The Lexus RZ is the brand’s first dedicated battery-electric vehicle—a swept-back crossover with some visual inspiration from the former Lexus CT hatchback. It’s a huge deal for Lexus to have a nice-looking competitor in the space, but one of the RZ’s key features got lost in the initial assault of press materials: The RZ will have fake shifts and a simulated drivetrain noise, following industry-bucking trends set by Hyundai and, of all automakers, Ferrari.
Lexus calls its simulated system “Interactive Manual Drive,” which is aimed at “allowing for a deeper and more engaging dialogue with the car.” Uh… sure.
Photo by: Lexus
The IMD system allows RZ drivers to “shift” virtual gears using the paddles behind the car’s steering wheel, similar to the system found in the excellent Ioniq 5N. Even though you know the shifts and drivetrain noises are faked, if both are done convincingly enough, the cumulative effect is that it makes you feel much more in control of and involved in the driving experience. And don’t knock those fake gears until you’ve tried them; they blew my mind last year at Laguna Seca.
Per Lexus’s video, its system is activated by pressing an “M Mode” button on the center console—we presume that “M” means “Manual”—sending shift operation to the aforementioned paddles and prodding the speakers to life, filling the cabin with simulated powertrain noise in the vague stylings of a porpoise in mourning and/or a person blowing through a straw.
Here’s the system in action:
The RZ’s behavior in IMD mode responds in kind to its driver’s inputs, accounting for the position of the accelerator pedal in addition to input from the car’s “virtual power source” and “virtual transmission” to deliver power to the wheels.
Then the ECU decides how much power it thinks you want and how you want that power delivered and… sends that amount of power to the wheels.
A Shift Guide Meter on the dash display acts as a tachometer would, showing the driver shift points along the simulated power band. The RZ imitates an eight-speed transmission by cutting power momentarily to simulate a shift before running back up the virtual tachometer/power meter. There’s an automatic mode that’ll still simulate shifts for you, in addition to the steering-wheel paddles, which can shift the virtual transmission’s “gears.”
Photo by: Lexus
Lexus’s so-called Interactive Manual Drive Sound is “the exclusive sound” paired with this Lexus IMD system. In the video demo it sounds an awful lot like someone hand whistling, mixed in with some vaguely mechanical noises. But also not dissimilar to a wailing sea creature.
That’s in stark contrast with Hyundai’s system that’s baked into the IONIQ 5N, wherein you can change the simulated powertrain noises to sound like a Tron bike or a literal fighter jet.
That said, we’re happy more companies are trying to bring some analog elements back to the EV driving experience, even if they’re simulated. While Lexus’s seems underwhelming (we’ll reserve final judgement for an actual drive of the RZ), it’s better to have something to inform our central nervous system about the speed and attitude of the drivetrain, even if it’s simulated.
Hyundai already proved the concept, and emphatically so. Our only advice for Lexus, to drag the RZ up to par: Give us an LFA DLC that makes the RZ crossover sound like V-10 fury and shift with the violent immediacy of an automated manual with straight-cut gears.
That’s a simulated powertrain we can get behind.
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