If you traveled back in time to the year 2000 and told someone that in 25 years, Toyota and Lexus would be the vanguards of building cars the old-fashioned way, they probably would have cited it as evidence that you were either A) lying about your origins or B) completely crazy. Or hey, why not both? But here we are in 2025, and Lexus is showing us a brand-new sedan. Has the world gone mad, or is it just me? I’m open to either possibility, frankly.
Crazy though it may look, this is no hallucination. Lexus is really doing this thing, and while we’re not expecting a radical shift in the philosophy behind the midsize ES, it’s obvious that Toyota’s luxury division is hoping to attract younger buyers with new sheet metal. From some angles, it looks slick—even striking—but that front end does some weird stuff that works way better on the Toyota Prius.
The inside has been completely re-imagined, too. The contrasting wood elements in the doors are a nice touch, but apart from that, I’m struck by just how sparse it looks. Perhaps Lexus is hoping to attract the buyer who sees Tesla’s plastic-fantastic minimalism as an aesthetic upside, but we’re not entirely convinced that this cabin will appeal to the traditional premium shopper. That steering wheel, for instance, looks like a single piece of injection-molded plastic with some keypads glued to it and, at a glance, looks a bit like the wheel you’d find in a carnival bumper car. Hey, at least it’s not a yoke, right?
The gas ES is out for this generation, which means this car will only be available a hybrid or a pure EV, and both can be had with either front- or all-wheel-drive. The base ES 350h hybrid uses Toyota’s 2.5-liter four-cylinder, but if you step up to the battery-electric model, the 350e is powered by a single front motor, while the 500e adds a second motor on the rear. Lexus hasn’t announced performance targets for any of these configurations, but expect the dual-motor 500e to be substantially more powerful than the 350e.
Lexus says the 2026 ES will go on sale next year, so there’s plenty of time for more information to trickle out.
Byron is one of those weird car people who has never owned an automatic transmission. Born in the DMV but Midwestern at heart, he lives outside of Detroit with his wife, two cats, a Miata, a Wrangler, and a Blackwing.
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