wivenhoe

I had to have a replacement AC charging module fitted - had to use public DC chargers for 6 weeks. It may be a coincidence, but I seem to be experiencing better range than everyone else. Perhaps the temps are not so low in North Essex. 
I haven’t changed my driving - a lot of 70mph dual carriageway and about 50mph rural roads. A week after my collection in May, my range was 220 / 180.  I use the auto radiant heaters with +2 / heated seats & wheel with occasional 27c heat for defogging and am getting about 190 which for 64kw usable is 2.9. Today for instance on only local roads I did 19 miles and the car is at 91% so about 3.3 kw / mile. 

As I had to use public chargers for 6 weeks (in the summer) I kept a record of charging - Lexus paid me £ 250 for the excess cost over home charging. I regularly used MER & Osprey 150kw chargers and did get around 140kw until about 40%. At Rugby services 150kw it took 30 mins for 20% to about 80% which is about right. I haven’t used high speed chargers in low temperatures yet. 

I should also have said that in the RZ it’s very easy to turn off the speed limit display as it has a dedicated shortcut button in the screen. BUT this turns off the speed limit display completely in the HUD and both screens. 

I found this to be the same as the ‘over speed’ warning - you can select to have visual without audible but it has to be set every time. It’s annoying and the manual for the RZ is a bit misleading as it says this can be set as part of ‘my settings’ which reads as becoming the default but it isn’t. As it seems to be an EU reg there isn’t a way round it. My previous BMW had it but it was only active when the semi-autonomous driving was operating - far more sensible and it wasn’t as sensitive. The Lexus system is so sensitive that it gives an alert when you’re looking at a junction or at the door mirror. 
I have turned the volume right down for all notifications so I can’t hear them with the radio / music. 
We swapped the wife’s 2022 Honda for a new Toyota as the lane keeping in the Honda was so severe it was dangerous - even on the lowest setting if you moved over to avoid something in the road it wrestled the car back towards the kerb ! The Toyota has a button on the wheel to turn it off but in the Honda it was buried in the menu and accessed by a button deep down below the dash 

I have been told that the EU mandates that it defaults back every time the car is started. Right hand drive, Brexit and our cars are configured for EU rules !

I think when you initially set up your profile it asks if you want to use face recognition. If the driver monitor is off then it may be getting confused !

I checked today and RZ is on the steering column so does move with the steering wheel. I think the RX is the same 

I completely agree but as most people do focus on the fuel cost then that effects residuals. I see parts of London now charge significantly more to park a diesel compared to an EV.  Pretty soon I can see no go areas for ICE’s - stupid but with the environmentalists taking control it’ll only get worse. Plug-in’s with reasonable EV range may come into their own then as they have the best of both worlds. 

In the RZ the Driver Monitor camera is on the bottom of the drivers screen. If you have the steering wheel too high it obscures the camera as it is in the screen not on the column.
In the RZ you can turn it off in Driver Assistance. I haven’t, as you will have to do it every time the car start (EU regulation) and I suspect the dynamic radar cruise will not function. 
 

2 screenshots. The first is the RZ and I think the second is the 2023 RX

I have had 4 PHEV’s - 2 Merc’s, 1 BMW and a Range Rover Velar. All of them kept enough Battery to provide the 0 - 60 time even if the range and Battery showed 0. If you selected EV only the acceleration fell away after about 60. 
For my regular journeys the plug-in was definitely the answer - the RR showed an average of 90mpg over 12,000 miles. Electric then was much cheaper so a great saving. Now with electric costing about 28p (ignoring off-peak tariffs) the saving is not so much but still about half.  Dragging the Battery around on constant long journeys would wipe out the benefits of local driving.
Normally you can only access 80% of the Battery so on the RX say 18kw x 80% = say 14kw x say 28p = say £ 4 for real world 35 miles = 11p / mile. Petrol say £ 1.50 x 4.5 litres = £ 6.75 / say 35 mpg = 19p. 
I went full EV after the plug-ins and bought a RZ 

Lexus continue to market Lexus Link+ as having send to car - Customer DisService say the service will be available soon - have been telling me that since May.
 

Lexus are light years behind other manufacturers in terms of the App - 8 years ago Mercedes Me had functions like geofencing and 4 years ago BMW enabled you to take a live photo of the car (uses the 3D cameras). May not be what you particularly want but are just examples of how advanced they were years ago compared to Lexus now.  

I was at an auction some years ago and there was a mint 3 year old Aston Martin Vantage. I spoke to a dealer about it and they said they were going to bid for it up to £ 45k - very low price as a very risky buy as it didn’t have a V5. I watched the auction and the bids stalled at £ 48k and then someone on the internet bought for £ 49k. Saw the dealer a few weeks later and he said he was so wrong about the car. The reason the car didn’t have a V5 was that the personal plate had been taken off and DVLA hadn’t yet issued a replacement V5. The buyer on the internet had somehow (police contact maybe) found out that the personal plate and car were registered to Buckingham Palace and he sold the car within a week for £ 80k !

I put a personal plate on a new BMW and the dealer gave me more (allegedly) to leave it on when I px’d it - he said it made him smile and looked forward to selling it - RU 69 BOB - apparently younger people read it to mean a different thing to older people !

John - I must ask - how did you get on with no HUD nor speedo so having to use the iPad ?

Or, as I did, buy a new Range Rover and be virtually guaranteed to have a few ‘issues’. That said, I’ve had a few issues in my new RZ !

