Lexus Has The Perfect Way To Keep Fun Alive In The EV Era

The 2026 Lexus RZ has received a minor facelift that includes longer range, a more powerful F Sport variant, and a new M-Mode that simulates gears, a bit like a Hyundai Ioniq 5 N and its N e-Shift feature. It all sounds pretty cool, but what if we told you it was only scratching the surface of what Toyota and Lexus are currently developing?

Base Trim Engine: Electric
Base Trim Transmission: Automatic
Base Trim Drivetrain: Front-Wheel Drive

Lexus shared a video of what the RZ’s M-Mode will sound like, and though the high-pitched whine is a neat sound, we know the company can do better. So when we sat down to speak with Lexus at Toyota’s HQ Confidential event in Plano, Texas, we had one question that needed an answer: Why doesn’t the RZ simulate the sound of an LFA?

“I grew up on PlayStation 1. It’s my dream to have an EV that you can get in and not just transform the sound, but transform the gauges and have everything simulated. I want it to sound and have the torque curve of an LFA. We are working on it.”

– Cooper Ericksen, Senior Vice President, product BEV mobility planning strategy, Toyota Motor North America

The RZ Is The First Step

The RZ 550e F Sport will be the first Lexus EV to feature simulated gears, with a new feature called M-Mode. As the video above shows, it allows drivers to use the wheel-mounted paddle shifters to change gears, pairing up with a sound produced by the speakers. The new 550e F Sport variant is the quickest RZ yet, producing 402 horsepower from two electric motors, yielding a 4.1-second 0-60 mph time. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N still holds a huge performance advantage, but this is just the beginning for Lexus.

America’s 2026 Lexus RZ Doesn’t Bear The Yoke Of Excess Digitalization

The new Lexus RZ will get more power and longer range, but in America, it won’t get a controversial new feature.

“This is the first step. It’s a manual transmission simulator where it’s kind of fun. It’s not just a sterile EV doing its EV thing. It’s shifting, and you get feedback; it feels a little more viral,” Ericksen explained.

He then went on to describe where this technology could go in the future, especially when combined with the manual transmission Toyota has been developing for EVs. Ericksen said he has driven two versions of the manual BEV. One has a simulated transmission with a clutch, which can be tuned to match the engine torque, power band, and sound of practically any car. For some reason, the engineers chose to simulate a Volkswagen GTI. The other, which is linked to an actual gearbox, is based on an old AE86 [Corolla]. “It’s so cool,” Ericksen said.

An EV That Feels Like An LFA?

“What’s to stop us from making our BEVs feel like a driving simulator? Let’s have fun with that. It’s my dream to have an EV that you can get in and not just transform the sound, but transform the gauges and have everything simulated. And then if we could transform the car on a track to show Scott Pruett’s (a famous racing driver) lap time as a ghost car in your head-up display, and how you are doing compared to him,” he described.

“We want to have the ability to add different sounds. I want it to sound like an LFA, and I want to feel the torque curve of an LFA. We should do an American 1960s muscle car and a European V12. Why can’t we do all these things?”

If the thought of hearing the V10 roar of an LFA through your speakers in a car that can likely out-accelerate the carbon-bodied supercar doesn’t get you excited about the EV future, we don’t know what else will.

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