javadude

Not yet. Still driving as much and as enthusiastically as before although that's cause I'm still on a good fixed-rate deal for refuelling at home (5p/kWh which is equivalent to about 1.5p/mile or 500mpg). That ends in November and while electric should still be cheaper than petrol I suspect I'll pay a bit more attention to how far my right foot goes down given how electric prices have been rising. There might be a bit less fun.

Really useful tip, thanks. Shame my 1000 litres of water barrels are currently empty though cause it would be great to run it off that 😞

I had to google APC! https://www.detailingwiki.org/detailing-miscellaneous/purpose-cleaner-apc/?quad_cc Sounds like you'd need to wax afterwards?

It depends on the mpg you're comparing it against and efficiency of the electric drivetrain. For my EV the cut-off point would be 80p/kWh compared with my previous NX300h. Fortunately public chargers are still less than that and I'm only paying 5p/kWh at home overnight at the moment. Even at the average UK tarriff of about 27p/kWh I'd be ok.

I don't know. The UX seemed like a half-hearted EV toe in the water and maybe admission that hybrid and fuel cells are not the only (or any in my opinion) answer to climate change. It'll be interesting to see if they invest in making that kind of change with the UX refresh or if they just have their focus on the newer models like the RZ which has CCS.

I found no problem with my RX, perhaps the engine noise nicely masked the CVT. My NX sounded awful when reved with that 4 cylinder engine though. I don't know how much was the engine and how much the CVT but it was just embarrasing. Apart from the the car was awesome though.

The UXe can use 7kw "fast" (which aren't that fast but faster than 3 pin socket). I think all/most CHAdeMO (which the UXe uses) are 50kw which is "rapid". (I think technically the standard supports faster but not many new CHAdeMO chargers are being installed in UK/Europe these days.) CCS chargers in the UK are "rapid" (50kw) and increasingly faster ones "ultra-rapid" (up to 350kw). UXe can't use CCS and there is no adapter. Most EVs now sold in UK/Europe support CCS and not CHAdeMO. Extension leads are not an option due to liquid cooling/safety/weight.

Never experienced that on my NX300h in the 3 years I owned it. (I did have a problem when autoglass replaced the windscreen with a supposedly exact match non-tesla screen: the hud displayd at a slight angle. They tried another of the same make and batch and oddly that had the same problem 🙄 before they or the insurer agreed to a genuine lexus windscreen which fixed the problem.)

Hmm. My two year old EV was £48k and has a range or 348miles WLTP, 250kw charge speed and 0-60 in 3.7 seconds. Ok so it would be £56k now and the Lexus will be nicer but 70k would be a lot for mediocre range and charge speed. Hoping its less or there's a v2 coming along quickly afterwards and it might tempt me.

I wonder if its still on the previous owners account. I'd suggest try contacting customer services.

They are very nice cars (apart from the engine which I found noisy and slow coming from an RX). At that point it was the best car I'd owned for the creature comforts, practicality etc.

The online service book is how its done which does seem a bit odd. I preferred a paper book with stamps in. If you create a My Lexus account and register the car then you'll be able to see the service history: https://www.lexus.co.uk/apps/customerportal#/tiles/ownedCars/+/sso/login/autoclose=true

If I was doing loads of miles (which I sometimes do - depends on my client) then I'd save money over the life of the car based on fuel costs. Most of my charging is at home at 1/14th cost of petrol. I only use rapid chargers when I'm going long distance and then rarely. Even costing me more is worth it cause the car is better then any ICE I've owned (eg IS200, IS220d, RX450h, NX300h) as its better to drive. The car will do 250-270 miles at motorway speeds and there are plenty of choices for rapid chargers even if your first choice isn't working. I've never worried about range or finding chargers not working. Ok so I have access to all the Tesla superchargers which are pretty reliable and fast which helps. I'm really looking forward to Lexus producing a good EV though. The EV benefits of a smooth, quiet, responsive, fast EV plus the Lexus luxury and service will be hard to beat.

Sounds like a fun road-trip. Shame life is too busy at the moment. According to ABRP the trip would take me 7 hr 18 min at motorway speeds in my EV, including 30 min of charging. I'd want to stop for longer than that to pee and eat during that long a drive. Cost estimated at £3.60 for charge to 100% at home and £24 on route so £28 to do 428 miles. What would that be in petrol? £100?

You're right, EVs still involve a lot of CO2, but a lot less than ICE cars. So there's a conspiracy between the governments of the world to push us into cars that are more difficult to tax, cheaper to fuel (and aren't enslaved by the major oil companies), more reliable, cheaper to maintain, and can be both more fun and more relaxing to drive than ICE cars? Hmmm doesn't seem so bad! If it's just to be able to control us with things like speed limiters then.... that's coming in anyway regardless of the fuel type. Given how crap our government are at promoting EVs and supporting charging infrastructure it seems more like something that's been forced on them that they're paying some kind of lip-service to than is coming from them. Norway are doing a good job (85% EV sales in May). Maybe there's a conspiracy there.

