Lexus has an electric ES on the way, and the first American hands on impressions are not the ones the company will have hoped for. Auto Focus spent time with a late prototype of the ES 350e and came away describing a car that is pleasant to sit in and difficult to recommend. Part of that is the specification. The video reports a single motor driving the front wheels, around 220 horsepower, a 75 kWh battery rated at roughly 250 miles, and a price a little above $60,000 as tested. Those numbers would have looked competitive a few years ago. The sharper criticism in the review has nothing to do with the numbers at all. It is about what the car does, and does not do, with the space an electric drivetrain is supposed to free up.

nexusEVnews covered the same car from a different angle on August 1, when Electrifying drove the UK version and reported a 517 litre boot alongside 22 kW AC charging, while finding the DC charging speed and the asking price much harder to defend. Two reviews on two continents landing on similar reservations is worth noting on its own. The wider point is that this body style should have been the easy one. A long, low, four door saloon has room to hide a flat battery under the floor and no need for ground clearance, which is why executive sedans were expected to be among the first cars to gain from going electric. Buyers cross shopping at this price now look for a front boot, a flat rear floor and a range figure that starts with a three. There is also a practical question the review does not raise directly. A car sold on refinement rather than efficiency gets judged hardest on long trips, and charging stops are what owners complain about first.

Much of the Auto Focus review is a list of places where the host says the electric ES behaves like the petrol one. There is no front boot. The centre console is the tall, closed unit you get when an engine and a transmission need packaging, rather than the open shelf most electric cars in this class now offer. The rear floor carries a raised tunnel down the middle, which the host argues makes no sense in a front wheel drive electric car. Sport mode, according to the video, still describes itself on screen in terms of transmission shift points. There is no one pedal driving either. The paddles behind the wheel adjust regenerative braking strength, and the host says that even at the strongest setting the car slows to a crawl and then needs the brake pedal to finish the stop. On range, he reports seeing 154 miles indicated at 63 percent and estimates 220 to 240 miles in normal driving, while crediting the car for an honest prediction rather than an optimistic one. Plenty gets praised. The boot is large with storage under the floor, the tailgate is powered, the rear seat has its own climate controls, sun shades and a calf rest, and the ride is soft in the way an executive saloon should be. The smaller complaints are the ones that only surface after a week with the car: a door latch that has to be pulled twice, indicators quiet enough to forget about, and no indicator repeater on the driver's display.

Bottom line: this is a car for someone who wants a Lexus first and an electric car second, and there are fewer of those buyers than the price suggests Lexus is counting on. If the review is right that the hybrid ES is the better car for similar money, the electric version is left arguing for itself on the badge and the plug alone. That works in markets where mandates and incentives do the persuading. It does not work against rivals who treated the switch to electric as a reason to redesign the car rather than convert it. The materials deserve better than the packaging they are wrapped around.

Commentary on a third-party video. Figures and claims are as presented in the source and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.