2016 Lexus NX300h Hybrid

Within a given model lineup, plotting each trim level’s price against the return for that investment typically yields a rising curve. Spend more money, get the better version of a car. But if you run this cost/benefit study on the Lexus NX family, we’re not so sure the graph follows so rosy an arc.

The hierarchy starts out with the base front-wheel-drive NX200t; it comes with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine, standout styling (it’s not boring!), and Lexus-like interior trappings. Add all-wheel drive to the mix for all-weather traction, some packages here and there to really flesh it out, and each upgrade nets the NX a benefit commensurate with the increase in price. Even stepping up to the front-wheel-drive NX300h hybrid keeps the NX’s plot on track, gaining the buyer significantly improved fuel economy at the expense of some performance—a fair trade-off for a hybrid. Which brings us to the all-wheel-drive NX300h, which sits atop the NX heap in price and price alone.

Not Worth It?

How can the priciest NX not be the best? Simple: Adding all-wheel drive to the NX300h’s recipe hurts both performance—this is the slowest NX model we’ve tested—and fuel economy. In the all-wheel-drive NX300h, the front wheels are powered by the same 2.5-liter gasoline four-cylinder engine and electric motor/generator used in the front-drive NX300h; the two power sources feed into a planetary gearset that, in conjunction with a second motor/generator, operates as a continuously variable automatic transmission. All-wheel drive is added by way of a 67-hp electric motor added to the rear axle. It’s called into action as conditions dictate, yet for most of the time the extra motor is dead weight. We never felt it do anything to assist with traction, and it doesn’t even factor into the NX300h’s total output of 194 horsepower—a figure shared with the front-drive model. The less expensive NX200t’s turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine, for reference, makes 235 horsepower.

Adding 167 pounds of weight but no more power over the NX300h we tested last year, the all-wheel-drive example lags in acceleration. We recorded an 8.8-second run to 60 mph compared with 8.3 seconds in the front-drive NX300h, a gap that more or less holds through the quarter-mile and beyond. (An all-wheel-drive NX200t we tested hit 60 mph in a relatively blistering 6.9 seconds.) There is such a dearth of power at pretty much every speed that drivers will spend more time contemplating how to abort passing attempts than they will spend actually making such overtaking maneuvers. Meanwhile, subtle transitions from gasoline power to electric—and any blending of the two in between—can be felt through the pedal either as rumbly surges (meaning the gas engine is working) or dead zones where throttle response goes even flatter than normal (when the computer prioritizes mostly electric-powered travel). That’s in the Normal drive mode, too; Eco mode flatlines the powertrain responses so much that the NX gradually loses speed, even with constant throttle input. The Sport setting generates slightly more low-end urgency but ultimately fails to transform the crossover’s behavior.

Riding on tires of identical size to those used on the front-drive NX300h, the AWD NX300h managed an identical 0.77 g around the skidpad, but its extra weight manifests in a 12-foot-longer stop from 70 mph. Numbers aside, the NX300h feels heavy, and its suspension feels imprecise. The ride is okay, albeit on the firmer side of comfort, but that starch fails to keep the NX300h’s body roll in check, and the lifeless, video-game-like steering might as well be connected to a different car’s front tires. This is all to say that the NX300h is not, as you have probably already surmised, a sports car or even a sporty crossover. It’s worth pointing out these dynamic shortcomings because they come with no commensurate upside at the pump. It is fairly typical for a four-wheel-drive version of a car to be less efficient than its two-wheel-drive counterpart, and opting for the all-wheel-drive NX300h chops 2 mpg from the city figure and 1 mpg from the highway number relative to a front-drive model, for a 33/30 mpg rating. We saw 27 mpg over several hundred test miles. That’s 3 mpg fewer than we notched in the front-drive NX300h and just 2 mpg better than we saw in a gas-fed BMW X1. It’s a mere 1 mpg better than a Mercedes-Benz GLA250 we tested.

Existential Existentialism

So while the NX300h, even with performance- and efficiency-sapping all-wheel drive, is more efficient than any NX200t, it isn’t appreciably more fuel-thrifty than its compact-luxury-crossover competitors from BMW, Audi, or Mercedes-Benz. As such, you have to really want a hybridized small luxury crossover—the NX300h is the only such vehicle on sale (others are at least one size larger)—to stomach the Lexus’s $40,660 base price and its compromises. Even then, if fuel economy is your aim, save a little and grab the more efficient front-drive NX300h. We begin to see why this is the only such offering on the market. You’d need to be frothing at the mouth for both four driven wheels and the idea of having an electrified drivetrain in a small crossover to even consider paying the $50,515 necessary for our (not even fully loaded) test car. For that sort of money, one could drive away in a decently equipped crossover from the next-size-up class where the Audi Q5, BMW X3, Mercedes-Benz GLC-class, and even Lexus’s own RX350 live.

Or you could save roughly $5000 and snap up an NX200t with the same Qi inductive phone charger ($220), power-reclining rear seats ($400), Luxury package ($4505), Navigation ($1875, required with the Luxury package), adaptive cruise control with automatic emergency braking ($900), and blind-spot monitoring with rear cross-traffic alert ($660), plus a few other odds and ends. You’d also be getting the same well-appointed (if somewhat tight-feeling) interior, eminently comfortable front seats, and finicky touchpad-operated infotainment display.

In exchange for a lower price and a more conventional engine, the hybrid’s 33/30 mpg EPA city/highway estimates would be swapped for the NX200t’s lowly 22/28 mpg numbers, but we’d wager that gas is currently cheap enough for that not to matter. Certainly not in comparison with the NX300h’s weak price-to-joy ratio, which bends the high end of the NX family’s favorability graph into the downslope of a bell curve.

Specifications >

VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, 4-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door hatchback

PRICE AS TESTED: $50,515 (base price: $42,260)

ENGINE TYPE: DOHC 16-valve Atkinson-cycle 2.5-liter inline-4, 154 hp, 152 lb-ft; two permanent-magnet AC synchronous motors, 141 hp (front), 67 hp (rear); combined power rating, 194 hp

TRANSMISSION: continuously variable automatic with manual shifting mode

DIMENSIONS:
Wheelbase: 104.7 in
Length: 182.3 in
Width: 73.6 in Height: 64.8 in
Passenger volume: 97 cu ft
Cargo volume: 17 cu ft
Curb weight: 4175 lb

C/D TEST RESULTS:
Zero to 60 mph: 8.8 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 25.8 sec
Zero to 110 mph: 36.5 sec
Rolling start, 5–60 mph: 9.0 sec
Top gear, 30–50 mph: 4.3 sec
Top gear, 50–70 mph: 5.9 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 16.8 sec @ 84 mph
Top speed (governor limited): 116 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 183 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.77 g

FUEL ECONOMY:
EPA city/highway driving: 33/30 mpg
C/D observed: 27 mpg