The new ES makes its strongest case when Thomas and James stop trying to provoke it and simply let it cover distance. This eighth-generation car is presented as moving from the Camry-related foundation associated with earlier versions to a Toyota Crown-based platform, with the tested ES 500 using an all-wheel-drive electric powertrain producing a stated 340 horsepower. Acceleration is strong enough to repeatedly trigger the car's incident-detection system during aggressive driving, but that becomes an accidental summary of its personality: the ES would rather everyone calm down. Over highway miles, rain, and the trip toward Thomas's childhood hometown, its quiet, comfortable, uneventful behavior is treated as a virtue rather than a failure to entertain.

The interior produces a more complicated verdict. Both hosts appreciate the clean presentation, well-positioned gauge cluster, real steering-wheel buttons, strong camera system, dual-device charging area, Mark Levinson audio system, soft-close doors on the Luxury Plus trim, and the amusingly important armrest that opens from either side. The visual treatment feels unlike older Lexus cabins, with bamboo trim and simplified surfaces contributing to what they later describe as some Chinese-market influence. Yet an approximately $80,000 Canadian price makes the omissions difficult to ignore. Despite generous rear space, the tested car lacks heated and ventilated rear seats and a third climate-control zone, leaving it well short of replacing the discontinued LS as a true flagship rear-seat experience.

Driving impressions are consistently positive precisely because there is little drama. Thomas describes the car as benign, well designed, and well calibrated, while the all-wheel-drive layout provides reassurance when heavy rain arrives. Sport mode sharpens responses and introduces artificial sound and vibration, but the presentation pokes fun at the software apparently referencing higher transmission RPM despite the tested car being an EV. The hosts also mention that a European version offers simulated shifts, while their Canadian car does not. More consequentially, they describe the ES's range as mediocre, although compatibility with Tesla charging infrastructure helped during the trip. The video does not provide enough measured efficiency, charging, or range data to turn that criticism into a detailed EV assessment.

Styling inspires considerably less enthusiasm. The ES is described as surprisingly large—longer than an M5 according to the discussion—and neither host is especially taken with its exterior appearance, including the black accent intended to make the body look visually lighter. Lexus's written description of a sleek silhouette hinting at an emotional driving experience becomes an easy target because the car itself produces few driving emotions. Even the disappearance of the traditional Lexus "L" badge from some prominent locations becomes part of a wider feeling that the design is cleaner but less immediately expressive. Importantly, Thomas says the appearance would not prevent him from buying it because the driving experience matters more to him, keeping subjective styling criticism separate from the car's functional strengths.

The road-trip format gives the review more personality than a conventional launch drive. Thomas revisits Brentford, remembers seeing Queen Elizabeth II pass by as a child, points out a farm where he baled hay, and recalls working at a bait-and-tackle store packing worms, leeches, and crayfish while weighing turkeys. Those stories have little to do with evaluating a Lexus, but they demonstrate the kind of job the ES handles convincingly: carrying occupants through a long, rainy journey comfortably enough that conversation becomes the main event. The joke that the car literally took Thomas down memory lane is silly, but it also makes Lexus's claims of an emotional experience funnier when the emotion comes from the destination rather than the machine.

The hot-wing challenge eventually overwhelms the automotive review by design. After warm-up flavors, Thomas, James, and Karsten tackle sauces described as roughly 3 million and 10 million Scoville, producing shaking hands, sweating, dizziness, stomach cramps, tingling, facial discomfort, desperate milk consumption, and increasingly incoherent jokes. Their reactions are memorable, but the video provides no independent verification of the sauces' stated Scoville ratings, so the numbers function as the challenge's reported benchmarks rather than measurements established by the presentation. More importantly, once the wings arrive, the ES largely disappears. The segment is entertaining as Throttle House chaos but turns a road test into a food challenge for a substantial portion of the runtime.

The closing assessment restores enough automotive focus to clarify where the hosts land. They characterize the ES as calm, docile, technologically improved, visually unusual, and influenced by design trends associated with the Chinese market, while noting that North American cars are made in Japan. It cannot fill the LS's role because the luxury level simply is not there, but they also point out that it costs roughly half as much. For what the ES is trying to accomplish, their verdict is broadly favorable: it is comfortable, spacious, easy to live with, and competent over distance, even if the styling, missing luxury equipment, modest EV range, artificial Sport-mode theatrics, and overzealous incident detection keep it from feeling like an unqualified flagship.

Pros

• The road trip demonstrates the ES's strongest qualities through sustained highway driving, heavy rain, and everyday conversation rather than relying entirely on specifications.
• Comfortable road manners, all-wheel drive, a spacious cabin, well-positioned instruments, physical steering-wheel controls, strong cameras, and useful charging storage create a convincing daily-driving package.
• The hosts clearly separate their dislike of the exterior styling from their positive assessment of how well the car drives and functions.
• Criticism of missing rear-seat amenities at the roughly $80,000 Canadian price gives useful context to the suggestion that the ES cannot truly replace the LS.
• Thomas's hometown stories make the road-trip structure entertaining while unintentionally demonstrating how unobtrusive the ES can be over a longer journey.
• The hosts remain willing to mock awkward details such as repeated incident warnings and questionable Sport-mode behavior despite generally liking the car.

Cons

• The EV discussion lacks enough measured range, efficiency, charging-speed, and real-world consumption data to evaluate the powertrain in much depth.
• Missing heated and ventilated rear seats and third-zone climate control undermine the premium positioning of the tested configuration.
• Sport mode's artificial vibration and aggressive-driving incident warnings come across as poorly matched with the otherwise calm character of the car.
• The extended hot-wing challenge is memorable entertainment but eventually pushes the ES itself into the background during what begins as an automotive road test.
• Several specifications and claims—including the extreme Scoville ratings—are presented conversationally without independent testing or verification.

The new ES emerges as a comfortable, spacious, technologically improved road-trip sedan whose calm competence matters more than excitement, but its premium price exposes equipment omissions and its electric powertrain deserves deeper testing than this journey provides. Throttle House makes the trip far more entertaining than the car is dramatic, although the spectacularly ill-advised wing challenge ultimately becomes more memorable than the Lexus carrying them there.