In some ways, it feels a bit odd for a company like Toyota to be introducing a bunch of new battery-electric vehicles right now. I mean, last year saw the loss of the federal tax credit for EVs, and the first significant drop in EV sales in a decade. That may get better this year, with more and better EVs to choose from, so who knows. Still, it’s a good reminder that Toyota was a bit late to the battery-electric game, even though they were pioneers in electrification with the then-revolutionary hybrid Prius line. Now Toyota seems to making up for lost time, as they’re expanding their bZ line of EVs to include new versions, including the off-road (ish) focused bZ Woodland, which is pretty much an off-road-capable station wagon that happens to be electric.
Now if the string of words “off-road capable station wagon” reminds you of another carmaker, you’re not alone. Subaru has been the go-to for go-anywhere wagons for decades, and that hasn’t really changed. In fact, the bZ Woodland is built in Subaru factories for Toyota (remember, Toyota owns about 20% of Fuji Heavy Industries, Subaru’s parent company) and Subaru builds their own badge-engineered version of the bZ Woodland called the Trailseeker.
So what’s the difference between the Trailseeker and the bZ Woodlands? As far as I can tell, a bit over $5,000: the Trailseeker starts at $39,995 and the bZ Woodland starts at $46,750. But the Woodland is what I drove, so that’s what we’re going to talk about.
The biggest difference between the bZ Woodland and the other bZ (which Toyota has renamed from the original bZ4X, which sounded a bit too much like a droid in a Star Wars movie that you see way in the background in precisely one scene but still has a whole Wookipedia page devoted to it) happens at the back, as the Woodland is more of a wagon compared to the bZ’s liftback design, and is about five and a half inches longer than the bZ.
There’s a bit more power, too, thanks to the fact that the Woodland uses the same 224-horsepower electric motor on both front and rear axles, while the normal AWD bZ has a 169-hp motor at the rear. Using the weird, alchemical math that computing multi-motor EVs demands, that comes to 375 hp for the Woodland, good for getting from parked to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds, which is plenty quick.
Since we’re already talking about how it drives, I guess we may as well make it official:
How Is It To Drive?
It’s fine.
I kind of want to end that there, because it’s true and is, if we’re being a little cynical and honest, it’s all you really need to know. It drives like the other bZs and like most other modern EVs: quick, quiet, easy. It’s not a particularly memorable driving experience, and I think that’s what most of the potential buyers of these will want. It feels safe and predictable on road, it’s a bit heavy but you don’t get an overwhelming sense of that, nor do you really get an overwhelming sense of anything.
There are four levels of brake regen, and while none of them will stop the car entirely, they can get close to one pedal driving in the highest regen mode, but you’ll still need that brake occasionally. Especially if you want to, you know, completely stop.
If you’re looking for a lot of robust exciting driver engagement, you’re probably not even going to be looking at this car at all. It drives like it’s supposed to, for the job it’s supposed to do. I didn’t get to take it on a track or anything like that, so if I tried to tell you what it’s handling is like “at the limit” I’d be lying to you.
But I did get to drive it off-pavement a bit! So let’s talk about that!
How Is It To Drive Off-Road
The “off-road” course that Toyota had set up for us was mostly dirt roads, with one little loop that had some zig-zagging holes dug into it and a few tallish mounds of earth we could drive over. Most of the off-road section you could probably have done in a Corolla, but the little loop of holes and lumps may have proved a bit more challenging.
More interesting is the former owner of the land we were driving on: this lovely bit of hilly pastureland, populated with cows and goats, was once owned by Paul Walker, the much-adored and currently deceased star of the Fast and Furious series, and also, unfortunately, someone who seems to have had some inappropriate relationships with underage girls. Not great.
Still, the land itself is staggeringly lovely, and there’s a really charming tree-less treehouse there, the bathroom of which I urinated within, which may be the only time I’ve peed where Paul Walker peed. At least that I’m aware of.
Also, see that dog there? One of the journalists had a drone they were using to capture footage of themselves driving, and that dog wanted to catch that drone so badly. There were a few times when I thought he might jump up and grab it, and I was pulling for him.
The Woodland uses Toyota’s X-Mode system of brake-and-power-transfer-based improved traction system that helps manage wheelslip and gets the Woodland over loose or rough terrain reasonably well. There’s also something similar to a hill descent system, like you’d see on more purposeful off-roaders, called Grip Control, and that lets drivers let the car handle throttle and brake so they can just focus on not driving off a cliff or into a lake or whatever. I took it down some steep, loose dirt hills in that mode, and it works pretty well.
