Vince Donald

No, my brother got rid of his after it started costing him big time, think the worst was the steering rack, cost £1200. He now drives a Hyundai and he says its actually a much better car. I know someone else who had a Freelander and it randomly started lowering one of the rear windows about 5cm - he had to be very careful when leaving the car as it sometimes did it when the doors were locking. Vince

Tell them that if their forums are quiet, its because many ex Saab drivers are now driving Lexus and so they can be found over here Vince

Had something like this on my Honda CRV, got progressively worse, was looked at several times, in the end it had to be sorted as it became a violent shaking, front drive shafts was the cause, the rear was discounted by temporarily removing the prop shaft. Vince

Yeah, this all harks back to the 80s, plenty of cars were getting stolen , you didn't even need to smash a window, I think Ford Escorts were a big target, but I do remember Vauxhall Astra's were as a mate of mine had 2 Astra GTEs, the 2nd replace the 1st after it was stolen, after the 2nd one was stolen he switched to something else. We actually broke into his car whilst he was sat in it, you only needed a piece of that plastic parcel banding with a notch cut into it. You fed it down the side of the window from the outside, fished about and you could pull up the lock mechanism the same as if you were in the car and pulled up the lock at the top of the door as most of them were back then, nowadays its usually on the same position as the internal door handle. We tried this when it was reported that Astras were easy to get into, turns out they were. This is why may people had Crooklocks on their steering wheels etc. Nowadays, most cars have deadlocks, the 1st lock actually locks the door, the 2nd disconnects the mechanism form the actual lock which is shrouded in metal to prevent tampering. Many cars also have immobilisers so you can't 'hot-wire' them by simply shorting the starter motor wires. Vince

Yeah, I saw that one, knew about the issue already, applying the fix is reasonable, its expensive if its already gone as that needs welding and its not an easy place to get into which is what pushes these into becoming write-offs, cos these cars are getting pretty cheap to buy like the one rich1068 got,.though it certainly doesn't look cheap. Vince

My experiences are along the same line as darrude, only occasionally have I felt anything other than a smooth ride. In a conventional car, the CC would vary the engine speed to maintain road speed, in a hybrid the system would probably leave the ICE at a constant speed whilst varying the electric side of things to "trim" the speed, in my experience this is done quite well. You can set the car so the rev counter is on in All modes, I did this for a while, interesting to watch the ICE switch off as you waft along the road. Vince

Did over 1000 miles with the Engine Light on in my 9-5 Aero, occasionally message appeared on the info screen too, so I knew it was down to the battery, still expect some codes to show up is this is the case. I say this as you have had the light go out as well, which happened on mine too. There were several versions of the oil breather setup too, check those are okay and clear. I remember that if the oil level was getting towards the low end of ok, I could get the oil light to flash on going round the Raleigh Island in Nottingham, but you had to be driving briskly, the Aero used a little oil, needing a topup of about 1 pint between 12k services which for me was about every 18 - 20 weeks. Hope you get the little niggles sorted as that is a beauty of a car. Vince

Regarding the heaters, if it doesn't blow warm air, but it does cool, then the suggestion of flushing the cooling system may work, on my 9-5 Aero, I had a situation where the heating was working, but in stop start traffic if stopped, all sorted itself out after I had the thermostat done when it failed. Tidy car, nice colour, it was this colour which brought me back to Saab when I got my 2nd one. Enjoy. Vince

As someone who has owned 3 Saabs, I looked into buying a 9-3 convertible a few years ago, the only thing I remember is that models of certain years were prone to having the bulkhead cracking around the steering column, which on an old car could be a write off unless you're prepared to pay to sort it. I believe the last version produced has it all sorted and there is a colar that can be bought and fitted to prevent the issue from happening on the other versions but since it has to be fitted to the bulkhead, its not the cheapest of fixes either. As far as I know, this only affects the convertible model. Vince

