When a brand spends three and a half decades striving for quiet, effortless luxury, it doesn't hand the final say on ride and refinement to just any tyre manufacturer. So, it's telling that the eighth-generation
Lexus ES — the most thoroughly reengineered version of the saloon since it first appeared alongside the flagship LS in 1989 — leaves the factory on the
Michelin Primacy 5 Energy, supplied in its bespoke original-equipment form.
It's a pairing that makes a lot of sense. Lexus and Michelin have built their reputations on the same handful of promises: comfort you can feel, efficiency you can measure, quality that lasts, and a premium finish in everything they do. Here's why the new ES and the Primacy 5 Energy are so well matched.
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A clean-sheet saloon, built for the UK as an EV
The new ES is a genuine ground-up redesign rather than a facelift. For British buyers, Lexus has taken the bold step of dropping combustion power entirely: the UK range launches in a single battery-electric form, the ES 350e, priced from £59,345 across three grades — Premium, Premium Plus and the lavish Takumi.
Under the skin sits a single front-mounted electric motor producing 221bhp, fed by a 77kWh lithium-ion battery that Lexus quotes at around 329 miles of WLTP range, with a 0–62mph time of 8.2 seconds. Charging runs at up to 150kW, making a 10–80% top-up the work of roughly half an hour. Crucially for how the car drives, it rides on the same GA-K architecture as the NX SUV, but with stiffened structures throughout, a newly developed multi-link rear suspension, and a variable-ratio steering rack — all aimed at delivering the brand's signature blend of comfort, confidence and control.
That's the brief a factory tyre has to honour. An electric executive saloon is heavy, instantly torquey and almost silent, which leaves nowhere for a tyre to hide on grip, rolling resistance or noise. This is exactly the challenge the Primacy 5 Energy S1 was engineered to overcome.