full BEV tech. I hope this car is forcing them to learn quick lessons before 2025. After that, no time for learning lessons, those behind will be eaten alive by China EVs

Hello Bjorn from Quebec, Canada smile😊 You mention that Toyota throttles the charge speed when the battery maximum reaches 48 and also when the battery goes below 20something… do you have a precise number for the cold-gating ? That’s what matters most in Quebec City LOL😂 for example the average daily temperature for June 2023 was 16*C (day and nites) so far this August is at 17*C…

Toyota: Put the battery cooling pump into turbo. Maybe that will flatten out the suboptimal cooling system, which seems to be the root problem.

So 5 minutes faster than my 5 year old Ioniq 28 kWh.. What a crap car, I assumed some improvement had taken place in 5 years

Yesterday i saw the first Subaru Soltera. Many people first get into electromobility and then they have such a car that massively ruins the driving or charging experience. I've also read in some forums that the heat output is not really sufficient. If you look at your videos, that's pretty weak. As far as I know, the batteries are on a cooling plate on the bz2X, how is good cooling supposed to be achieved there. If an electric car still has cold or hot gates today, it is no longer up to date. What about in summer at 30°. Do you charge with 20kW then? 200km with almost 90% battery wow that's extreme! I like watching your videos, you get great tips and can see the latest vehicles at the limit.

Honestly this is embarrassing for a company, that's been building ev-hybrid cars for over 3 decades now. How did they get left behind in battery charging?

It's a ridiculous limitation. Someone who does 2 x 1000km trips per year with 6 full cycles at 140kW charges, is a lot less load over a year on a battery that is charged a 140kW once every day. Let people use the car how they need to FFS.

09:00 what a fail, really, what an epic fail. I don't know how the hell they can put on the market such a crappy car...

How is Toyota so bad at EVs? They should be light years ahead but rested on their laurels and were terribly run for far too many years

redeeming feature of the bz4x/solterra - Offroad capabilities are better then the rest. Up there with the Rivian according to Out of spec reviews.

That Toyota and the way it charges is Shhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!! I got that charge speed or better on my i3 5 years ago with half size battery!!!!

Just when we all thought 1000 km challenges were becoming boring and unnecessary because all new EVs can handle it without issues. Then Toyota shows up and fails big time.... so disappointing! Only 700 km before battery throttle is just not enough, normal day trip to Italy/Spain/France is at least 1000 km for most families.

Not sure what the difference is between throttling, rapid gate and cold gate.. can you explain?

Well. I think at least they will have a battery that last.

If road-tripping becomes a rocket science, Toyota is doomed.

Toyota did not hit a home run ⚾️ with this car. Maybe only a double

12 hours for 1000km would be acceptable, not great but acceptable, if it could be done like people do it: Start with 100%, drive as far as they feel comfortable, say down to 20%, plug in charge to 80%, and repeat until done. They should also be able to do it while driving 130km/h and stay out of peoples way where possible without cooking the battery or having some other unpleasant experience. That is not possible with this car, not even close. As it is now, this car is a failure, IMO.

I don't think you need to redo the test. It just shows Toyota is silly. Everyone can't be like you. People should just dump their cars..

Oh, toyota... you have a looooong way to go... to catch up to EVs from a decade ago.

Thank you for making this video

Thank you Bjørn! Thank you for doing a retest. I wish people could see your final words from ~17-18 min before they commented. I agree with you. Not many Toyota drivers would suffer the restrictions on charging. I happens to own a bZ and have driven it in Norway and Sweden for the last 6 months. It’s a great car for an average family who drives up to 5-800 km a day, then it will be okay with a break anyways. Not that many people hammer it 1000 km. If needed in this Toyota, drive as far as you can, take a overnight stay, and enjoy it as a trip. Too many are in a hurry to reach their end destination, but som like the trip to see more places along the way.

I don’t get it? I’m looking for my 1st EV and it is not inspiring me. Not that I will be driving 1000km

Does the twin subaru solterra use the same software and charging limiter?

Toyota is new Nokia no doubt

...simply the best....thxalot

Where is that software from?

I never thought “the future of personal transportation” would be so awkward.

