Linas.P

I mean looking at the owner I did not expect much anyway... timing 0-60 with a phone in the hand whilst driving based on speed indicated on speedometer.... I probably can tell speed more accurately from the smell of the coffee in the morning. That is kind of the point - he never hit 60. He hit something in 4.4s, but that is not 60MPH. Speedometers does not show speed accurately - normally at least 5-10% overstates it. So he potentially hit, 54-57MPH in some time +/- his own clicking on the button early or late.

Probably many people already said this many times, but it is just a fact - it is your money and your life. Nobody can tell you what car you buy with your money and I mean nobody! I am much younger than you, but nobody in my family could tell me what to do, certainly not what car I should buy. To extent that is not only me, but nobody in my family would dear to say it in any other way, but just "light opinion"i.e. - "beautiful car, but ... have you considered fuel cost etc. etc. (whatever the argument would be)". Actually, I doubt even that... that is kind of personal choice and it is just a fuel and it is just a car... maybe one day you decide it is not for you and sell it... and but another car. I don't see any reason why anyone would feel entitled to criticise you for your choice. If you choose to listen, it is your thing as again nobody can tell you now to listen your family... but I fount it extremely uneducated, wrongly entitled and rude make make statements like that regarding other person's car choice. My point you are adult and you do what you want. The stated power of the car is nothing extraordinary - look to other large cars i.e. Audi S6, larger BMWs, even some diesels - ok they may have 800Nm and and less HP... still large car needs large engine. This is not wrong, this is how it should be to make the car feel right. Lexus LS is amazing choice for long drive and if you need space in the back for family definitely good choice. Get it, enjoy it, make your passengers enjoy it (LS is great for that) and in the end if you find it for whatever reason is not for you... sell it, get another car.

I think that the gears sometimes gets dirty in the mirror mechanism - Ideally I woudl remove the mirror and clean whatever is inside and put some grease inside. If it is not so bad what generally helps me is just carefully move the mirror with hand, backwards, forwards and side to side and then usually it starts working again. It basically brakes the dirt which would makes the mirror mechanism to bind, but if you not careful you can get gears broken inside.

I haven't done it, but I generally think that IS250 brakes are undersized for heavy car. I mean IS350 is not that much heavier, but has massive brakes. As much as I looked into it, many people agree and the ones who have done it as well mentions that as one of main "practical" benefits, the rest is just for additional confidence - it is not like one races IS250 so such large brakes not necessary needed simply for stopping. I personally don't have issue with braking power, but if I would do the upgrade I would do it from maintenance perspective. IS250 just chews through the brake disks like cheese, one almost need to change the disks when changing pads and the dust from pads again is massive issue. Having much larger brakes would mean much reduced wear and hence less maintenance and less dust.

So you walked on next to the busy road...was it congested, queuing traffic? Right? So obviously if the traffic would be free flowing there would be much less fumes at the pavement level? Based on most basic estimates the pollution would be at least 3 times less... Where I am getting with this - pollution problem is not only with the car, largely it is with design of the roads. Lets say in right conditions car can do 50MPG @ 50 MPH, which means per hour you going to burn 1 gallon and travel 50 miles and generate pollution equal to burning that 1 gallon, however if the road infrastructure is bad (as it mostly is), then you will only be able to achieve 25MPG and only @ 25MPH, so you will burn double the amount of fuel and generate double the amount of pollution in the same car. So it is always easy to blame cars for everything, but what have we done to allow them to run efficiently? Additionally, all the parts in the car wears much less in free flowing traffic, the roads wears wears less as well and all emission controls are more effective, engines more effcient. When it comes to wear of parts that is PM pollution... and guess what - regularly cleaning/washing the roads can reduce PMP by over 70%. I remember rather archaic method was used some time ago in the summers (when PM pollution can get very bad), there were simply truck spraying water on the road. It is claimed it reduces PMP by 20%, which isn't much but helps reduce PM pollution to acceptable levels.. just simply by making the road wet! Imagine if they properly washed.. and so... when was the last time you seen roads being washed - again we blame cars even though we do not properly maintain roads?!... with austerity in UK I have forgotten how this thing looks: Again you say that fumes were terrible, but what I often see - closest to the pavement you have HGVs and Buses which are unbelievably inefficient in traffic, burns diesel and have lax emission controls or just generally pollutes much more then average car... but whenever issue comes-up it is always issue with the cars... bizarre. Then you said it was burning you throat right? Here is the thing - CO2, NOx, CH and most of other gasses coming from tailpipe are colourless and has no smell or taste - you could not know if you inhale them. It might make you dizzy over time, but you would not smell them, never mind have sore throat. What you can feel on the other hand is SO2 - because of sulphur (but assuming you anywhere in EU.. that should not exist anymore), soot - so it must have been diesel cars, or PM... which as explained indicates poorly maintained road above anything else. To summarise... without changing cars we can still reduce pollution massively and I mean by 70% or more, not marginally. Just by planning, building and maintaining road infrastructure correctly. Oh but here is a catch - to build roads it costs money... not good for politics. What is good for politics instead is push bull crap like this about car pollution because it makes money, there is good justification to tax cars heavily (especially small private ones which pollutes least), cars sales heavily and promote cars depreciation and scrapping, because more sales generates more revenue. Furthermore, making sales generates even more income, because that stimulates economy by manufacturing new cars. What is result of that - over consumtion, scrapping of perfectly good cars, planned obsolescence etc. So what we save in driving more fuel efficient cars we waste 10 times over making them. Finally, driving electrical cars in the city will create more pollution in country side where power stations and car manufacturing plants are (and where I assume you live)... so worse for you. Not sure why you would want that. To save half of 2.4% (personal vehicles) pollution in the city to double 70% (manufacturing and power generation) pollution in the country side?! wrong logic.

