ganzoom

So did 160 miles last night, Leicester to Southampton. Adaptive cruise control set at 85 mph+, barely had to touch the accelerator pedal for the whole trip :). Computer says just over 40mpg, cannot complain...manged to beat the predicted time of arrival by 30 minutes :)

Contact hire or PCP etc doesn't get you away from deprecation. If you work out how much your paying over 2 years + initial deposit it's still usually a fair amount. Your essentially paying deprecation for the hire company so that they can sell the car in 2-3 years time for a profit. The main difference compared to buying cash is you don't have to stump up the initial capital. There is no 'cheap' way to run a brand new car every 2-3 years. Lease/PCP/Cash you cannot escape paying deprecation. Buying 12-18 months old is much more sensible....That's what we normally do, but if for the 'right' car I think it's worth paying a premium, the IS300H did for my wife, and I may/may not be tempted to do the same for a different brand :)

The cheapest way to run a car is to buy a £500 banger with a 12 month old MOT and run it till it dies. I've done that before, and it's not really a nice way to get from A to B...But if you can afford to treat your self, why not?? As they say, you only live once, and who knows what might happen tomorrow...

Wowee!!!! Frightening isn't it.Has any member on here ever done a comparison of running costs between a CT200h and the IS300h? Is there much difference? Not that frightening, cars depreciate, and depreciation is actually the biggest cost to car ownership...It's a far bigger cost than fuel/servicing/road tax. The newer the car, the higher the list price, the more they depreciate. In the first 12 month deprecations also the worst. Every time you change to a newer car your suffering more deprecation, the only way to avoid that cost is to not buy a new car, or don't change cars for 5-10 years at a time. We paid £36K for my wife's IS300H 7 months ago, I suspect we wouldn't get much more than £25K as PX. Dosen't bother us, the car is going to be staying with us for many years. We knew fully that buying used would have saved us £5-10K but at the end of the day we judged the car to be 'worth it'. However I'm much more of a penny pincer than my wife, and I certainly wouldn't be buying a brand new car....Not unless it was really good :)

I've used winter tyres the last 3 winters on both our cars. At current temperatures (double digits) the handling is definitely worse. The car 'moves' around more, and you really feel it at motorway speeds. In proper snow though they are unbeatable, I was getting up hills 4x4 couldn't manage :) BUT we only really get 1-2 days of proper snow in the Midlands every year, so not sure I'll bother this year. I do have a set of spare wheels that fit the IS300H in the garage, but will need to get x4 winters put on them which I'm not sure I can be bothered with, especially with how mild this winter is looking.

I've not felt anything like that on ours. Isn't the fix a special damper? Sound like a resonate frequency issue, maybe it's the LHD conversion that cause it to show up.

I persume a custom remap will sort out any initial lag from standstill and up the power. If they are selling then 200t in the US it'll only be a matter of time before the ECU is 'cracked'. Sounds like a decent drive.

My Leaf can charge at 50KW, a Model S at 120KW, and Porsche is claiming 200-300KW on their Misson E, to put that into context a kettles uses just 3 KW when boiling water. If you could stick the 1.5 kWh battery pack on the IS300H to a Tesla supercharger, it'll be fully recharged in under 60 seconds...BMW and Nissan both offer 8 year, 100,000 mile warranty on their batteries, Tesla 8 year and unlimited miles. If NiHm batteries are so much better, all these companies must be getting ready for massive warranty bill....But actually your struggle to find a handful of reports of battery packs suffering bad degredation early. Instead Nissan have just INCREASED their warranty cover, it was 5 years and 60,000 miles. The development guys at Toyota and Nissan clearly have very different ideas about battery technology ;) I'm glad Toyota has stuck to NiHm battery in the next Prius, because if means there isn't likely to be a Lithium ion IS hybrid for another 8 years +, which means our current IS300H at least wouldn't become 'out dated' :)

Despite all the advertising the IS300H isn't an EV. It's a petrol car that uses hybrid tech to allow an Atkins combustion cycle and kinetic energy recovery. The petrol engine comes on when cold because it needs to warm up like any other petrol car. If you want a 'proper' EV hybrid plenty of other manfactures now offer plug in hybrids that will do 20 miles on EV mode alone.

Tesla are on versions D/E of their battery pack and apparently version 10+ of the motor units. Unlike other manfactures who drag their feet about replacing parts, they are very proactive at replacing updated parts. Their current push is a 'one million mile' drivetrain. The same consumer reports article that brought up realiabilty issues also showed 97% of owners would buy again. Which is the final/most important factor. The battery technology Toyota is using WAS cutting edge, when the original Prius came out. Back than Lithium Ion battery technology was still been developed, and cost more than $1500 per kWh. The cost of Lithium ion battery packs is now already at $250-300 per kWh, and LG apparently have told GM they can supple packs for $145 per kWh. Nissan have shown a prototype Leaf with a 60kWh battery pack that's the same size as the current 30kWh pack, so double the energy density, due for mass production in 2017/18 - Just a reminder the IS300H has a 1.5 kWh pack. Toyota has done a great job at pushing the hybrid technology, and the IS300H is the reason I became interested in EVs....But their technology hasn't really changed since 1997. Mitubishi have shown how a large SUV can be the perfect platform for a larger plug in hybrid...Yet Toyota continues to press on with chasing after hydrogen fuel cell cars. The latest 'Car' magazine is worth a read, it documents well the EV tech coming from Audi/Porche, their longterm Volvo Plug-In hybrid, a brief review of the new RX, a peice on hydrogen fuel cell cars (and the ture cost of building hydrogen fuel stations), and an editorial about Tesla. If you want better mpg from a car currently there is only one way to go - larger batteries/full EV drivetrain. Though Toyota clearly believe otherwise, but I also note Blackberry have just released their latest hand set....Guess what it still has a physical keyboard :)

