Range anxiety: Why the 2024 Toyota bZ4X electric car is delayed for Australia after disappointing in other countries

Established brands releasing updates to near-new electric cars, the same way video game publishers release patches to fix early bugs, seems to be becoming slightly commonplace at the moment.

The Volkswagen ID.3 electric car was recently updated with fixes to address complaints about ergonomics and laggy multimedia tech, but Toyota’s bZ4X electric car is the next major model to have an early-life ‘patch’ waiting in the wings.

Toyota's first dedicated electric car was tested by various Scandinavian and northern European outlets for its driving range, a claimed 516 kilometres at most under WLTP testing in its front-wheel drive variant.

The publications, such as elbil24 and the Federation of Danish Motorists (FDM)’s outlet called Motor, found the real-world range to be more like 246km, with the AWD version managing 318 kilometres in another test - short of the 470km claim.

While countries like Norway and Denmark experience cold weather which can affect battery efficiency, these tests were conducted on relatively warm days.

Since, Toyota has responded to both these outlets with promises to improve the electric car's battery’s efficiency and the subsequent range, while also answering questions from UK magazine Car about the planned update.

“We’re going to give a greater degree of transparency and unlock some hidden elements of range,” Toyota spokesperson Robert Tickner told the publication. 

“We are going to optimise the range buffer: when the instrument panel says zero kilometres left, actually there’s 8 per cent still remaining.

“Compared with the competition, our buffer is a bit bigger and we want to release some of that to make it usable.”

Upfront is a 12.3-inch centre multimedia screen.

Toyota plans to make its battery range indication clearer and more accurate on its driver display, as well as reconfigure the estimated effect the air-conditioning and heating system has on the range.

While Australia would have initially been destined to receive bZ4X models in need of the updates, we were told at a preview of the model earlier this year that the reason for the local launch being pushed back is in part due to Toyota Australia wanting to avoid the earlier iteration of the model.

Vice President of Sales and Marketing Sean Hanley told media in attendance: “We want to be able to secure supply and the latest spec.”

Details for the Australian specification of the bZ4X aren’t confirmed, nor is pricing or exact timing beyond that it should land in Q4.