Yeah I got a Mesa Red IS, I actually went to look at one on a dull day and decided against the colour. Then after more looking, I decided, no, I like the colour, and in the sunshine when its clean, it simply gleams due to the gold flecks in it. On a dull day, it can almost look burgundy, and yes it does show up the dirt, thought red wouldn't. Vince

Correct, though after I posted I realised that I made a small mistake, the MG2 doesn't spin slower, its speed is directly linked to the road wheels, its just that the rest of the system, its just that the MG1 takes the energy and spins the ICE as I said. Vince

In a normal car system, the alternator can be disconnected and then it just spins and provides little resistance, this is correct. However, in a hybrid system, the energy levels are much higher and crucially the system is connected to the road wheels, as it says in the first part you quoted "(MG2) is operating as a generator, it creates resistance to rotation at the wheels", this is normal regen occuring. In the second part this is describing braking at higher speeds, if they switch the ICE off, the MG1 would need to spin extremely fast backwards, http://eahart.com/prius/psd/ has a good demo of this on the Prius, the maximum speed with the ICE off would be about 42mph so when they say "protect the planetary gear unit", they really mean MG1 as they don't want it spinning too fast, this is still normal regen occurring. So from higher speeds, at some point when you are going slow enough, the ICE goes off, if you set the tacho to always on you can see this all the time. In downhill braking, even at say 20 - 30 mph when the battery becomes full, this is not the same situation as described in part 2 as at those speeds the ICE would more than likely be already off. But at some point the ICE comes back on, I've witnessed this a few times, descending the Cairn O Mount its easy to watch it all happen as you don't want to come down there at any great speed. So descending at around 30mph in silence apart from the brake pads on the discs, the ICE suddenly come on a short while after the battery appears to be full, and the ICE runs at something like 2000rpm. So whats occurring here is a little different, the main braking is being done mechanically, but since the MG2 is connected to the road wheels at a fixed ratio so it will keep generating power, but if you could disconnect the circuit, this would be done using electronics so would have large energy across the electronics, not good. Also you would remove the load as the load is created by pushing the electricity into the battery and you don't want a sudden decrease in braking. So by spinning the MG1 you cause the ICE to spin and this allows the MG2 to spin slower, the energy of this slower spin is used to keep the MG1 spinning which is spinning the ICE, so the ICE is providing the load via MG1 to MG2 and hence the road wheels. The whole system is beautiful in its simplicity, it however requires some very sophisticated software to keep it all in check. Vince

A petrol engine will create mainly CO2 and a little CO, usually the CO is created when the engine is not running at its most efficient, now since hybrid systems are all about efficiency, they are designed to run the engines in as an efficient manner as possible - hence the atkinson cycle, in fact the atkinson cycle is supposed to create lower emissions of both NOx and CO. Vince

The servo assistance must be electrical as most of the time when slowing down, the engine is usually not running when you get to the mechanical stage of braking, ie from about 5mph if you do it just right. Other items like the AC are also electrical rather than driven by the ICE. The way the engine / electric motors all connect through the gears, the electric motors can not be disconnected so they will be spinning and electricity will be generated, this has to go somewhere so the engine will spin as a load - it doesn't need to use any fuel, it just needs to be spun by the system to create a load to dissipate the excess energy, the continuing for a few more seconds would just use up a little more energy. The control of the engine is achieved by using a second electric motor which can spin forwards or backwards to mate the speed of the ICE, the electric motor and the road wheels, its all very clever and actually extremely simple which probably helps with reliability. There are several videos on YouTube explaining how it works, the Weber Auto one actually show the inner workings of an actual gearbox / motor setup from several versions of Prius, which are fundamentally the same system, in one of those videos he mentions the engine spinning as a load for the system when there is excess electricity. Had this very effect recently on a trip up Scotland on a road know as the Cairn O Mount, battery fairly depleted at the summit, filled up pretty quickly on descent and then the engine came on about 2/3rds of the way down. Vince

Recent trip up to Scotland with 3 people in the car, boot completely full, averaged 49.8mpg and when on the motorway this was often creeping above 50mpg, and since CO2 must be related to consumption I'm skeptical. Too many times I've seen articles based on Which reports yet lacking in detail as they want your cash, so I see them as a sensationalist organisation rather than a bastion of truth and righteousness, call me cynical if you like, I'm more likely to believe what I can see. Vince