Meh so not 3.8 cycles but just 3.8 "typical charging sessions" and the charging speed goes into the toilet. Amazing...li bad.

Yu should have driven like .......... a Toyota driver It's logigal, the car is designed to be driven like a Toyota. Drive slower to arrive faster....

In my opinion this is a poorly designed car. They must redesign the battery cooling so that huge temp gap doesn't happen. And that freaking punishment thing is a joke!

Do you suggest this car?right now i have a rav4 hybrid looking for a plug in hybrid or ev. The rav4 plugin hybrid is much more expensiv than bz4x here in denmark. Also tesla y long range is a good option but also more expensive than this one. Which car do you suggest in this range (specialy size)

The "punishment points" look similar to a "Leaky bucket" rate limiting algorithm. However, I still kind of don't get the purpose of the whole thing. I mean, there is some indication that a lot of DC fast charging might degrade the battery slightly more than slow charging. But is there actually some indication that doing a bunch of DC fast charges during one day is in any way worse than long-term one DC fast charge session every day? Does a battery get „tired“ when repeatedly charged-discharged during a short period of time and becomes more sensitive to fast charging (and charging it semi-slow somehow helps)? The battery has time to cool down in between and if that was for temperature only, they should be throttling based on the temperature (which apparently they do as well). If they expect some lithium not to integrate well enough during the charge and form something on the surface of whatever electrode it is, this should be used up by discharging the car during a drive. And considering the penalty-throttle should not kick in during "normal" use, I have to wonder why they even went to all the effort to do that. For most cars this would happen like 5 times during their whole lifetimes, so unlikely to improve degradation by anything measurable and if there are few cars that would be used otherwise for really long distance travel (unlikely even if this penalty didn't exist for this particular car), it might even be cheaper to just replace their batteries in the warranty than all the effort to implement, test, etc the system + the PR pushback for it even existing. Furthermore, I wonder if ABRP or other such things will be able to deal with this weird behavior.

Toyota? My world is !>200 km in radius! Take that TB! Better: Toyota? I‘ll take season two part 4 or five! Give it to me!

Björn, you know the charging algorithm, but most of the buyers won't. I would also not want to do some complex math before my road trip to avoid adding extra charging time. I also think your 1000km challenge is realistic. I have done a trip with my ICE for 750km on a single tank and I am.looking for an EV to match that. Yeah, I could throw in a charge in the middle, but with the reliability of the chargers here in California, this would become a hassle.

Has anyone done a 1000km challenge with the FWD version?

Manual adjusting amperage on HPCs for the win! But that feature will never be implemented 😢

Bjorn, you are way too soft for Toyota. They are the largest car manufacturer with a lot of excellent Japanese engineers, and they had all opportunities to learn from Tesla, Hyundai……. And all the others. And then they com with this shit of punish points. Do they really need youtubers (with all duly respect) to show them their issues. It looks like Toyota will be the Nokia or Kodak of this period.

Is there anything good about this „car“? I guess for Toyota it is sufficient that the wheels do not fall off as a reason to bring this thing to the market.

So at alll you think it doesn’t worth a money ?? Or this car at all disappoint you ???

Try the 2wd version as some in the us have mentioned the battery they use is different supplier to the ones in the awd version

they still want to keep the prius on life support shove an hybrid gas car lol

Spreadsheet not updated yet?

❤❤❤

This car needs at least 90kWh nett battery capacity

Great review. Very much informative. Good work again 👍

It is a bit bad that in 2023, the Toyota EV is slower than a 2013 Performance Tesla (not even the long range one) in 1000 Km challenge.

Are you going to get the updated steering wheel

What a heck Toyota! Y'all seriously can't figure out how to properly manage the battery temperature. This so disappointing.

Hvad hedder den obd så man kan bruge mobilen

how do you update to a new software?

JUST LEASED CANADIAN BZ4X 2023, I ONLY GET 52KW ON 100KW CHARGER. IS THIS NOT FALSE ADVERTISING ? I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED SO FAR. I'M THINKING SERIOUSLY ABOUT RETURNING THIS VEHICLE.

@14:25 if it underreports by 1.2%, shouldn't you be heading to 1012km trip to get an accurate 1000km?