mhult

Sometimes I wish I had kept my second gen IS as a collection item. It was a bit special, with light-coloured leather, Mark Levinson, and adaptive cruise control (when that was still quite an expensive extra). And the build quality of the second gen IS is stellar. It literally felt like the LS of the same era, obviously in a smaller format, and with a less powerful engine, but otherwise just as well crafted.

Thanks, but I already ordered a BMW i4. I am sure Tesla and Polestar make fine driving experiences, but I have specific reasons for not preferring those brands.

This has happened to me a couple of times. As Herbie points out, the actual messages displayed when the 12 V battery is low are irrelevant. What happens is that the computers don’t get enough voltage to function properly, so they can flash lights and show text that is completely bonkers. Since this battery only powers some electronics and no starter motor, the load on the battery is very low. However, if you drive mostly short distances or leave the car parked for some time, the 12 V battery can discharge. It is charged whenever the hybrid traction system is powered on, but the charging current is limited to 4 A. So a completely discharged battery will need a very long drive to charge up completely. A couple of hours will not make much of a difference. So my recommendation is to get a good charger like a CTEK or equivalent, that has an intelligent charging cycle that includes a heath check, charges the battery, and then goes into maintenace charging once the battery is full. I hook mine up a few times per year when I know that I have not done any long drives for a while. I installed a quick connector on the battery so I don’t have to mess with the screw terminals on the battery. Very convenient.

That's a short simple question that I am not sure I can give a short simple answer to. Well, as per EU regulations that have been in place for decades, landfills are basically prohibited. That is, the only things we put in waste landfills are rocks, concrete, bricks, tile, plaster, ceramics, and glass that is not packaging (because that is recycled separately). That stuff is then taken out of the waste landfills when building roads or filling the ground for other useful purposes. Consequentially, all batteries are taken care of by recycling facilities. That goes for all kinds of batteries, whether they are small button cells, phone batteries, electric car batteries or industrial batteries. As to the efficiency of that recycling, your guesses are as good as mine. I presume if there is value in the materials, they are indeed recycled. When there is no value in the materials, or rather, when the recycling is too expensive, I would guess that the materials do end up in some kind of environmentally safe storage above or below ground, until the technological economics of recycling improves. But this is rarely spoken about publicly. How is it in the UK? I do believe there is a mechanism of industrious people constantly looking to develop the recycling business for the good of the planet (and their investors). I put quite a lot of trust in this mechanism.

You are of course right, LInas, except one minor detail. Most domestic outlets and outdoor outlets here are 10 Ampere, not 10 kilowatts, which is fine for our electric cabin and engine block heaters that we expect to be able to run at home and at work, so our cars are per-conditioned for driving in the winter. But it is not enough for electric vehicle charging. That still requires additional installations in public spaces. Yes, I know we are privileged. I spend a significant part of my professional life working around Europe, and have also worked in the energy infrastructure sector. So it is easy for me to enjoy fabulous electric cars and feel good about weaning myself off fossil fuels. On the global scale this is a much more complex problem. Anyway, we who have the infrastructure should use this opportunity, and I hope in due time everyone is able to do this on a global level.

It is really interesting, the different rates of transition to electric vehicles in different parts of the world. Norway is the real outlier, with fully electric now being 80 percent of new car sales, and new ICE passenger car sales to be prohibited already in 2025. I live in Sweden, where fully electric is now 30 percent of all new car sales. The tax incentives for company car drivers are now such that unless a fully electric car does absolutely not work for your driving patterns, fully electric is the only way to go. For more luxurious cars, the cost differences are quite significant. Using the BMW i4 M50 as an example, the M440i, which is perhaps the closest ICE equivalent, is about 80 percent more expensive for the driver. Even a more modest sedan, such as the Lexus ES 300h is significantly more heavily taxed than the BMW i4 M50. Charging is obviously an issue if you have to park in the street. But everyone who owns a house here already has 400 V three phase power coming into the house, and can easily install a 11 kW or 22 kW charger. We installed a dual outlet 22 kW charger while waiting for delivery of the UX. Our main fuses are 3 x 25 A, so we obviously can't charge two cars at full power unless we upgrade the fuses (at some cost in the monthly grid fee). And the UX only has stupid single-phase charging, so when the heating system is running at 5 - 10 kW (intermittently) during winter, the UX sometimes goes down to 2 kW. We have a load balancing device which measures the current on each phase and informs the charger how much it can use. But so far we have never failed to have a full charge in the morning (I have the charger set to only charge off-peak). But it was really nice to see the RZ and i4 M50 charge at 11 kW when I had those on loan over weekends.

I am curious regarding which cars IS 300h owners who are going fully electric are buying. I love sports sedans and have been driving Lexus IS since 2010. I am really into the refinement of Lexus cars and would probably order an electric IS immediately upon availability, unless there was something seriously lacking with it. My wife drives a UX 300e which is nice but unfortunately too small and too short in range for me, and I am not an SUV person. I tried the RZ and did not like it much. The BMW i4 M50 impressed me with its performance and comfort level, and being fully electric is almost as smooth to drive as a Lexus (unlike ICE BMWs). Adding loads of options, including ventilated seats and smooth ivory white merino leather brought it close to the Lexus Takumi level of luxurious feeling. So that is what I ordered. Please share your thoughts and choices on this topic.