I too agree with Martin on this, I spent rather longer than 12 months looking into what car I was going to get, I ALWAYS came back to the Lexus, now I may have liked an NX, or even a GS 450h but found them a little out of my price range, but found an IS 300h, I even looked at Toyotas though I wanted a little more than the 1.8 hybrid. Now I'm not looking for a replacement just yet, I've only had mine for about 18 months, but I have been keeping an eye on what could be my next car and it will probably be another hybrid Lexus, there's plenty to choose from, GS, NX, UX (soon) or even an RX. My only hope is that Lexus will start to embrace plug-in and then ultimately full electric, the Tesla S or X will have to remain a dream for now. Vince

I've only made one person jump, had several look at the car with that "why's it not making a sound" question clearly across their face. But as others have said, its not the quiet car that is the problem, its the distracted idiots not paying attention to their surroundings. Vince

If the car is in regen, i.e. such as going down a long hill, when the battery is full and can take no more charge then the engine turns to provide an alternative load. The energy has to go somewhere - conservation of energy. Vince

I tend to listen to a podcast over Bluetooth and it sounds fine, I've streamed from Amazon Prime and that sounded just fine too though I usually use the USB memory stick for my music. Vince

No, my mate has a Subaru Impreza, one of the seriously fast ones (special edition of a WRX / STI) and he tried after i told him, no joy. It was so it saved the battery on his 2nd key, which is why I did this at first with my Lexus, now disable the daily key when at home. Vince

I used to use it years ago when I was doing circa 30k miles per year, worked a treat, seemed to last quite a few weeks, so several thousand miles in my case. Thought it worked really well, no need to use wipers unless travelling really slow. One added bonus is that is seems to prevent the windscreen from freezing too. Vince

Interesting news from California, and to those dissing California, their economy is now greater than that of the UK, not bad since their population is about 2/3rds of ours. EVs look like the way to go, and with their extensive knowledge, Toyota/Lexus should be in a good position to take advantage, even if there is little to be seen at the moment. Vince

I have a IS300h so there's no 'B' option on mine, but you can use the flappy paddles to 'select' a lower gear, which I've only ever used a couple of times but it maintained the speed without using my actual brakes. Lexus will have the system set up so 0% and 100% battery on the display are actually only say 20% and 80% in reality, this would save you running your battery completely flat and when full gives you extra 'space' for a bit more charge. So here is the thing, when you are regenerating into the battery, you will go past 100% as far as the display is concerned but there will be still be a limit when then battery is actually full, now when this happens, you have still got to dump the excess electricity being generated somewhere, what the system does is to use this electricity by spinning the secondary electric motor which causes the petrol engine to turn, thus using the petrol engine as a load to keep the system happy. I'm surmising that its this transition to spinning the petrol engine where the actual braking diminishes even temporarily, you would sense this as a surge in acceleration due to gravity. I've watched several videos on YouTube showing how the hybrid system works, and in one of the Weber videos, they actually mention this effect where the engine will spin to create extra load, just like conventional engine braking would. Vince

I have the IS300h, when you disable it, you see 2 sets of 2 flashes, so 4 flashes in total of the LED on the remote. You can also walk up to your car and slip your hand behind the handle and it won't open. I do this all the time at home, when out and about I usually leave it alone so you can walk up to the car as normal. When leaving or arriving home, you usually need your keys for your house front door anyway. Vince

I find my IS300h great on the motorway, entering from a motorway services is impressive as it pulls very quickly all the way, I find Sport mode is better for responsiveness, but use cruise control most of the time. The day I picked up my car, I reset the meters, and sat at an indicated 70mph and it showed an average of 58mpg. On my journeys up to Scotland (350 mile each way), I tend to get high 40s, nudging 50s, with 48 being the norm, I actually find it better on the motorway than round town, maybe my right foot is too heavy. Vince