Lexus Builds an Electric Car That Pretends to Shift. Decommission the Pantomime.

The 2026 RZ 550e F SPORT makes 402 horsepower from a dual-motor DIRECT4 system, and Lexus has given it a Lexus-first M Mode: virtual manual shifting with paddle shifters. The paddles shift nothing. An electric motor has no gears to change, so this is a pantomime of the car it replaces: a manual mode with no manual, sold as sport.

That is the whole column, so I will file it now. Virtual manual shifting is not a feature so much as a developmental stage the electric car should have outgrown. A motor taught to impersonate a gearbox it does not have is a thing to be retired, quietly.

Grant the firsts. Three of them, and overdue. The all-new 2027 TZ is Lexus's first-ever three-row all-electric SUV, standard DIRECT4 all-wheel drive, a manufacturer-estimated 300 miles of range. The ES gains its first battery-electric variants, the front-wheel-drive ES 350e and the all-wheel-drive ES 500e. My sister in the suburbs, with whom I am cordial, has waited years for the TZ: three rows, a plug, a school run that stops idling. Nobody asked that car to pretend.

The tell is the choice. A legacy house arrives this late to electric cars, lands three firsts, and introduces them by teaching the newest, an RZ with an EPA-estimated 229 miles of range, to mime the one it replaces. Hank called the fake gears a heresy, and for once we agree, which I find more damning than he does.

So retire it, and spend the effort somewhere that counts. I ordered my EV with the smallest battery on the configurator and no air conditioning, and I renew the second choice every July morning at the first red light. I gave those up for range, for weight, for the hellbender you will never see. Lexus spent the same engineering teaching a 229-mile car to fake a gearbox. One of us is serious.