I got my second key last week - collected car mid May. I thought it looked slightly different and when I tried to put it on a key ring I found out why. It didn’t have a blade (manual) key in it - I then remembered that I got a spare blade on collection so inserted that complete with ring. After the dealer programmes the key you get a message on start up saying a key has been programmed and you then have to read and remember how to cancel the message, otherwise you get it every start up !

7 hours ago, omegatt said:

Lets  hope AF do a discount you might well need one given the RX450 is in the premier league of nicked cars. 

I have been looking at the RX to replace my Mazda CX5, plugged the numbers into LV   my current insurer,  £1650  per year please Sir !  Err that's £1200 more than the CX5,  no points, over 60 and live in a very rural area.  No RX for me ☹️

Might be worth a call to NFU - they gave me a very reasonable quote. 

I think Lexus Insurance doesn’t want to insure anyone. My dealer told me that for the 7 day complimentary insurance when you buy a new car the dealer has to get authority from the underwriter- every single referral he has made has been refused meaning the customer has to delay the purchase and organise insurance before they drive away. He says as a lot of their customers are repeats they take it for granted they’ll have a week to secure insurance once they have the reg. 

I’m not sure of the relevance of this in the UK - half of the discount is a federal tax saving off of earnings, not off the price of the car  - https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/taxcenter.shtml

From a different website - the $15,000 lease cash incentive includes the $7,500 federal tax credit. We are passing along the benefit of those tax credits to customers," a spokesperson told InsideEVs.

The US government has brought in massive tax incentives for EV’s - it’s a major reason Tesla reduced their prices as one of the incentives applied to cars less than $50k. The US did all this whilst the UK government removed the subsidy on EV’s. 

It’s not only EV’s. I px’d my 2 years Range Rover Velar in May against the Takumi. One of the major reasons for doing it was I got £ 62k for it having paid £ 70k - unheard of. The Velar is now worth £ 48k so a loss of £ 14k in 6 months and nearly double what it lost in 2 years. Takumi has lost about £ 18k so in real terms £ 4K more. Looking at it like this is the only way I can sleep at night !

7 hours ago, Boomer54 said:

Be interested to know how you get on with that Yaris. Think my daughter would like to trade up to that from her Aygo.

We swapped from the Jazz to the Yaris as the ‘driving aids’ in Jazz were ridiculous, even on the lowest setting. The Lane control was downright dangerous in say a lane where you moved over to avoid something the car forced you back. It was a right palaver having to turn them off every time. 
My wife really likes the Yaris and thinks it is one of the best cars she has had, recent ones being the Jazz, Polo, Fiat 500, Polo. As you can see, she will only drive small cars. If you are going with the Yaris, if you can, get one with a pano roof - it makes a massive difference. 

We swapped the wife’s Honda Jazz for a new Yaris (was a straight swap as the Honda had the same residual as paid for 2 years before). The Yaris is a top of the range and cost £ 21k. The Takumi LBX is £ 40k - spec wise not that much higher so double the price for better materials and build - I just don’t see it. 

Just looked on Autotrader and despite Merc’s agency approach, there are loads of brand new Merc’s at heavily discounted prices e.g. EQC Premium Plus £ 9k discount. So that’s not how the agency approach was meant to work. Their announcement said single price so no stress as you would always get the best offer !

My local tyre centre is also a MG dealership. I know the manager really well there. They were forced to switch, as Peugeot after many years decided to remove the franchise - Stellantis rethink on number of dealers. He says they have never been so busy as being MG they move far more cars and they get a fair bit of warranty work ! Plus MG sell ICE cars and EV’s. He said it didn’t cost a fortune to ‘rebrand’ to MG and they don’t spend a fortune having to prepare for the tick sheet mob of ‘franchise auditors’ from Peugeot.   
However, a relative of mine bought a new MG and it has been back to the dealers with a faulty fuel gauge that they can’t get the parts for. 
 

Genesis tried the web only sales and a central service with collection and delivery of cars. They sold this as a unique service with personalised attention. It bit them badly and now they have signed deals with dealer networks for a  network of conventional localish service centres. 

Genesis has appointed the first seven of 20 new network partners as part of its plans to establish a franchised dealer network in the UK ahead of further European expansion.

The move represents a significant change of direction for the brand which was launched in the UK in 2021 on the premise that it would “look after the customer from end-to-end, taking full control of that with no agents, no dealers”.

My policy went up by £ 300 to insure the RZ Takumi instead of my 2 year old Range Rover Velar. I just got a quote for a RX Takumi instead of the RZ and £ 300 cheaper ! Not in London and if I’d kept the Velar I think the renewal would have been over £1,000 more as NFU now refuse to insure any Land Rovers younger than 5 years except for existing clients. 

The market price of all EV’s have plummeted recently. The critics favourite, the Genesis GV60 is a good example. A top of the range model is £ 73k on their website so similar to a RZ Takumi  Autotrader has a 23 reg with 800 miles top of the range for £ 59k. Motorway will not provide a value. Motorway values a 6 month old RZ Takumi with 4,500 miles at £ 54k so less than the Genesis, but in the same dire range.

The Lexus charging network is (to say the least) not very good. Amazingly it isn’t integrated into the satnav.
I have a RZ and due to a failure in the AC charging unit, I couldn’t charge at home and only use DC chargers for 6 weeks. I use ZapMap which is fully integrated into CarPlay and on the go you can check near chargers for speed and availability. There is then an option to navigate to them using Maps / Google Maps / Waze. 
You can preload a journey and then set charger locations - it has almost all the networks and details of cost & facilities and users report defective chargers. It will tell you whether the charger can be paid contactless, need an App or specific card. In the 6 weeks I was fully dependent on it, everything was great. It is free although a subscription (less than Lexus) gives you more capabilities.