What is boring is that Lexus only gives option of 300h nowadays. I haven't really consider BMW as company car, not sure what you are referring to - the only thing I might have said Lexus 300h option is not allowed with new company car salary sacrifice schemes (from 2017), only BMW530/330e (and similar plug-in hybrids). So I said Lexus missed the trick with compliance in UK.

I think one more thing to note - Average speed on free flowing motorway in UK is 82MPH (according to ONS 2016). Hybrid will always be more fuel efficient if you cannot get past 70MPH, I quite specifically stated petrol only becomes ~ comparable @80MPH and more fuel efficient @90MPH. Argument is purely theoretical in UK as in theory anything over 70MPH is illegal, but in other more sensible countries with 140KPH limits or more that becomes quite relevant. When I say motorway, for me that mean cruise set @80MPH indicated (which is ~73.5 GPS) literally for 100s of miles - I do sometimes cancel cruise, but try to never brake (hypermyling of sorts)... if you get into traffic or if you fighting for outside lane i.e. accelerating to 90, then braking to back to 50 when 4 axle freaking crane creeps into 4th lane... that is not motorway driving. That I call "British road madness"... and there you certainly better with hybrid. Anyhow going back to my practical example from my life - if I would have had IS300h instead of IS250 for last 4 years I would have saved £400 for my mixed driving. At the same time I woudl have lost £4000 in depreciation (comparison apples to oranges as obviously this is between mk2 and mk3), however if I would have say BMW 320d, it would have saved me £2000 only because of motorway MPG (probably would have spent £1000 on DPF and another £800 of plastic timing chain gears, but that is the topic for another day). Point I am trying to make - sort of for and against at the same time. In the city hybrid will save so much money compared with petrol that it is worth considering, if you do quite a bit of motorway then the saving will be negligible. Even considering rather outdated IS250 mk3... I would rather have it with nice smooth petrol v6, than save £400 and drive anaemic hybrid. I am not saying Petrol will be better on motorway or hybrid woudl be outright bad, but the cost saving will be negligible.

If I may... I would like to avoid commenting on the looks of you car interior. I think as long as it makes you happy that is what matters....

Just to note - there were endless list of issues with Lexus IS220d, so what Lexus did with 200d to make it more reliable was obviously upgrading head gasket, few other parts and de-tuning the engine. By chipping your car basically you going to convert the car back into 220d, maybe should have got 220d to begin with, or if power is an issue then maybe 250 altogether. P.S. Noted it is zombie thread, but comments still relevant.

Pick up or Courtesy car is standard option.

