My 2006 RX400h has just failed on me as i was accelerating up a dual carriageway, there was a bang from under the car and then total drive failure in the outer lane. I managed to get it to the side before it totally stopped. This has got to be a safety hazard, lucky I wasn’t on a motorway in the fast lane like some have reported.
I got it to lexus in Cheltenham who have taken 3 days to suspect that it maybe the inverter that has failed. Normally this would have been covered under the warrantee but apparently because when I brought the car from a garage 3 years ago it was classed as cat D insurance then all the warrantees are void. It apparently had minor flood damage back in the 2007 floods and was in excellent condition when I brought it. It had only done 6K miles when I brought it and has only done 28k now 3 years later, so very low mileage.
They didn’t tell me that when they were servicing it every year which I had done to maintain the warrantee.
They replaced the steering rack early this year under a recall but the inverter is not classified as a recall even though there appears to be many failures especially on 2006 models.
Normally the inverter failures are hidden because they are paid for by lexus under the warrantee, does anyone know how many have failed , bet lexus don’t publish that information.
Surely the ones replaced under warrantee would have been examined by lexus to see what the common point of failure was, where is this data?.
Have all the newer ones been modified or now the 5 year warrantee are about to run out will this start highlighting this problem.
Surely the resale price of a hybrid over 5 years will be zero with the cost of an inverter is £3k just for the part without the labour.
Does anyone know if these inverters can be repaired.