There’s also a good front camera that helps you see right in front of the car, which would normally be hidden by the hood:
The ground clearance is decent at 8.4 inches, but there aren’t any actual skid plates under the car, and it doesn’t really articulate like a true off-road machine, so I wouldn’t expect this to be your first choice for rock crawling, which I suspect is just fine by Toyota and most potential buyers.
It’ll go on dirt roads and over rougher terrain, and probably will be decent in snow and some mud. The off-road properties of the Woodland are less about the act of off-roading for its own sake, but more about providing a means to get to places you may want to go even if those places aren’t especially street-car-friendly, and I think that’s probably good enough.
Oh, it’s worth noting that if you’re serious about getting your Woodland dirty, you should probably opt for the no-cost option of the all-terrain tires, though in doing so you’ll be reducing the range from 281 miles for one riding on all-season tires down to 260 miles. That’s a pretty big hit, and the real-world range is likely to be even less, but hey, you were the one who wanted to drive in the mud so damn much.
What’s The Interior Like? And What About All The Electronic Stuff And The Controls?
In the autojournalism business, we call the part of the car on the inside the interior. You may recognize this as the place where they keep the seats, and the best place to be in a car if it starts to rain. The interior of the Woodland is pretty nice; it feels well-put together, and the material choices feel good, including the SofTex-trimmed seats, the pelts of which are only harvested from softtexes bred in captivity, which will hopefully put a stop to all the brutal softex poachings that still plague the mountainous areas of countries like Upper Tarquania.
The interior is essentially the same across the whole bZ range of cars, and they have all of the expected electronic candy. There’s a pair of wireless chargers up front, which is nice, since we all have phones hungry for electrons, and there’s Apple CarPlay and Android Auto wireless connectivity.
While it’s about as touchscreen-focused as most modern cars, there are still some physical controls, which is welcome, and I like the knobs-on-the-touchscreen method seen on some cars, including the bZ family, for controls like the climate temperature knobs:
The shifter is a rotary knob thing that’s a little confusing to use at first; I’m not sure it really adds much, like all these rotary shifters, and if I’m honest, I think I’d just rather have the center area free from controls and a column-mounted shifter.
One unexpected disappointment was the lack of a glovebox:
One of Toyota’s engineers told me the lack of a glovebox was to maximize front seat leg room, which I get, but it’s not like most cars with bulky engines lurking just in front of the front footwell haven’t managed to figure out how to still keep a glovebox. It feels like a packaging issue that perhaps should have been solved.
There’s other storage of course: in the doors, a shelf under the center console, and a little in-armrest storage cubby, but that still didn’t really seem like a great place to store the usual glovebox manifest of owner’s manuals, wadded up traffic tickets, some bulbs and fuses, and perhaps an expired condom.
Speaking of the floor, though, I have to say the thick, rubbery, textured floormats in the Woodland are top-notch. Excellent for protecting the car from mud and gravel and grime, and they cover the whole floor, and even have the handy little “wall” around them, so if you remove them to dump out or hose off, you’re less likely to decant months’ worth of grime into your carpet.
Let’s keep going with the floors! Rear legroom, for example, is pretty good, though it’s worth remembering that I’m only tall in a room full of toddlers.
Occasionally, I’m smartest in such a room, too, but not always. The rear seat has heated and cooled seats, (sorry, just heated, I made a mistake) as well as a pair of USB-C ports and HVAC vents, which is nice.
Behind the rear seats, the cargo area is a pretty good size, keeping true to its wagon-shape, and offers between 33.3 and 33.8 cubic feet with the rear seat up (the rear seats are adjustable, you see) and between 71.8 and just over 74 cubic feet with the seat down, depending on if you opt to have a flat floor or choose to drop the false floor in the rear down for a bit more room.
You’ll also note there’s a nice rubbery mat in the cargo area as well. There’s a good-sized well under the floor, and while there’s a sort of disc-shaped thing in there, it’s not a spare tire:
I bet you’re wondering if there’s a front trunk on the Woodland! Lots of EVs have them, and it’s appreciated!
There’s not. I’m disappointed. It looks like there could have been a decent-sized little well to hold charging cables and stuff in front of the 12V battery, but I guess the engineers couldn’t be bothered.
How Does It Look?
It’s not a bad-looking car; it has Toyota’s new corporate face, the hints of which we first saw on the redesigned Prius, and now on the facelifted bZ lineup. The Woodland is quite similar, with a mostly grille-free design save for a low, wide one below the bumper line, and a frontal DRL lightbar that kicks up into sorta of tong shapes at each end.
