Lexus Admits Its Future EVs May Be Too Radical
Lexus is in the midst of designing its future EVs, which will usher in radical new styling language skin to the controversial spindle grille.
While electric vehicles in general are a bit controversial at the moment – largely thanks to their widespread politicization – most automakers are still committed to expanding their EV lineups in the future, albeit perhaps not as much or as quickly as before. One of those brands is Lexus, which is still aiming to add more EVs over the coming years, though that task will obviously pose its own unique challenges. One such challenge is how to style future all-electric vehicles, as some find existing examples to be, well, a bit polarizing, to say the least.
Lexus is clearly well aware of this fact, as its global design boss Simon Humphries explained in a recent interview with Automotive News. “It’s important to think, ‘Is that going to be OK? Is that too far?’ ” said Humphries, who admitted that future Lexus EVs will represent a huge shift in terms of exterior styling, akin to the controversial spindle grille. “Challenging is the right thing to do,” he admits, just as the brand plans to launch these radical new products in or around 2026.
Both the LF-ZC and LF-ZL concepts previewed this forthcoming shift in exterior styling direction, though Lexus is also focusing on giving its future EVs things like flexible layouts, more spacious interiors, and a more minimalistic nature, overall, as technologies like gigacasting can help reduce complexity in manufacturing. All of these things are key for a company that still plans to move to an EV-only lineup by 2035, even as some other brands have since ditched those types of timelines in recent months.
“It’s a huge step, yes,” Humphries admitted. “But the whole point of the Lexus brand from the very beginning has always been to challenge what was considered the de facto standard of the time.” A good example of this is the aforementioned spindle grille, which has been quite controversial, and yet, not necessarily seen as a failure within the luxury brand’s walls. “We wanted to give Lexus character,” Humphries said of that styling cue. “Even on some of the vehicles where we put that on a minor change, the sales almost doubled. So there are a lot of people out there who actually were very like-minded about that sort of thing. They wanted a more expressive car.”
Whether or not it can do the same thing with its future EVs or not remains to be seen, but it’s clear that Lexus is aiming high in this regard, and intends to differentiate itself from the competition in more ways than one. “The whole purpose of doing something like that car [the LF-ZC concept] is to set yourself up for the future,” Humphries said. “If you set the bar that high, then things happen.”
Photos: Lexus
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