My quick thoughts after ~350 miles:
Low speed drivability is greatly increased… it’s butter smooth and you wouldn’t know it wasn’t a V8. I also feel like they might have dampened the sound even more because I feel like I hear less of the engine at WOT. The issues I had with the 2018-2020 “not feeling like an LS” in this regard are gone.
Same as before, the engine will get up and scream once you’re moving, thanks to the turbos.
However, there’s a vast gap between those two where the transmission struggles to pick the right gear and turbo lag is still pretty bad. I think it’s exacerbated by how smooth the transmission is - it almost feels like a CVT and shifts can be imperceptible. So if you nail the throttle to the floor, the car takes a split second to read your input, takes another split second to downshift, and then it starts to pick up speed but you hit turbo lag… and THEN it hits its sweet spot and starts to take off. But because the gear shifts are so smooth + turbo lag, it almost just feels like 1-2 seconds of nothing which can be very frustrating and lead to some “oh ****” moments if you’re trying to merge or pull out across traffic.
So… below 4/10ths , the car is very happy and a pleasure to drive. It feels more like an LS to me now than it did before. If you ask for more than that, it’s still difficult to drive and requires planning before you need acceleration because the car has a mind of its own in how/when it delivers power. Even if the LS 500 is more powerful than previous LSs, the delay in responding to driver inputs + turbo lag makes it feel less responsive when you want acceleration. Outside of that, it’s definitely superior to any LS before. Sort of an odd dichotomy.