Toyota bZ4X Touring Review: The Wagon That’s Now Toyota’s Fastest Car in Australia

Toyota’s bZ4X Touring hits 100km/h in 4.4 seconds, quicker than anything else wearing a Toyota badge in Australia now that the GR Supra is gone. It backs that claim up with a 603-litre boot and a genuine tow rating, not just a straight line.

Toyota invited David out for an exclusive first drive of the bZ4X Touring, the new wagon-bodied version of its electric SUV ahead of wider availability through Australian showrooms. It turned out to be more than a practical family wagon. With the GR Supra discontinued, this is the quickest car currently sold under the Toyota badge in the country.

Pricing and warranty: Toyota locks in one spec at $69,990

Toyota Australia has priced the bZ4X Touring at $69,990 plus on-road costs, sold in a single all-wheel drive specification. Premium paint adds $575. That sits $2,000 above the existing bZ4X AWD and $14,000 above the entry-level 2WD, making Touring the new flagship of Toyota’s electric line-up.

The vehicle warranty runs five years with unlimited kilometres. The traction battery carries its own five-year cover, extendable to ten years provided the owner returns to a Toyota dealer for an annual battery health check. Keep that up and the battery warranty on this car runs longer than most rivals offer outright, though it asks more of the owner to get there than BYD’s straightforward eight-year cover on the Sealion 7.

Size and towing: the wagon body adds 140mm and real ground clearance

At 4.83m long, 1.86m wide and 1.68m tall on a 2.85m wheelbase, the Touring adds 140mm of length behind the rear axle compared with the regular bZ4X SUV body. That’s the difference between an SUV and a proper wagon.

The 20-inch alloys wear 235/50 R20 Dunlop tyres over a MacPherson strut front and double wishbone rear, giving 211mm of ground clearance, among the highest of any electric vehicle currently sold in Australia. Braked towing capacity is rated at 1500kg, unbraked at 750kg, and payload sits at 495kg.

Powertrain and range: the numbers back up the fastest Toyota claim

Two identical 167kW motors, one on each axle, combine for 280kW of system output and 268.6Nm of torque apiece. Toyota doesn’t publish a combined torque figure for the Touring, an omission it doesn’t make for the regular AWD which carries an official 438Nm combined rating.

That power comes from a 74.7kWh lithium-ion pack built by Prime Planet Energy & Solutions, Toyota’s joint venture with Panasonic. Toyota hasn’t confirmed the cell chemistry, but the 3.76V nominal cell voltage points to nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) rather than lithium iron phosphate which runs closer to 3.2V. Independent testing of the related bZ4X 2WD and Toyota’s own owner community back that read.

Toyota claims a 0-100km/h time of 4.4 seconds. With the GR Supra discontinued from new orders in August 2025 after a six-year run, and the remaining GR hot hatches slower on paper (GR Yaris at 5.1 seconds, GR Corolla at 5.2 seconds, the naturally aspirated GR86 further off still).

Range is rated at 488km WLTP, behind the standard bZ4X AWD’s 517km and well behind the 591km claimed by the base 2WD, a fair trade for the extra size, weight and power. DC fast charging tops out at 150kW (10-80% in around 30 minutes) and the 22kW three-phase AC charger fills the battery from 10-100% in about three and a half hours.

*Toyota does not publish a combined torque figure for the Touring.

Interior: Toyota resists the minimalist trend

Step inside and the cabin doesn’t chase the flat-screen, button-free look that’s become the segment default. There’s a wood-look garnish across the dash (plastic, not timber, but convincing enough to lift the perceived quality) and a busy, clearly labelled steering wheel loaded with physical switchgear. It won’t suit everyone, but it makes the cabin easy to operate without hunting through a touchscreen menu.

The driver’s display sits set back further than usual, doing double duty as a head-up display without technically being one. It doesn’t intrude on the sightline over the wheel. Climate is handled by physical dials with small screens embedded inside them alongside a 14-inch touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, two wireless phone chargers and a rotary gear selector ringed with drive-mode and parking controls.

There’s no glovebox. Front passenger storage is limited to a small cubby under the centre console with a USB-C port and a 12V socket and there’s a pull-out tray in the centre console for everything else.

Rear seat space is a genuine highlight. The front seats are shaped to free up knee room and I found it delivered some of the most generous rear legroom I’ve seen in an EV this size, even if the floor sits high enough to angle the knees up slightly. Heated outboard seats, two USB-C ports, ISOFIX anchors and top tethers across all three positions round out a genuinely family-friendly back seat.

Cargo space: the wagon body earns its keep

The 603-litre boot, measured to VDA standard, is the headline reason to choose Touring over the regular bZ4X SUV. A power tailgate, retractable cargo cover, underfloor storage for the charging cable, tyre repair kit and first-aid kit, and a manual seat-release lever inside the boot all add to the practicality case. A nine-speaker JBL system, including a subwoofer mounted in the cargo area handles audio.

The standout feature is a 220V/1500W vehicle-to-load inverter built into the back, letting owners run mains-powered tools or appliances straight off the battery. Few rivals at this price offer that as standard.

On the road: quick, direct, and quintessentially Toyota

Behind the wheel, throttle response is immediate and the brakes are strong. Paddle-adjustable regenerative braking offers four or five levels of intensity, and I preferred the lightest setting to coast rather than drag on lift-off. Steering is straight and settled across mountain roads, open highway and rougher back roads.

It’s been a while since I drove a Toyota daily. My first car at 18 was a Tarago, about as far from this as Toyota’s range gets, and the punch on offer here doesn’t feel like the same badge.

The one letdown is noise isolation. Road noise from coarse-chip surfaces comes through more than expected, a trait that’s more noticeable in an EV simply because there’s no engine to mask it.

What stands out most is the fit and finish. Against a wave of new-energy rivals leaning into premium-feeling trim at lower price points, the bZ4X Touring leans on something more familiar: solid, rattle-free build quality that doesn’t need soft-touch materials to prove itself. It’s the same instinct that’s made Toyota’s petrol and hybrid models durable long-term propositions, now applied to a car quick enough to embarrass most performance hatchbacks.

The rivals: BYD, Subaru and Tesla sit within a few thousand dollars

The closest comparison doesn’t need to leave the Toyota group. The bZ4X Touring shares its platform, its 280kW dual-motor drivetrain and its 74.7kWh battery with the Subaru Trailseeker, sold in Australia from $67,990 (Trailseeker AWD) to $73,990 (Trailseeker Touring). Despite near-identical hardware, Subaru claims 533km of WLTP range against Toyota’s 488km.

Chinese rivals aren’t far behind on outright pace either. BYD’s Sealion 7 Performance AWD claims a 0-100km/h time of around 4.5 seconds for $63,990, roughly $6,000 less than the Touring, albeit with 456km of WLTP range. The Sealion 7 range sold more than 13,000 units in Australia last year, second only to the Tesla Model Y among EVs.

Speaking of which, the Model Y Long Range AWD remains the most direct price match at $68,900, with 378kW, a 4.8-second 0-100km/h claim and 600km of WLTP range from a 78.1kWh battery. Buyers not ready to go fully electric can also cross-shop inside Toyota’s own showroom: the RAV4 PHEV XSE AWD (from about $63,340) undercuts the Touring’s price while keeping a petrol engine as backup.

What’s next: a longer test is overdue

An hour behind the wheel across mountain roads, highway and coarse-chip back roads was enough for a strong first impression: quick, solidly built, and more distinctive inside than most of the segment allows itself to be these days. What’s missing is a proper road trip, the kind of test that shows whether 488km of claimed range and a wagon body built for towing hold up once the Touring name gets put to actual use.