Sandy42

I can't answer most of your questions but, as young thinking, fit 66 year old, I bought a 4th gen RX450h 6 months ago because it was what I WANTED. I had a 7 year old IS220d before that. I do about 3,600 miles a year and it cost me £760 for the 1st intermediate service plus a full service next year at my local Lexus dealership. Yes, maybe I am mad but, hopefully, I'll still be around in 6 or 7 years to be mad again.

Depends on the mesh thickness as well. It's all to do with the equivalent waveguide lengths and cut-off wavelengths. Just use Thackeray and Matt8's method and you wont need to worry about rf engineering and cut-off wavelengths. I stopped worrying about them when I retired Oh - and your fob battery will last longer as well.

Hopefully the image below doesn't break the site!!

Which? lists the RX as a Best Buy in the Large SUV category. It's top equal with the Q7. The NX doesn't make it to the top of the Compact SUV category. I trust Which? a lot more than I would trust the various motoring magazines. (I guess that you would need to subscribe to Which? to see their review).

The Passat was white to start with which showed up the rust really well. I miss those days with orthphosphoric to get rid of the rust, then two layers of Holts spray paint to cover up the mess and finishing with a T-Cut work-out to to try to blend it all in. Maybe the Kobe steel problems will bring them back. (Just joking!)

Vauxhall Viva, Triumph 1500TC, Ford Cortina, VW Passat, Toyota Carina, Toyota Corolla, Toyota RAV4, Lexus IS220d, Lexus RX450h. i.e. UK, Europe, Japan, Japan, Japan....

I agree with all of the above. You can see that the index is flawed when you find that the Suzuki Jimny, Chevrolet Kudos and Rover 25 all have better reliability indexes than the RX. I sure don't want one of those.

My car computer says 40.4mpg average after my first 1000 miles or so. I've not checked the gallons in versus miles out myself. That's after some fairly mixed driving though I tend to drive fairly gently and keep below 60mph on motorways. I keep the car in "Normal" mode and I've had plenty of start-stop journeys. Which? magazine reported 37.2mpg combined for the RX. I tend to trust Which? The Fuelly website reports 27.1mpg average for a 2016 RX. This is for mostly US results so this will be miles per US gallon i.e. about 32.5 miles per "real" gallon. I had an IS220D before and it's computer said 34.5mpg - so I'm well pleased (and surprised).

Ah - Just found something on P742 of the manual. Hardly the obvious place to look. I'd better see what else is hidden away.

Thanks Rayaan. I'd better check what mine are set to and adjust them accordingly.. Still a bit surprised that there's no reference to this in the manual though. All it says about the "Distance" control in the manual is Both the front or rear center sensors display and tone indication can be set. Anyway, good to know something new.

Yes - p. 379 (2016 model) has the sensors "blinking slowly" at: Front center sensor: 100 cm (3.3 ft.) to 60 cm (2.0 ft.) Rear center sensor: 150 cm (4.9 ft.) to 60 cm (2.0 ft.) For closer in the blinking speed goes up until it becomes continuous. Nowhere do I see any reference in the manual to a sensitivity adjustment but I'll need to do some real world checks to verify my "colour theory". I picked the following line from p388 of the 2016 manual (The section on the Lexus Parking Assist Monitor/Camera). The line shows points approximately 0.5 m (1.5 ft.) (red) and approximately 1 m (3 ft.) (yellow) from the center of the edge of the bumper. So, are we discussing two different things?

Are we sure that there is a "Low Distance" setting on the parking sensors? Isn't it just the colour of the displayed "bricks" in front or behind the car that are changeable. I know it says "Distance" on the Settings menu but I think that this might really mean "Distance Indication Colour". I'll do some checks myself in the next few days.

So - just done my testing on a fairly steep slope with the car pointing down the hill. Stopped the car, foot on the brake, shifted to R, foot off the brake and the car didn't roll forward. BUT it didn't start to roll after 2 seconds either and, in fact, it didn't roll forward after 30 seconds and more. So, I was confused. Maybe the hybrid system was holding it. I then put my foot back on the brake and shifted to N then released the brake. The car rolled down the hill fairly quickly. I did these tests a few times with the same result. I didn't bother doing a test with the car pointing up the hill since I know the BRAKE HOLD function would work just fine when in D. In summary then: Probably the HILL-START ASSIST CONTROL works OK but it's not something I'm going to rely on. Whether it works or not seems to be slope dependent. I do think that's it's a Lexus mistake not to provide some visual or audible indication that the HAC has been set as they did for the earlier RX versions. Think I'll stick to applying the parking brake manually in situations where I need to. PS I'm now up to just over 40mpg. Of course, since I've retired, I've no need to go anywhere in a hurry!

For point 4. I just sold my 2010 IS220D SE-I a month ago after 7 happy years with the car. My average consumption over the time I had the car was 34.5mpg. Yes, you should get 40mpg+ on the motorway but 32mpg average seems about right for the 2007 car (which had a slightly poorer official consumption compared to the version I had).

Thanks again Colin. The middle of Edinburgh is a bit short of traffic free hills so I'll need to get out of town to do my tests properly. Probably I'll wait till the weekend. I'll report back when they're done.