^^ But the ability of the battery to discharge power is a major limiting factor for any EV. Certainly on battery EVs, it's a more important than the motor. The motor on my Leaf is 'capped' at 80KW due to battery constraints, same with the Zoe. On a Tesla, the performance difference between various models isn't down to the motor, it more the battery. The 314 BHP S70 has the same motor as the 370bhp S85, and the P85D has the same motors as the P90D-L. It's the ability of the battery pack to reliability discharge enough power to supply the motors that's the limiting factor. No Lexus hybrid has a big enough battery to really take full advantage of their EV drivetrains. 1.5 kWh of usable charge is like a fitting a V8 with a 1.5L petrol tank....Not very useful, expect for limited running at low speeds, which is when I enjoy our IS300H the most.

Don't forget hills make a massive difference to mpg. On a flat bit of road with rolling traffic at 50-60mph I've seen 70mpg from our IS300H. Throw in some half decent hills and you can nearly halve that. The energy recovery from going down a hill via the hybrid drive is only about 1/3 efficient, so if your living in a hilly area your mpg will be worse regardless of how you drive.

Not really, you can tell the IS has a great chassis setup by driving the 300H, the weakest part of the IS300H as a 'drivers' car is the hybrid power unit. I suspect the 200t will be a much nicer car to throw around some B road purely based on engine. But the vast majority of buyers rate mpg/lower tax as been more important than pure driver engagement, hence the success of diesel and why Lexus promotes the IS300H over the petrol versions. Hope the OP, let us know how you get on :)

^^ But I thought printing none existent money was the solution to the worlds problems :)

Thanks for the videos, really liked the metal frame been hit with the hammer, shows the benefits well!! Honestly have never even thought of stuff like this before Will 100% look into trying a set on a one of the cars at some point. If you don't mind me asking which anti-roll brand did you go for?? and do you need to drop the rear subframe to install the rears??

^^ So in effect it adds more 'stiffness' but not at the cost of overall comfort?? Sounds interesting, might by worth looking at. Does the OEM 200t item fit the 300h?? Good to know the stock suspension are monotones....Explains partly why the IS handles so well....Real shame we don't get the engine/drivetrain from 300 here :( What other suspension mods are you running?? I'm waiting for our IS to come out of its manufactures warranty before moding it, but need to save up now, since in 12 months time we'll be ordering a Tesla Model S and expecting a baby next April....Neither are really compatible with spending £££ on aftermarket car parts :)

Their work looks good. Will keep them in mind. Anyone here wrapped a car before with the clear M3 protective cover?? I'm thinking of getting this done for the next car straight from the showroom. Pricing seem to vary a lot.

I've have never taken any kind of extended warranty on any of our cars after 3 years.... The only car that made me wish I did was the BMW, which broke down more often than a 5 year old Peug 106 :) Seems to me Lexus have a good buissness going with these servicing plans...They just wouldn't be getting any of my pennies.

Looks fab, price doesn't seem to bad. I thought about it for ours but ended up doing it my self woth Wolf's coating. Which has lasted 6-7 months now and still OK, but will need topping up this weekend. How long did the work take? Did they do it indoors?

First time I've seen something like this....What's it suppose to do?? Does it replace an OEM item?? I'm not adverse to fitting aftermarket parts, just jave no idea who this thing is suppose to improve anything - For reference I find the ride quality on our IS300H as good/better that on my old BMW that had £2.5k worth of custom tuned Bilstein suspension on it :)

WTF....£91.85 extra for a stamp....and Lexus dealers are suppose to have the 'best customer service' around. Are Lexus just use to having a customer base who don't mind been ripped off or have so much money £100 is just pocket change??!! You DONT need a Lexus stamp for the warranty. It's EU law, Lexus have to honour the warranty as long as the car is serviced with OEM parts. Anyways the reason we bought a Lexus rather than another BMW is that we don't need to worry about it needing repair work :) There is nothing special about a Lexus, BMW, Mercedes etc. At the end of the day they are just like cars, no different to a £7k Dacia. Any mechanics who's half competent can repair any make of car. If you want to pay £100-200-300 MORE every year for a Lexus dealer to service your car go for it, but don't be under any illusions that some how they are doing a job no one else can..... I haven't used main dealer servicing on any of my cars for the last 8 years and certainly don't intend to start now, and definitely not at the stupid prices Lexus dealers seem to think it's ok to charge.

So if we assume the IS300H has 1.7kWh battery the NX300H has a 1.8kWh, a wooping 0.1kWh extra....Not entirely sure that will even increase the actual usable kWh by more than 0.05kWh.

^^ Probably explains why the NX cannot really manage much in EV mode - x2 motors but tiny battery. I suspect the rear motor is what's eaten into boot space. Hence the inherent space/weight issues with hybrids - you need both the weight of the internal combustion units + the weight of EV motors + battery.

Really?? I thought both had the same 1.6kWh battery, with only about 60% of that been usable (charge is kept at between 20-80%) - It's bigger than the Prius but still pretty pathetic by Battery EV standards :(. My Leaf has 24kWh and a Tesla Model X has 90kWh.

How far can you get in 'EV' mode in the NX?? Spend about 30 minutes covering 2-3 miles in Cardiff shopping traffic today, but thanks to the EV setup in the IS300H, most of that crawl was spend in EV mode, and the over mpg barely dropped :).