So you don't believe climate change exists? Or you think there's a better solution than EVs? Or the price of fuel is to push people into EVs? Not sure what you're saying.

I'm still on a fixed rate Octopus Go tariff paying 5p/kw at night so fill up for 1.5p/m compared with what would be about 21p/m for my old petrol NX. A 200 miles journey to visit family costs me about £3. I've not had to charge out in the wild much. When I have its mainly been on 7kw posts while staying away from home. Those have been hit and miss but it depends a lot on the network. They were BP Pulse, who have a fairly appalling reputation for reliablity. It's almost like BP want people to keep on buying petrol. The Tesla chargers are the gold standard for other's to follow. Plug and play if you have a Tesla and very reliable and fast (eg charge speed of up to 1000 miles range added in an hour on the V3s). Only 15 opened up so far and you do need to use an app if you don't have a Tesla. Hopefully it'll push the other charger networks to up their game. Also thinking you might find it useful to download the Wattsup App (or Zapmap, ABRP...), plot usual routes that you take and see what public chargers are available on the route.

The range wouldn't be such a big problem if the car had ultra-rapid charging. Wonder if they'll ditch the CHAdeMO connector and go for a better charge speed too but then the RZ still only manages 150kW charging. My two year old EV has 250kW. How long do we have to wait for Lexus to catch up?

When I test drove a Kia e-Niro the pedestrian alert sounded like someone on a train playing music loudly on headphones: that annoying faint tinny almost musical sound. At first I thought there was a car behind me with the radio on loud but then I realised there was nothing behind me. Fortunately you could turn it off and just look out for people about to step out in front of you.

I don't understand why manufacturers are not including dashcams as standard these days.

On the EV and Tesla FB groups there are plenty of people talking about driving the NC500 in their EV so Scotland can't be such a problem. Even with current electric costs it's cheaper to fuel an EV at home and on some public chargers. (For my EV I pay 1.5p/m for electric compared with what would have been 21p/m for petrol of my previous "self charging" hybrid.) Some public chargers are similar to petrol/diesel at the moment but they're typically the ultra rapids that you only use on long journeys (and you'd be paying silly prices for petrol/diesel at motorway services too). You're right: pay per mile or something will happen. For now (and probably always going forwards to incentivise the move for climate change) EVs will be cheaper than ICE cars. They're also a lot more fun to drive. In reply to the original post I have a Zappi home charger in the garage. It wasn't cheap but I combined fitting it with a much needed rewiring of the garage and I look on it as a home improvement rather than just related to the purchase of one car. I don't use many features on it yet but it'll work well with solar panels when we get those. The app to view energy usage of the house and charger is cool. I use the car to schedule charging within a 00:30 to 04:30 cheap rate slot (with Octopus Go) but I think the zappi has some sort of scheduling too.

You only need the range to drive for a couple of hours on the motorway and the charge speed to top up in the time it takes to stop for a break (eg toilet, coffee). EVs have that already. (eg mine will do 4 hours+ / 250-300 miles on the motorway and recharge to 80% in 22 mins.) Degradation is low and already better than the earliest EVs. Things like reduction in weight and use of cheaper and easier to source materials are going to be more significant (eg Tesla's LFP battery which doesn't use cobalt).

Build quality is a lottery. When I bought (Sept 2020) mine had a list of cosmetic issues that they fixed under warranty as did many others but plenty had no problems at all. These days the UK ones are built in China and soon Germany and the quality is meant to be much better. Reliability wise after purchase mines been great and any electric car should be way more reliable than a hybrid or pure ICE as there's far less to go wrong. (My breakdown cover reduced when I changed from Lexus to Tesla.) Just waiting for Lexus to build a class leading EV. (Sadly the UX300e and RZ450e aren't 😢 ) Most surprising to see broken down: any Lexus. I've seen a few but not many over the years.

I had a IS220d Sport. The gear box was better than the non-sport which I had as a courtesy car once or twice. 6th gear was so long that it struggled at 70 as mentioned. Sport gear box was nicer to drive but a bit clunky to deal with the torque. The amount of torque and the responsiveness was good. I modified my previous IS200 but didn't feel the need with the IS220 as it had everything and was quicker. Fuel economy wasn't great for a diesel as they'd just worked out how to meet some new emissions regulation. Vague memory something like mid to high 30's as the sport was less than the non-sport too. It had some recall thing done on the valves or something I think. Apart from that it was reliable but maybe I was just fortunate. If I bought again and was still into ICE cars I'd prob get the IS250 though.

From https://electrek.co/2022/01/12/government-data-shows-gasoline-vehicles-are-significantly-more-prone-to-fires-than-evs/