I am not some sort of expert, but I do like detailing my car and spend some considerable time researching best products and techniques. Unsealed leather doesn't really exists in modern cars (I am sure there are exceptions), Lexus semi-aniline leather is still type of sealed leather. Yes it is not heavily sealed leather of 80s and 90s where you could literally peel layer of lacquer, but it is still sealed. Unsealed leather is actually very very absorbent (think Chamois), you drop water on it and it will absorb it within seconds. This is something I found quickly just to illustrate the point https://www.paulfordleatherproducts.co.nz/identifying-leather.html Now I think it is worth clarifying terminology - Conditioner is a product based on organic or mineral oil, which works by being absorbed into say leather. If you apply this on sealed leather heavy enough and leave it long enough you likely going to ruin it. It will absorb more in to little wrinkles, seams and perforations and will give "cloudy"/dirty looks which you will never get out of it. Well that is unless "vintage looks" is your sort of thing. Sealant - is usually a spray, which contains some sort of solids which seals by bonding to leather and sitting on top. That is what is best to use on any modern leather or vinyl. I have seen several products called conditioners (mostly dirty cheap kind junk), but they are not - they look conditioner "like", but often contains silicone and works like a sealant leaving leaving layer of silicone on top. This is kind of lazy marketing, instead of educating consumer, they simply slap the name which ignorant consumers expects... "conditioner". Autoglym is one of those products, they call it "balm" - "feeds and protects"... I call it BS. They as well say it contains "natural" oils, but product doesn't have ingredients label so hell knows what is in it, if it has oils then very very little - I mean 0.5% maybe, because Autoglym not entirely stupid, they know that if they product would contain a lot of oil it would ruin most of seats. Anyhow - it is best for modern leather to keep it only sealed, leaving any sort of conditioner (be it fake one which cannot penetrate and ruin it) only going to work like springboard for dirt to stick, accumulate and wear down the leather prematurely.

+2 for Dodo juice. Clean leather has to be matte not shiny... and please please... do not use conditioners - they do not work on sealed leather!

There are no comparison between diesel and IS300h... hybrid will be much smoother and more comfortable to drive. But it isn't as smooth as straight NA petrol and certainly not even worth comparing to LS.

Depends what qualifies as a "gift". For fuel sensor seal they fill 1/4 of the tank with petrol, but that was part of the fix i.e. they cannot prove it does not leak if the car is low on fuel, but I had mine with half tank and got it back with nearly full. Other got Lexus "branded" sweets and water bottles, but that is more dealership and your relationship specific. I heard more remote dealers say in Scotland do put some free fuel as well when it comes to recalls perhaps because you made that journey "because of Lexus fault" and you wouldn't have done otherwise... but hat is kind of exception rather than rule... I would not expect much ... always better, because if you get something in the end it will feel better 😄

Yes, it could be done at the same time, I did mine with service - you need to book it thought, because they will need to order part etc. You cannot assume they simply going to do it themselves as part of the service. Although, last time when I booked service the lady checked if I don't have any outstanding re-calls before booking me in.

Have you recently bought the car? It is couple of year now since petrol line seal and airbag recalls happened. The only reason I can think of - previous owner have ignored the letters and once you bought the car it triggered new notification.

Practice... I do mixed driving, but often I work in Paris or Geneva... which means Monday morning 5AM Romford to Gatwick and Friday 9PM back again on fairly empty M25/M23. Autopilot is set to undisclosed speed all the way without single touch of the brakes (with exception of Dartford) and I know that I get better MPG in IS250 than IS/RC300h. Done it 100s of times in IS250, once in RC300h and 4 times in IS300h. Now obviously in light of low MPG thread that is probably not true anymore, but here I am saying what the car can do. @wharfhouse - again that is true, for mixed driving hybrid is better than diesel or petrol. It depends how much of that mixed driving one is doing and what kind of mix you are getting. The point I was making - the real benefits of hybrids are in the city (or be that electric car), that is why urban and extra urban fuel consumtion is nearly the same. As I mentioned people who do 300 miles day on motorway, there are ones (and I know few) who drive car 3 times per week in central London for 5-10 miles. I would not suggest to buy the diesel for them... heck I would have Ferrari if that would be the case... because if you do 30 miles a week fuel consumtion is not a concern. There are taxi drivers in the city as well... hybrids are game changers (hence all drives Prius now).

Both of you above... Did I say petrol is better then hybrid for mixed driving? No I haven said that... Yes for mixed driving you will get better MPG on IS300h... Did I say diesel is better for congested motorway? driving in queuing traffic with speeds between 40-60MPH? I haven't said that either... But not all motorways are always congested and there are people who literally do 300miles per day on motorway... diesel is better for that. Sounds like a tractor... yes it does.. not so much the issue inside. Do not read between the lines and invent thing I haven't said. OP asked - why extra urban MPG for IS300h is similar to urban one - because it is similar in practice, because IS250 (mk2) is more fuel efficient @90MPH and because IS300h is really most beneficial up to around ~65MPH. Hybrids are not for motorways... especially not if you driving faster than 70MPH.