The fenders and lower bumpers on the Woodland are clad in black plastic to give the car a more rugged look, though you kind of lose the effect on dark-colored cars. You can see it better here, on a light one:
I suppose that adds some visual interest to the car.
The sculpting of the sides is interesting; there’s a kick up just aft and above the front wheel arch that leads into an upper character line, and there’s a lower, upward-angling character line as well that contrasts with the horizontal hockey stick line that works into the rear wheel arch. But I think I like the sort of scimitar blade-shaped intaglio part just under the rear window and continuing back to the taillight. There’s a good bit going on, but I think it generally works, even if the overall effect is still pretty anonymous and not that different than most modern crossovers and SUVs.
Charging!
Just kidding, you don’t charge through that 120V outlet! But it does have one in the back, so I may as well show you. The big point about Toyota’s charging choices is that they seem a little too… I don’t know, timid? You do get a Tesla Supercharger-compatible NACS charging port, but the best DC fast charging caps out at 150 kW. For comparison, a Kia EV9 can do 210 to 235 kW, and a Tesla Model Y or 3 can do 350 kW on V4 Superchargers, provided they start with a low enough state of charge. Toyota says their charger will charge the 74.7 kWh lithium-ion battery pack (about 67 kWh actually usable) from 10% to 80% in about 30 minutes. That’s not terrible, but compared to the competition, not great either.
Parting Thoughts
I’m sure there will be lots of people who would love a more rugged, occasionally off-roadable electric wagon, and this is that. But, so is the Subaru Trailseeker, which is essentially the same car, for, as I mentioned, about $5,000 less. If there’s some place where the Toyota one really makes more sense and is worth those extra five very big ones, I’m not entirely certain what that is.
I don’t think this is a car I personally desire, but I can see it being appealing to many people. Oh, and it can tow 3,500 pounds! I forgot to mention that! Of course, I didn’t try it, and it’ll probably turn the range to garbage, but still, you can take your catamaran to the lake or whatever if you’d like.
I’m sure the right people will love it. But would they love the Subaru-badged one and five grand in their pocket more? Probably.
Top graphic image: Jason Torchinsky
The Trailseeker comes in three trims, whereas the BZ Woodland comes in only two. If I had to guess, the base BZ is better optioned than the base Trialseeker and that’s where the difference is coming from.
The EV9 absolutely cannot charge at 350kW, it maxes out at 210kW. Maybe this site need a writer who’s more enthusiastic about EVs.
I’ll fix that; I used a bad source. Thanks for pointing this out! And I am plenty enthusiastic about EVs, but I’m also a flawed human and make mistakes.
Sorry I didn’t mean it as a slight against you! 🙁
Just that I find the nerdy details missing in Autopian’s coverage of EVs. e.g. charging curves, battery preconditioning etc.
That’s fair; I’m not as into charge rates as, say I am into the details of a weird 2-stroke air-cooled engine or something. There’s no question electric propulsion is far more rational, overall. I’m still just a sucker for the archaic madness.
I was under the impression that two-stroke air-cooled engines are perfectly normal.
I’m still angry that there’s nothing new on the market with acetylene taillights, even as an option. and I hope you are too.
I’m not the target demo, but the ugly steering wheel and lack of one-pedal driving really put me off.
OK this is weird (Hi, Jason!) but I have some EV questions…
First, what is it like when the vehicle is just idling along? My mother’s Malibu wagon had a cold idle speed that held 35 or 40 mph (fun! dumb!) and I’ve driven lots of cars that would mosey along at 5 to 10 mph, speeding up or coming to a stop on hills. What do these do?
Second, what is the most efficient cruise speed for a BEV? Most ICE cars seem to like 40 to 45 mph; what is the best ‘it’s 3:00 am and no one else is on the road so let’s turn time into watts’ speed?
Third, when are you going to saddle one with the smallest, hardest, least grippy tires possible and see how that effects range? Soon? Please?
Torch – I have a question/comment that was spurred by your note on the rear heated AND cooled seats. I wonder if this is something that has ever come up when you’ve been at a press launch.
My work vehicle, an Equinox, has ventilated front seats. The front passenger seat will tilt forward baaaarreelllyy past vertical. I thought this was just dumb thing related to the power seat controls, but my buddy’s Equinox without the ventilated seats tilts further.
This makes sense, once you think about it, because air has to be routed up the back of the seat with a hose of some sort that you don’t want to crush. But the lack of tilt really hurts when you are trying to carry bulky items from the home center.
Have you noticed this in new vehicles or has it ever been brought up?
These are the real Autopian questions. A good question for sure.
