ganzoom

@mpls Exactly what better battery tech are you thinking of that will superceded lithium-ion. Sony bought the first commercial Lithium ion batteries to market in the early 1990's, its taken this long to reduce costs to make them viable in EV use. All the new battery tech you see in the press are still at the experimental stage most are 20 years+ from production. And why do we need new battery tech, the Panasonic cells Tesla use are already at 100kWh with another 10-15% in charge capacity to come just by changing form factor. That's a real life range of 300-400 miles already. Lithium-ion will be with us for the next 20 years, the tech is good enough already its simply a matter of reducing cost. But its not just Tesla working on EVs. LG have now started to build their own 'gigafactory' to supply Audi/Jag. BYD in china already sell more EVs than the rest of the world combined, they are busy upping their battery supply capacity. The point is battery EVs are fundamentally different from the hybrids Toyota are building now. Toyota don't even use lithium-ion packs, instead still stuck with outdated NiHm packs. If Toyota are serious about battery EVs they need to be developing them NOW, not wait till everyone else have them and the sales start to fall of a cliff. ... The turbo hybrid you want for your next car, I will bet everything I own it will run on lithium-ion tech, and if you want one before 2018 it certainly wouldn't have a Toyota or Lexus badge on.

^ Actually I disagree, can you find another car manufacturer producting a car with the features of the Model X or S. Musk by his own admission have said they have tried to cram too much tech into the X. I have no brand loyalty at all, my last few cars have been a BMW, Nissan, Honda. But as a consumer wanting an EV that fits my needs the only manufacturer in town that can deliver is Tesla. I can bet a Tesla with a BMW or Audi badge will sell much better. At a recent wedding I went to the majority of people there (all professionals) haven't even heard of Tesla....Bizzarly nearly everyone one had heard about the Leaf. Though one guy thought it was some supped version of a GTR!!

^ Toyota have been investing in hydrogen fuel cell cars instead of battery EVs. In short they have backed the wrong horse, and the sooner they admit their mistake and move on to battery EVs the better. Tesla have 400k+ of preorders on the Model 3, that's on a car with no firm price, performance spec, and no confirmed final design. Sales of the S is annihilating other cars in the same bracket in the US, that's with petrol prices at a current all time low. I would love Lexus to do a full battery EV, and will be more than willing to spend £60-70k on one, but I cannot see a Lexus EV appearing anything soon :(.

The Tesla is costing us more than double what we have spent on any car before, but both me and the wife have been bitten by the EV bug. Cheaper EVs with a similar range is coming, the Chevy Bolt is about to go on sale in the US. $30k, 0-60 7 seconds, 5 seats, real life range of well over 200 miles. http://gmauthority.com/blog/2016/10/2017-chevrolet-bolt-ev-goes-240-miles-with-range-to-spare/ Jag/Audi EVs will both be on the market in next 24 months, I've been a petrol head for as long as I can remember, but EVs are by far the most exciting development to hit the automotive industry ever. Just a shame Lexus are been left behind. Toyota will be heading the way of Nokia if they don't start getting involved soon. Sales figures speak for themselves in regards to what consumers want. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-12/tesla-dominates-u-s-luxury-sedan-sales

Ordered a Model X, makes even the S feel outdated.

There was half a chance our next car would have been a RX to complement the IS, but it's fully electric or nothing for us from now on. Our Tesla is due to arrive in early 2017, the original plan was to keep the IS till 2020ish, but I have a sneaky suspicion once my wife gets use to the Tesla she will call the shots on that every time (her complaints on the Leaf main extend to range/lack of gadgets which the Tesla deals with on both fronts with ease).....The IS isn't a bad car but I couldn't drive it day in day out, the throttle lag and engine noise ruins the car for me, especially if the other car we have access to is a full EV..... Sadly I don't think the Tesla Model 3 will be available in the UK till 2019/2020 at the earliest, but I've always wanted to have a Jag on the drive way, we originally wanted a XF before ending up in the IS. With one kid here and potentially more on the way two larger cars might make sense too, I do like the build quality of our IS, but Lexus/Toyota's inability/reluctance to embrace EVs means our time with the brand will be rather short lived, so lets see what Jaguar can do with their EV attempt :) http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/all-electric-jaguar-suv-spotted-testing-again

But of course these days I don't see the point of tuning combustion cars, EVs are the future and if you have cash to waste on modding your mad not to go and test drive a Tesla.