As much as hybrid owners will start crying now... hybrid on motorway is just a petrol with a heavy battery. Depends on speed somewhat, but over 65mph the scales starts to tip over. Specifically comparing say IS250 (mk2) and IS300h in the city and up to 65mph the hybrid would rule, at 80mph the consumtion would be the same and at 90mph the petrol woudl me more efficient then the hybrid. Hybrids are for cities - that is all, if you do a lot of driving on motorways you still best of with diesel and you won't find much differences between hybrid and petrol.

Ceramic coating costs £25-.... well max max £150 if you get into pro-only applications. £1000 is for full detail and polishing of the car - that is what makes your car look like from showroom, not the last step which is the coating. Even then, the price would be like £350-550, £1000 is either rip-off or you trying to book your car somewhere in Chelsea or Knightsbridge, to be done next to McLaren P1. Other thing - ceramic coating is not like apply and forget for 2 years (or whatever they claim). You need to keep the car clean for it to bead the water, you need to top it up from time to time (say every 2,3rd wash), there are dedicated "top coats" for ceramic coatings etc. In short if you want ceramic coating to last and to give you like "on application" water beading you need to maintain it. It is misconception that you spend £500 to get car detailed and ceramic coat applied and it is "protected for 2 years". Bear in mind as well - ceramic costing is not what makes your car look brand new (unless it is brand new now), it is the polishing. So if you have scratches and you apply ceramic coating on top... you going to have scratched-up pain with ceramic coating on top.. that is it. I is still going to look dull and ugly. You need to address any scratches of even light swirls before applying the coating. If you are really planning to keep car long term then do ceramic coating and detailing, but I would suggest to consider clear bra as well, at very least on the front quarter of the car.

That is not the way to do it. My car is at 1/2 tank now and I have done 230 miles - does it make it 35MPG?! No... it is around 23 actually. I know that with remaining "half" of tank I will be able to do 70 miles. What I found with IS (250 at least). First half of tank is ~75%, 3rd quarter is another 20% and last quarter is remaining 5% up until it says 0 miles range left. From there you can still make 30miles on reserve. What you need to do is to do it brim to brim, not necessary to do full tank, but it needs to be full to begin with. Fill it until it clicks, check the mileage or reset the trip, drive until you feel like refuelling, fill again until it clicks and see how much fuel you put in. That is going to 99.9% correct to what you used. Then check how many miles you did and that gives your actual accurate MPG. In terms of expensive fixes for IS220d they are well known and I would not associate them with mileage of the car. Actually, if the car has higher mileage because it spent most life on motorway you might be better off. The problem with IS220d and most of diesels is short journeys in the cities... If you find 12 years old IS220d with 50k miles - that is going to be money pit. Turbos, gaskets, ERGs, DPFs, Injectors, 5th Injector, Clutch and flywheel.... not only it could go wrong, there are plenty of thread of it going wrong. However, as said before it is not really a mileage thing, it is the way car was used - city and short journeys = dead. Looking into you travel I am not surprised you are fine (same was the case for @Shahpor) - doing 60 miles in a day and most of it on motorway gets your engine etc. up to temp and you should not get into most of the IS220d related issues. Although 32mpg is rather low for the journey which is mostly on motorway - even I in IS250 could achieve that (or at least I could before), I woudl expect your MPG to be higher. Well that is unless last 5 miles in the city are very very congested.

Never been flashed is not really reliable way of knowing if you dazzling others, some crazy people (like me) flashes every car, but most don't bother. The funniest thing - I flash somebody with clearly fake HIDs which are too bright and dazzles and they try to flash me back, but their main beam usually is not as strong as fake HIDs in dipped beam. MOT is as well hit and miss, some cars I see on the roads are not road worthy never-mind MOT "passing" - yet they have MOTs. Difference of scrutiny from centre to centre is literally anywhere between black and white and all shades of grey. Fake HID is just bad idea, antisocial, dazzles other, looks silly blue and doesn't give that much extra visibility anyway. The only way as suggested to get good quality high kelvin halogens like Osram Nightbreakers