I don't know if it has any kind of advanced parking assist. But it has the panoramic view, and it certainly beeps a lot when close to walls and other cars while parking (as does any car with parking sensors). Intense beeps while in reverse is not standard all cars, but present on some, and this one has set a new level in terms of loudness. What bothers me most are the constant beeps while driving on an open road. As I said previously, many of those beeps are caused by very minor breaks of the automatically detected speed limits. I turned those off yesterday, which made the car almost quiet. However, when starting the car today, all those setting were back to default. Very annoying. If at all possible, the dealers need to configure the RZ to make a better first impression. As this one is now, the intense beeps alone have almost deterred me from buying one.

Bob, I have not seen Teammate mentioned in relation to the RZ. What I can tell is that the Lane tracking assist seems to be doing a good job, better than in the UX.

Just to be clear, the constant beeping in this car is absolutely ridiculous. It's like the car has ADHD. It rarely goes ten seconds without beeping. And in any ten second interval it can generate five different beeps, most of them mysterious to a new driver. It really ruins the driving experience, trying to pay attention to the road, listen to music or a podcast, having a discussion with a passenger, or just enjoying the (supposed) serenity of a Lexus. Granted, having spent a few hours in the car, most of the beeps are not that mysterious anymore. They are still just as annoying, though. I mean, if I pass a sign with a new speed limit and set the adaptive cruise control to the new speed +5 km/h, to compensate for the error in the speedometer, I have absolutely no use for the car beeping to tell me that I am (in reality) maybe speeding by one or two kilometers per hour. This particular acoustic warning can be turned off, but there are many others that I have yet to learn how to kill, if at all possible. I started thinking that maybe it is better to physically cut the cabling to all speaker elements in the car and live entirely without an audio system, than suffering all these beeps. That is maybe excessive, but it is indicative of how intolerable I found all those bloody beeps.

This review is mostly spot on with my own findings from test drives of the RZ. I have one on loan over the weekend. The rear seat is abysmal, with the low seat. It is approximately 6 centimeters closer the floor than in my wife's UX electric. This is a real shame, since there is plenty of leg room. With a higher seat position, or at least lowered wells for the feet, the car could have an awesome back seat. The beeps are really annoying, but I was able to tame some of them by disabling the warnings for exceeding the speed limits by single digits. Not mentioned in this review, though is that the front seats are not that great either. I am 1.84 meters tall, and the seats are too small for me, and can't be tilted far enough. I don't get a good support for my legs. The foot rest for the left foot makes things worse by raising my left leg, and there is no room between the foot rest and the brake pedal to rest my left foot. It seems to me that they built this car for short people. The seats in my IS, while not very large either, are absolutely fantastic in comparison to the RZ. So in summary, I am fairly disappointed by the RZ. The new RX is a much better Lexus, but obviously not fully electric. Even the UX is a better car in some regards. It feels better built. For example, it has a metal door for the charging port, while the RZ has one in flimsy plastic. I really struggled to open it, since pressing it did nothing. I had to consult the manual, which specified that you press the rear end of the door to make it pop out. Knowing this, it still took me ten tries to open it. If you don't press in the exact right spot, the door flexes without engaging the opening mechanism. One centimeter off does not work. But I am not really an SUV person. I would have bought an electric IS in an instant. Now I will probably order a BMW i4 M50. After 13 years fully devoted to Lexus, never considering other brands...

I am sorry if I am asking a dumb question, but why do you need to close the mirrors? Which purpose does it serve? Personally, I find the feature useless and have turned it off immediately after delivery. I live in a cold climate, so the issue of breaking if operated while frozen seems very real to me. But I don't see a need for the mirrors folding when locking the car. If I am parked in a tight spot it is better if someone touching my car gets a warning by coming in contact with the mirror, rather than scratching or denting the rest of the car.

This a very interesting find. It makes me very curious, though. Half a rotation takes about 50 milliseconds to complete. How can you detect this?

I have had card keys with two cars since January 2010 (one second gen IS and one third gen). Over this period of almost ten years I have done perhaps four or five battery replacements, so counting the batteries that came from the factories, that makes about six or seven batteries over ten years.

The one I had on loan during the weekend was a trim level known in Sweden as Premium. It had leather seats, 18 inch wheels and power rear door. It also had a tech package including Mark Levinson and navigation. I don't know what the UK equivalent is. Upon closer comparison to my IS, i think the UX has noticeably more road noise. It is still much quieter than the CT, though. The driveline is also a significant upgrade from the CT. My wife is seriously in love with it and wants to upgrade. We are probably going to wait and see if an all electric version comes out. Her CT only has 37000 kilometers on the odometer, so it's not like she really needs a new car.