> $40k for < 300 miles of range is just too much, and before anyone claps back at that, I would like to see you, yourself, spending that money on this product. My girlfriend’s mom has a bZ. It is a perfectly fine car. But if it were MY $40k that had been spent as we’re sitting on the highway in the winter watching the range drop like a rock, I would be pissed. Toyota just doesn’t make a livable, competitive EV product right now
The only reason I could see Toyota charging more is because they plan on less being made for them. Granted from the amount of Solterras that have clogged up the lot here for me doesn’t give me much hope the Trailseeker will sell in very big numbers either. I live in the Seattle area, so EV’s are a lot more frequent since people like to use them to commute around the area and have a backup car that they use to do their outdoorsy activities.
Even then, some EV’s are just more popular here and the Solterra and the Trailseeker seem not to be despite Subaru having a serious market stronghold over here with the gas cars.
The Subaru version is, to me, the new Outback except electrified. The actual new Outback lost its wagon-shaped ways for CUV-dom; it’s really more of an Ascent Jr.
In Europe, it’s being sold as the e-Outback!
I know people who would spend $5K more for a Toyota because, even though this is a EV they think the head gaskets will go bad if it is a Subaru (non-car people).
The black plastic over the wheels is not my think. It feels and looks gimmicky.
ANYTHING even pretending to go down a dirt road needs front recovery points. that low hanging plastic and no tow hooks will be regretted very quickly. TOW hooks are 1000x more useful than black plastic wheel decoration.
HEY!!! Oh never mind you’re probably right..
Are the rear seats cooled? I only saw heat buttons.
Me too.
Yeah, thought that was weird.
“but I guess the engineers couldn’t be bothered.”
The engineers weren’t allowed to do a frunk. Although I bet a few of them did skunkworks proposals trying to prove it would work.
That’s the only note on a review of a car I have no feelings about and only read because I knew reading a Torch thing would make me happy, and also laugh.
That black plastic cladding in the front is certainly a choice. I generally prefer light colored vehicles. But in this case I will make an exception.
You could probably address that with a partial wrap….
Meh. Perfectly cromulent. But 150 kW charging is it?!? I bet it’s slower on Superchargers than on non-Tesla chargers. Tesla seems to nerf charging speed for competitors even though they have access. So a lukewarm 100-125 kW is likely on a Supercharger. Not road trip friendly at first glance. Hopefully it keeps up 150 kW for a good long while at a CCS station because if it tapers off any it’ll be a frustrating car to take long distance. And with a trailer? Nope, nope, nope! Even with a faster charging EV, long distance trailering is still not wonderful. But for camping within 100ish miles of home and an electric site it’ll be fine.
I know other brands offer faster charging, but I think this is less of an issue than what people make of it.
Last summer I did a long (about 800 km) drive in our 64 kWh eNiro. I did a relatively leasurely 400 km stint in the afternoon. The thing only has a max charging speed of 77kW, but it still charged to 100% in less time than what we needed for a short diner. (Somewhere between 45min and 1h). Ready for an other 400 km in the evening.
For longer drives, it is even better to do many short stops:
Recalculate for larger battery/faster charging/adamantium blatter.
My Model Y is 75 kWh but can charge at up to 275 kW in optimal conditions. Every summer I road trip it camping with a small popup caravan in tow. Common trips are 300-500 km one way in my US state. Most charging stops take 20ish minutes between unhooking the caravan, charging and rehooking the caravan. When the charge rate drops to 125 kW I’m stopping charging and going again. Taking an hour per stop would not be okay for me. Back in fall 2025 I needed to get 800 km in a day. Most charging stops were ten minutes at 250 kW chargers. The car often peaked at low 200’s then had us stop charging once the charging rate dropped to 140 kW.
I wish we had good public transportation like Belgium. Otherwise I totally would have taken a train instead of driving. Sadly aside from airlines there’s jack squat for public transportation here. So driving 800 km in a day often is more practical than other alternatives.
We do have reasonable public transportation in Belgium.
But also, Belium is compact. You could cross the entire country in any chosen direction with your 75kWh, without a stop.
So I assume you mean trains in Europe. In that case, yes absolutely. It takes 4 and a half hours only to go by train from Brussels to Bordeaux (900 km).
About the same time toward the east of France for ski.
And I have taken very comfy and affordable night trains to Croatia and Polen, among others.
Another important factor in charging speed at Superchargers is how busy they are.
If you go to the one in Shelby, IA, with more than a couple cars, you’re not getting max speed. That one is consistently slow for us, but it’s the last stop as you leave Iowa.
It seems like there must be groups of chargers that have a common power source, since you can sometimes move to the next one over and get full speed again.
