Because the Lexus RX enters its fifth technology, model executives are concentrating on a 20-per-cent enhance in Canadian gross sales subsequent yr.

Assembled at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada’s (TMMC) plant in Cambridge, Ont., the RX generated 25,907 gross sales in 2021, making Canada its fourth largest international market.

America was No. 1, with 302,713 items offered in 2021, adopted by China with 226,122 and Japan with 51,118, in response to Martin Gilbert, director of the Lexus Division at Toyota Canada Inc.

Since Lexus launched the world’s first luxurious crossover, the RX300, in 1998, greater than 150,000 RXs have been offered in Canada, in response to Gilbert.

“The reliability of the product units it aside. It’s a bullet-proof product, since day one,” mentioned Gilbert. “Perhaps the design was polarizing on the time as a result of it was a unibody building – a lot of the SUVs have been nonetheless constructed body-on-frame, so it was a departure.”

The 2023 RX will get a serious redesign inside and outdoors, extra know-how and connectivity options, and 4 new powertrains – three are electrified and embrace the RX’s first plug-in hybrid electrical (PHEV). All fashions, besides the plug-in hybrid, might be in-built Canada. The PHEV might be made in Japan.

The 4 powertrains embrace: a 275 horsepower 2.4-litre turbocharged 4-cylinder engine within the base RX 350 AWD; a 246 horsepower 2.5-litre inline-four two-motor hybrid within the RX 350h AWD; a 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine with an 18.1-kWh lithium-ion battery within the RX 450h+ AWD PHEV. (Many particulars, such because the horsepower and electrical vary, nonetheless aren’t obtainable but)

There will even be a high-performance hybrid model with a 2.4-litre turbocharged inline-four mated to a single electrical motor that produces 366 horsepower and 406 lb.-ft. of torque – that’ll be within the RX 500h AWD.

The 2023 Lexus RX goes on sale later this yr, whereas the RX 450h+ PHEV received’t be obtainable till later subsequent yr. Pricing might be introduced nearer to the on-sale date.

The Cambridge plant is the primary and solely facility outdoors of Japan to provide the RX. Greater than 1.6 million Lexus RX and RX Hybrid automobiles have been constructed on Canadian soil since manufacturing began in 2003, in response to Toyota Canada spokesman Scott MacKenzie.

About 300 RXs are constructed each day at TMMC. “We roll an RX off the road roughly each two minutes. We make about 105,000-110,000 yearly,” mentioned MacKenzie in the course of the latest worldwide press launch of the all-new 2023 Lexus RX in Santa Barbara, CA.  Roughly 10 per cent are offered in Canada; 90 per cent exported to the US.