Ok I will see if I can capture fuel trims. How log is long term? 17 miles to and from work would be long term I guess? One other thing - I was doing some math on the range and it seems my car is reporting lower MPG then it actually is e.g. previously I could do 340-360 miles per tank which on average fill of 58-60L ~ say around 27MPG, which was approximately what was indicated. The long term tended to be higher as I would do weekend trip to Scotland or something on 37MPG tanks etc. Now I do ~290-310 Miles to the tank which is ~23MPH. My last Tank AVG indicated 21.2MPG after 308 miles and 58.92L brimmed, which makes it closer to 24MPG. It seems car thinks it sends more fuel then it actually does?! Anyhow, even 21.2MPG is not as low as it could get... I now tend to drive really conservatively compared to before. If I drive same as when I was getting 27, 28, 29 MPG... I would be sub-20. Before it was like, I drive harsher or get into massive traffic and it drops to 24MPG, but then just few miles of smooth motorway and it picks-up straight away back to 27, 28. Now if it drops to say 22... it stays there. Equally before if I get half tank at 36, 37 and spend rest of the tank in the traffic the overall would still be 33, 34 etc. Now I just get into traffic can it drops right don't. It is not like I cannot achieve high MPGs e.g. last Thursday I refuelled on my way home quite late in the evening and the road was very quiet so I could cruise at dead 50 MPH for 10 miles and I got 44.1MPG... so it not like I cannot achieve it, but I need to try much harder and drive extra smoothly to get there. Clearly might highs were much higher and my lows were not as low. Previously, as long as engine is warm after refuelling I can drive home without showing off and even with traffic lights etc would would get easy 38-42MPG. Anyway... enough story telling - in short something is a miss. If I press accelerator fuel goes down like into the drain. All considered MAF sounds quite logical conclusion...

Agree... in general, but it is easier said then done. However last time decent mechanic was fixing my A/C, he turned the air from outside in winter when temp was 7C and noted that A/C performance is excellent - "blows 7C air". As a matter of fact it was not working at all. In UK we have very few real mechanics left, who can actually take a car and find an issue. People do not keep cars past 10 years old and nobody really fixes older cars, parts are replaced as units and most of "mechanics" only knows how to replace oil and most basic things, like brake pads, coolant, battery... even then they screw-up. Fixing such "nebulous" problem like low MPG in older car is just not worth it (they still could not find why A/C does not work) - even if I find decent mechanic it will cost me more than a car is worth. So I rather try few things myself.

Measured where - at the kerb side? Probably you right. Just to clarify 2.4% is specifically for CO2 and it is national figure for UK. Meaning average ton of X gas a year, locally to you it could be more or it could be less. Accurate figures for pollution are hard to come by as they often omits many pollutants or like TFL did for London - they simply disregarded all the rest of the sources and took the "pie chart" just about transportation and concluded some 40% NOx from passenger vehicles - that is at the street level somewhere in Camden only considering road transportation which itself is like 10% of total pollution, so 40% of 10% at the street level in Camden during evening rush hour in winter. When you see the graphs check sources and what they actually showing, because most of the time they are total non-sense. E.g. compare these 3 graphs from the same presentation. One states cars makes 70% of emissions (that is probably what you are referring to): But ... it is just road transportation, the entire transportation graph is here: But.... then this is just transportation, without considering other industries: Ok... so we finally getting somewhere.. But these are just GHG, not total pollution?! And in the end I am not even sure I trust the sources. If we go by this specific presentation, then you can clearly see how it gets abused and confusing for average Joe, what you will get in you evening news or morning newspaper is the first graph which says in capitals "CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 70%!!! POLLUTION, DANGER, KILLS PEOPLE", but if you check then actually what they mean is 70% of 71.8% of 19.7% which is actually ~10%, but includes vans and other light commercial vehicles and in the end this is only GHGs if you adjust for PM, Sulphur, Soot, non-industrial etc.... well you see the picture. I personally, have not found a single source which would have total pollution with up to date figures for all sources of pollution. If I would care I could potentially do the study myself combining multiple secondary sources and getting somewhere closer to real pollution figures. But frankly I am not bothered - even if I do it government still going to continue to vilify motorists just because it is convenient. Finally, any source you take they will quote different figures, but one thing stays very clear that ~70% of pollution worldwide is caused by 3 main industries - Manufacturing, Energy and Agriculture. If you looking for big change you need to go against these 3.. the rest are just to "save the face".