I have a UX on loan right now, and I am very impressed by the low noise level. It’s been a long time since I drove an NX, though, so I can’t compare those two. Comparing the UX to the cars we own, I would say it is almost as quiet as my IS, and much, much quieter than my wife’s CT. The ride quality is even more impressive. There is no pretense of sports ambitions, which I think is good with this car. The car feels very consistent, with a strong focus on comfort. the only thing I wish was different is the seats. The side support is not as good as in the CT and IS, which is something I could live with. The more serious flaw is that the seat bottoms are too short, and you can’t raise the front end enough to provide support for long legs.

I assume the lower and hard sidewall transmits more noise into the car.

I have a Premier with 18 inch wheels in the summer and 17 inch wheels in the winter (I live in Sweden where winter tyres are mandated by law), and I think there is a significant difference in road noise between 18 and 17 inch wheels. I took delivery of my car in December 2017, so it had the the 17 inch winter wheels on at the time, and when I switched to the 18 inch summer wheels at spring time, I was surprised at the difference in noise and a bit disappointed, actually. There is also a huge difference in feel, but this is mostly (maybe entirely) because of the much softer rubber in the winter tyres. My previous second gen IS had 17 inch rims for both winter and summer tyres, and there was no difference in road noise between those two, but the same huge difference in feel due to the very soft rubber for the winter wheels. If I didn't care about looks (the Premier wheels look fantastic), I would change my summer wheels to 17 inch.

The three Lexus cars I have owned (second gen IS, CT, and third gen IS) had all been out for one to four years when I got them, so I don't have any first hand experience owning a launch year Lexus. However, the impression I have is that they are mostly sorted out, quality wise, already in their first year. The only issue I can remember now was a rattle from the dash of the second gen IS, which was the result of assembly workers using a wrong size pin. This was when Lexus was experiencing a higher than expected demand for that car, and used some kind of temp workers on the assembly line (at least that is the rumour). This might not even have been in the first year. Anyone here who knows about this? The ES has been around since 1989, and I believe they know how to build these cars properly, even in the first year of the new generation. Any other thoughts or experiences?

Kieran, if a large part of your driving is two mile trips, I can understand why your fuel consumption is high. I imagine any car with some kind of combustion engine is going to do poorly under those conditions. I think the only way around it is to get a fully electric car, or a plug-in hybrid that doesn't start the combustion engine at all during those short trips.

I have sat in one. It looks good inside and out, and feels modern. The seats are larger than in the IS. I did not get to drive it, as it was a pre-production car visiting the dealer for two days (although got to ride in the passenger seat for a hundred meters as it was driven outside by the sales guy to be loaded on to a truck for transport to Tallin for its next appearance, really managed to catch it at the last moment). It was the same with the UX visiting a few weeks ago, didn’t get to drive that one either. They do allow the press to drive the pre-production cars, so I am not sure why they don’t allow customers to do so. I have seen previews in the Swedish press of what I believe are the exact same cars as the ones I sat in (at least they were the same colours). Maybe they are only driven on closed off tracks for press events? They told me they would have a car for test driving in December.

This is interesting. I got used to the card key when I bought my second gen IS Premier. When the third gen was launched, I partially held off getting it because it was initially not sold with the card key in Sweden. Call me crazy, but that is how good I thought it was, not having a huge car key fob in my pocket (my key ring only holds one house key and a couple of tiny electronic fobs for some business related doors). I actually asked a Lexus service technician back in 2013/2014 if it was possible to buy the card key as a spare part and pair it with a car that only came with regular keys, and he said that it was not possible because such a car would lack some piece of technology required for card keys to work. Later, the card key was added to the IS and I eventually got a new car with card key (yeah, I'm crazy, but the card key was a contributing factor).

I had a second generation (2010) IS 250 Premier with ML for almost eight years. Since six months I am driving a new IS Premier with ML (manufactured in October 2017), and I also find that the audio quality is not quite as good as the previous generation. What is most obvious to me is that the sound appears to come more from the center, and not so much from the sides. I am guessing that the overall "cheapening" (my subjective experience) of the interior compared to the second generation left less money for good, solid speaker enclosures in the front doors. Still, the ML processing does quite a good job with room correction of frequency response etcetera within the given physical means of the speakers, so the sound is by no means bad. It's just that I found the previous generation to be slightly better. As for volume, I usually keep it between 10 and 25, with 10-15 being the appropriate level with the family in the car and some background music while still being able to have a conversation, and 15-25 when I am on my own and enjoying music. My sound source is usually an iPod nano.

According to the owner's manual, there are pressure sensors in the valves. The manual states that one should let a Lexus workshop or other workshop with similar qualifications and equipment register the ID codes for the sensors with the car. Maybe there is a way to disable the TPMS in order to reduce the cost of the winter wheels, if one is willing to live without the safety the system brings (and circumvent the regulations that require TPMS on all new cars).

I haven't driven either BMW 330e or MB C350e, but I am going to chime in anyway I have read some comparison tests in some magazine where the testers found the BMW hybrid driveline to be significantly smoother than the Mercedes. I don't have the test at hand right now, and even if I did, it would probably be in Swedish. Don't take my word at face value, but you might want to be alert to this when you go for test drives. I don't know about you other Lexus owners, but my eight years of Lexus driving has really spoiled me in the smoothness department.