Road Test: 2025 Lexus UX 300h AWD F Sport 2

When I first set bum in the 2025 Lexus UX 300h AWD F Sport 2, it did not go well.

Before I even got out of Toyota’s parking lot, my back hurt. The driver’s seat is adjustable for reach, rake, height and fore-aft lumbar support, but it took a lot of fussing to make it acceptable, if never quite really comfortable.

I also couldn’t keep the Satellite Navigation in the “North Up” orientation, about which more anon.

Moving on…

Styling and Configuration: Lexus calls the sub-compact UX an “SAV” (“Sport Activity Vehicle”), to avoid calling it what it really is – the market-abhorrent term “station wagon”.

Styling-wise, some of UX’s swoops and swirls could have been toned down a shade, but overall, it’s a decent-looking car.

One interesting tidbit is the tops of the taillight lenses that look like miniature tail fins!

Mine was the range-topping “F Sport 2” trim level, in “Cloudburst Grey”, with red leather upholstery and accents. The paint quality from the Miyawaka Japan factory is beyond reproach.

Inside, those front seats get additional lateral bolsters over the base model, for support in corners at speeds which Lexus thinks the car will encourage.

With the powered steering wheel as far up and as close to me as it could go, it just barely fit me. The chubby-thighed need not apply. The fat leather-wrapped wheel does feel good to the hand.

The lovely wooden finish on the centre console houses the shift quadrant which is just plain stupid. Several consecutive and confusing manoeuvres are needed to make it do anything.

“PRNDL” people! Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, Low (OK, “S” for Sport). It ain’t broke; don’t fix it.

Equipment? Lots of cup holders, cubby bins for oddment storage, both types of USB plugs, a 12 volt plug in the roomy centre console, a pad to recharge a compatible cell phone (which mine isn’t), heaters for the steering wheel and seats front and back, as well as seat ventilation (fronts only).

Space? I could sit “behind myself”, but barely. The UX would likely be bought by singles or youngish parents with small kids, and that rear seat would be fine for them. The 60/40 split-folding seatback provides lots of people/cargo options.

As always, I removed the rear-seat headrests to improve reward visibility. There’ll be a “Kenzie’s Korner” on this topic elsewhere on Vicarious soon.

Cargo? The smallish trunk’s floor is flush with the hatch opening to ease loading and unloading. The tailgate is power-up or -down and features a kick-to-open feature if you can figure out how to make it work. There is room under the trunk floor for a proper spare tire, but you’re stuck with four dreaded run-flats here.

Now, my beef about the SatNav screen. It can be set for “Direction of Travel”, “3D view”, or “North Up”. I prefer the latter – it was good enough for Christopher Columbus; it’s good enough for me. But when you select another screen then return to SatNav, it reverts to Direction of Travel. This is a known issue for Toy/Lex, with no fix as yet.

Tech? UX offers Apple CarPlay / Android Auto / Bluetooth / Sirius XM compatibility, as well as what Lexus calls a “natural language virtual assistant”. Most of the time when I said, “Hey Lexus” to ask a question, it responded, “See Owners Manual”. Thanks a lot, Lexus.

Mechanical: Like most newer Toy/Lex products, this is a hybrid. The front wheels are powered mainly by a transverse-mounted 2.0 litre twin-cam four, augmented as required by a permanent magnet synchronous electric motor.

A second motor powers the rear wheels under certain conditions (i.e., not above 70 km/h, for whatever reason).

Lexus quotes a total of 196 horsepower but does not publish a combined peak torque value.

The transmission is an eCVT (electronic Continuously Variable Transmission).

Suspension is by MacPherson struts up front, multi-link at the rear. Dampers on the F Sport 2 can change their firmness based on your choice of driving mode.

Driving: This is Toy/Lex’s fifth generation hybrid, and they’ve got them down pat. The transitions between engine and motor power are seamless. You can hear when the motor joins the party, but it’s not obtrusive.

The UX is a non-plug-in hybrid. When I would push the “Start” button, the car ran on the electric motors for about 10 meters, then the engine fired up.

The “EV driving ratio” gauge apparently tells you how much of your drive is done electrically. Sometimes, this read “0%”, and “Total Time” was “00:00”. On other occasions, it read “100%”, and “Total Time” was “00.02”. No idea what that all meant.

You can select “EV mode” which locks you into electric drive until the juice runs out. Most of the time, this screen showed me a message to the effect “EV not available”, so fat lot of good that did.

0 – 100 km/h takes a tick over 8 seconds. Hardly “F Sport” quick.

Strong brakes are always welcome.

Some ride harshness due to those run-flat tires apart, the car drives decently, despite steering that is devoid of road feel, and not as accurate as it should be. Again, “F Sport”?

A knob on the right side of the instrument binnacle lets you select one of five driving mode – Eco, Normal, Sport, Sport+, and Custom – to adjust things like suspension and throttle response. Aside from different instrument cluster graphics, the perceived differences are marginal, and largely pointless in a car like this. Even more irrelevant is the track-oriented lap time recorder. In a 196-horsepower car, on run-flat tires? Seriously?

As usual, I shut off all the nanny systems, especially the dangerous self-driving nonsense. All the settings survived switching the car off. But hard as I tried, I couldn’t kill the massively irritating Lane Departure warning. According to Melissa O’Connell, a Technology Specialist at Northside Lexus in Houston Texas, this setting is buried somewhere in those menus, but I never did find it.

One bit of modern tech I do love is the back-up camera, because it shows me something I can’t see myself.

In retrospect, all the things I didn’t like about this UX 300h (that SatNav screen notwithstanding) had to do with that “F Sport 2” package. That tries to turn the car into something it isn’t and cannot hope to be. Get one of the lesser trim packages, save yourself nearly nine grand, and you’ll have a capable small station wagon – there; I said it again – which will surely give you years of excellent service.

2025 Lexus UX 300h AWD F Sport 2
Price as tested: $43,605.00
Freight: $2,205.00
Configuration: Front engine/all-wheel drive
Engine/transmission: 2.0-litre 4-cylinder/ eCVT
Power/torque: 196 hp/ N/A
Fuel (capacity): Regular (40 L)
Combined fuel economy ratings (L/100 km): 5.6 L/100 km
Warranties: 4-years/80,000 km (basic)
Competitors: Audi Q3, BMW X2, Mercedes-Benz GLA 250, Volvo XC40
Website: Lexus Canada