The older V2 cabinets share power supplies. If you look for cabinets 1A and 1B for instance, those share a power supplies and will evenly split the available power between the cabinets.
99% of Tesla SCs deployed today are 400V.
Since the Toyota/Subaru twins are on a 400V platform, they won’t have any issues getting all the power they request from Tesla SCs.
800V cars like Hyundai/Kia, Lucid and Porsche have to convert low-voltage to high-voltage, which is why they can’t can’t charge as fast they could on a 800V charger (Most other chargers like EA,EVgo,IONNA).
Am I hallucinating or is that Torch being held aloft by balloons above the bZ in the lead image?
look closer!
Are you a Muppet, Jason?
only on my dad’s side
So are we just going to ignore Beaker with a beaker inside the treeless treehouse?
Whoa, whoa, whoa – slow down, Professor!
*takes notes*
It’s wild how many people actually subconsciously want a minivan, but have some tiny shred of something that prevents them from just buying one – it results in this very bizarre niche of vehicle unique to the US market that’s comprised of intentionally functionally-compromised minivans.
Are you crazy?!? Minivans are for soccer moms! These mothers are rugged, athleisure and Ugg boot-clad individualists! That just so happen to take multiple children to soccer games.
It is crazy to see the generational divide happening right now – Gen X rebelled against minivans because they were dorky soccer mom cars, and now Millennials are rebelling against SUVs because they’re dorky soccer mom cars. I’m personally here for it. I’m 34 and childless and really want an Odyssey as a 2nd vehicle.
My millennial friends with children either jumped right into getting a minivan or are actively shopping them now. I guess we all have memories of how awesome they were when we were kids, rather than any societal stigma around them.
Maybe this is regional or something, because I’m mid-30s too and have friends and coworkers throughout the Millennial range and the only household that bought a minivan was one that had a 3rd child (and even that didn’t last long). The dads may be open to it but it’s a hard no for the moms.
It may be upbringing too. Most of my friends are those that I grew up with, and we all came from lower-middle-class families. Most didn’t have a family of 5 or 6, but the van was an all around workhorse. It fit sheets of plywood or drywall, roadtripped, and made carpooling with friends/cousins a breeze.
I’ve been concerned about wild softex herds for a long time, and you’re the only journalist willing to discuss it. I’m so damn sick of my special interests being ignored.
Car looks OK. Toyota hasn’t thrown all that much R&D into the EV world and this kind of shows. Better than being seen in an Elon Egg. I have standards, barely.
4.4 seconds is something I’d like in a commuter wagon, though. Wipe the smirks off the faces of the little WRX and GTI twerps in short order. They’d think they had lined up against an Outback.
But no spare tire in an offroad wagon? C’mon….
Mazda needs to do something similar to the bZ -> bZ Woodrow Wilson with the Mazda 3.
Add 100mm into the wheelbase and another 100mm behind the rear wheels of the hatch and you have a Mazda3 wagon that I would definitely buy.
You may make up the cost delta in residuals. Subarus hold their value better than most affordable cars, but Toyota is king on that front…and I very much doubt that the market will care that it’s basically the exact same car.
Anyway I’m one of the like 6 or 7 people that are excited about a lot of these second gen EVs. 300ish miles of range and supercharger access really opens things up quite a lot. I think they’ll find a niche.
I have zero interest in this car but read the review because Torch. Was not disappointed…
I wonder if it’s like the Mitsubishi Outlander and Nissan Rogue hybrids, or the BR-Z vs the GR86 the other way, where there’s a base model you can only get as a Subaru. Did you get a chance to compare spec sheets? I’m guessing not or you’d have told us what we get for that 5 grand.
That’s exactly it. The review at Ars Technica says that the base trim of the Toyota is equivalent to the mid level trim of the Subaru. That mid level Subaru is still $1500 less than the base Toyota tho.
Brutal headline. Way to call a spade a spade though. That’s why I’m a member.
I feel irrationally irritated that they didn’t bring the rear wheel cladding all the way down to meet the bumper and rocker panel. Was the extra three inches of plastic too much added cost for the design team?
It’s just like the previous gen RAV-4, and probably the current also. When it’s in white, which half of them, it looks like the tires are about to be popped by big mechanical pincers at the scrapyard.
I don’t care enough to see how they actually compare size-wise, but stylistically, this is a much more convincing new Outback than the actual new Outback. I could see the Subaru version finding a ready market there, especially at a lower price point.
So much so that in Europe Subaru is calling this the E-Outback.
AMC?
And those were *actually* off-road capable, as opposed to this.