Changing air intakes made zero difference to power gains, the opposite. The only thing I changed with the exhaust was replacing the primary cats with a 'sports' version, but even stock you can easily achieve 360bhp+ with nothing more than upping boost. The latest A45 AMG is pushing 380bhp from a 4 cylinder unit. The 335i I had was an early car that came with forged camshaft and cylinder head, so I was comfortable upping boost knowing causing proper engine damage was hard. I have no idea how much redundancy the 200t unit has, but as you say the US market is where all things modding happens. The 200t is stil newish, but I would be surprised if eventually it cannot be made to hit 300bhp easily.

Looking at product I would be very very careful about putting it on my own car. All it appears to do is highjack the sensor inputs into the ECU to 'fool' the ECU of the car to change the engine map. I highly doubt its got any built in knock detection, data logging(which will let you see if under wide open throttle runs there are any issues with heat/misfires), or the ability to control fuel flow/throttle directly. Worst of all it's an genetic box for lots of cars, so it cannot possibly have been developed/tested in detail on a 200t. Personally I would leave well alone and let others take the risk.

Naa on a turbo thats not that much of an increase. On my old 335i I could change the power ouput from 200bhp (0 PSI) to 400bhp+ (14PSI) by just changing the boost pressure on the turbo. Add in methanol injection for heat control and some people were running boost pressures of 18PSI on stock turbos giving a dyno proven 500WHP, stock the output was 306bhp at 7PSI of boost. Problem is the higher the boost the more chance of pre detonation/knock, so you better besure the ECU or tunning box has knock detection. You also get misfires more often, so better spark plugs/coil packs may be needed, superunleaded is a must. Than ofcourse you have the biggest headache, heat. There is a reason why the current turbo charged M3 has 7 heat exchangers stuffed under the bonnet.

Its not really a surprise a V6 engine is going to pick up better than a 4 cylinder unit. What I was surprised by in a brief test drive of the new RX450h was the mpg. My old modifed 400bhp 3L twinturbo BMW 335i returned about the same efficiency!!

I love the ACC on our IS300H. But wife still refuses to trust it.

The 300H GS will be slightly slower, slight less economical, and I suspect not quite as easy to throw around a B road. But otherwise its the better car, you get alot more for your cash. I wanted my wife to get the GS instead of the IS initially but she thought the GS was too big for her, so that was the end of that idea :).

^^ It is an easy fix, but the whole rear bumper needs to come off to get to the reflector, and than than the actual part needed isn't cheap.

Your struggle to get anything without 300bhp+ to 150mph on the Autobahn. You need a long stretch and a car that call pull hard well past 130mph, most cars under 300bhp will nearly stop accelerating past 120mph and than crawl up to their vmax.

The Lexus hybrid system is essentially a modified version of the drive train from a Prius. It was designed from the onset to favour economy over performance, I suspect motor/battery temperature at high speeds are physical limits of the system. Try touching the boot area on the IS300H after a M-way run, it's fairly warm due to demands on the battery. The IS300H's power train is at its best been driven at 5/10th, ie at a leisurely pace. A 'sports' car it most definitely is not.

The suspension setup on our Premier is the best I've experienced in a small saloon. Certainly leagues better than the 'M' sport suspension on my old BMW, and on par with Birds B3 kit I have eventually go fitted to the BMW. Good suspension lets you feel the road, but rarely lets what you feel throw the car off course, this is exactly what our IS does perfectly.

^^ Sorry I just don't buy that scare mongering. Here is the live update on the grid....Most EV charging is at night when demand is less than 20GW. http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ As for future generation....I have no idea why the government is wasting money on such outdated tech as heating water to make steam and driving a generator, when we can now capture solar energy direct, and store it via battery for evening use. The first UK domestic solar PV+battery systems have just been installed. 97% reduction in electricity use, the results speak for themselves. https://youtu.be/jB6jyy0Joq8

Toyota and Lexus need to stop messing round wasting time with hybrids and develop some proper EVs ASAP. Even their own engineers now concede pure EVs are cheaper to build than hybrids. BMW, Audi, Jag are now 100% committed to EVs and all will have battery EVs onsale with-in a few years. I love our IS300H for it's build quality, cabin design, but every time I press the throttle pedal I wish Lexus would put a pure EV drivetrain in the thing rather than wait and heat the agricultural combustion engine kick in. Time is starting to run out for Toyota to get their act together interms of getting a battery EV on the market, by 2020 (maybe even sooner) Lexus may will become the only 'premium' brand that doesn't have a battery EV onsale, and the brand may become as relevant as Nokia was when Apple launched the first iPhone. http://insideevs.com/toyotas-ogiso-evs-250km-155-mile-range-battery-electric-vehicles-already-can-built-less-money-hybrids/

The problem with Ebay stuff is they rarely fit perfectly, I've spent a lot of ££ on body parts off eBay for my last car, I cannot remeber a 3rd party part ever fitting first time out of the box, they all needed some work in the body shop first. The actual repair isn't hard, any smart repairer should be able to sort the plastic trim repair for sub £100, the reflector you really have to buy from Lexus. In total it cost me less than £200 to sort out the repair on our car which suffered similar damage to the OP, which isn't too bad cost wise.

We had a similar damage done to our recently. Lexus quoted £900ish......Ended up been sorted by a smart repair chap in one morning for £80. The reflector part left is screwed into the bumper your need to take the bumper off to replace it (you cannot just pull it off). The reflector you can only get from Lexus....£80sih!!! Even the Lexus part guy couldn't believe how much it cost, it's just a bit of plastic, the other option is a 3rd party reflector off ebay, but you take your chances with fittment.

^ You cannot just slap a turbo onto a complicated hybrid setup, and tunning NA engine is extremely hard. I've never known any air filter/Inductions to actually introduce any noticeable power gains at the wheels by them selves, quite the opposite, most third party air filters cause drops in BHP and torque, but they do make things louder. I should know I've wasted about £1000 on various air intakes for my old 350Z and 335i, not a single one gave any dyno proven gains, in the end I always went back to stock. I still have two different induction kits for the 335i sitting in the garage. Tunning a NA engine is hard work and expensive.

If the car has been on the M-ways all this time its likely the battery is fine. At M-way speeds the traction battery is hardly used. Though you cannot be 100% sure. The IS300H is still too new for 3rd party companies to get involved with refurbishing the battery if needed, so maybe use that as an excuse to barter the price down even more. I suspect the cost of a new battery from Lexus will be in the £2000 region, even though the actual production cost of the battery will be less than £500.

I think some of your guys need to read up on car tunning 101!! A remap on a turbo combustion engine is completely different from tunning a hybrid system. The only company I know that have 'Tuned' a production hybrid drivetrain is BMW, with their latest i8, where apparently BMW have squeezed more power from the combustion unit but the i8 has a turbo combustion engine where as the IS has a NA unit. In short there will never be any tunning product for the IS300H. As for those of you who don't think the IS has no throttle lag go and test drive a Nissan Leaf or a Renault Zoe, if you really want to be depressed any Tesla. It's not really a deal breaker, as for the purposes of a family car some throttle lag is fine, but let's not pretend it's not there.