DBIZO

Hi folks - just trying to establish facts here: does anyone know if electrically operated rear window sun blinds were ever available in the UK market? I think I saw it in earlier catalogues for Luxury or maybe Premier models, but more recent UK catalogues don't mention it, probably since the 2016 facelift. It was available with the 2016 EU facelift. It is still available in some Asian markets. Thanks!

That's not that bad. If any comfort, I'm getting low 30s in European cities in cold winter (freezing) for short trips. Summer drives at 50-60 mph cruising get you 50+.

One must note that getting full-tank 49-50 mpg from an IS, even if it's per the computer, is excellent. Of course, in ideal conditions, you can achieve 50+ mpg on certain trips. My long-term (20k miles so far) consumption stat is 40-41 mpg calculated at the pump against the odometer, which includes lots of motorway miles in winterly conditions.

All seasons are mediocre in most conditions, but they get the job done, that's the point. What do you do for those few days, you don't drive?

Of course. When summer is hot and winter is winterly. But all seasons are a no-brainer in places such as the UK where all seasons are temperate. What's the alternative? Summers all year long like most UK motorists do (I'm glad we left for Europe before winter hit, all those cars on summers around me gave me the nerves), or changing to winters because there is a week or two that warrants them? Running a set of Pirelli Cinturato SF2, can't really fault them. 20k miles, including winter across Europe, 100+ mph in sub zero temperatures this week. Not a moment of skittishness. Excelled in a skid training too, together with the Lexus stability. I'll also use these to scale the Alps later this winter.

This is dangerous. It is normal for the car change its posture on the wheels when the parking break takes the weight off of the road breaks, but this should not mean rolling. However, why do you leave in Neutral, as opposed to Parking? The car tends to complain if you try to exit not in P position. That should also help the breaks, because it loads the transaxle. I don't think I've ever tried to park in N, in fact I never use N. It's for towing.

You're assuming the masses buy cars on technical merit...

Why don't you try Motorway.co.uk or other car reselling services?

I have, so...?

Right. Home charging at 100s of kilowatts and superchargers at several megawatts? Will there be several nuclear reactors installed for every postcode area?

It really depends on your comfort zone with having a car in or out of warranty. These cars should last well beyond 150k+ miles, so with your 4k per annum, it will take 15 years to get there even from 90k. If I were in your position, I'd go for an older, higher mileage car (as long as its in nice condition, I can't stand scruffy cars), from private seller even to get a lower cost, but get on a negotiated Lexus service plan to get a rolling 12-month warranty. It's mental hygiene for me. If you've got a garage you really like and trust with a hybrid car, that's probably different. I don't.

Unsure what you mean by careful use of fossil fuels that don't contribute to climate change. Burning fossil fuels produces greenhouse gases, predominantly carbon dioxide, and I don't think there is a practical way to capture them for mobility applications. Even for stationary, it would take massive filtration systems and unfathomably vast repositories. Burning a litre of petrol produces something like 2.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide, you can't just simply filter it or store it. You may not consider CO2 a pollutant, but for all intents and purposes it actually is. Your underlying sentiment that we need to keep investing in fossil fuel technology is of course a valid one. More efficient use of fossil fuels is still the most effective tool in curbing global emissions in a given time for a given amount of financial, industrial and natural resources. What you would really need to be careful with is that such investments do not lead to increased consumption, which is known as Jevon's paradox. There are policy tools to achieve that (quotas and taxation) through making fossil fuels progressively more costly, although they are difficult to maintain in popular democracies due to people voting politicians out who try to make energy more expensive. But ban on combustion engines in the name of emission controls is counterproductive - it makes manufacturers stop investing in combustion engine development, which means millions of cars will not receive new engine designs, lifting emissions. The fallacy of full EVs is ignoring the most basic premise of economics, which is that we are allocating limited resources, and also that we are up against the clock too. EVs are extremely wasteful and slow to ramp up, and exacerbate the power generation problem. Wind and solar are ineffective because they are not dispatchable.

The problem is that changing the climate means weather will be different to what's human and natural environments are built and conditioned to. Change is faster than what these environments can normally adjust to, which means gargantuan economic costs and natural damage. While it probably sounds like a good idea to have warmer winters, in the UK that could very well end up in tears frozen in an arctic winter, when and if the Gulf stream diverts from the British isles. Unless the climate stabilises (slows), change will likely keep outpacing our and living nature's ability to adapt. Unless you were just sarcastic...

Driving to Norfolk in a fortnight, bringing some jerrycans it looks like.

Where is that? In Portsmouth, it's still well above 1.7.

Wonderfully pointless debate, because it's up to what you expect. It is clear that the IS300h is not a 'driver's car', whatever that's supposed to mean, and because of that, not a car press' car, and as a result, has always been misunderstood, much like the GS hybrids. There is no drama, and there is a bit a 'fly by wire' feel to it. But the car is outstanding in build, road stability, looks, smoothness of power delivery and economy. If you want noise and neck breaking pull, shift manually, or intimidate traffic ahead of you (the latter alone is a significant portion of the market), it's not your car. Personally, I can only repeat myself: practically, the IS300h has more than enough performance for UK roads, including acceleration. The only place I find I'd want it to have more torquey beans is European motorways, particularly the Autobahn, simply because I don't want to rev to 4-5k every time when I want to pick up speed. That's where I wish they built an electric system that could chime in, but that's precisely where it cannot (or prevented from by the computer), because of a relatively low-performance battery pack. This is where it shows that it's not a European brand, but a Japanese exporting primarily to the US, and there is no need in either of those places to deliver lots of torque above 80 mph, and there are no roads where it's either socially accepted or legal to drive at 100+ mph. With an updated electrical system, ideally with a 20-mile plug-in electric option, that would be possible. Instead, Lexus moved out of the sporty sedan category. Which reminds me of that anecdote, that an American car brand early in the motoring days received reports of exceptionally high failure rates from their European customers. After a bit of investigation, it turned out that European customers, according to the report, were simply driving way too fast and aggressively compared to American drivers, stressing the gearbox and the engine way more than the maker expected.

I wish I knew enough about combustion engines to tell you what it actually does, or if it's of any discernible effect on a healthy engine. But it's inexpensive enough to be a fool. I've done this twice now, some 24k miles apart. Lexus Petrol Fuel System Cleaner — PZ463-00PB0-04 L (lexuspartsdirect.co.uk)

Saving the planet, one red light at a time.

You hit on an key point: not buying a new car is the next best thing to not driving at all. Buying an EV to replace a still working ICE car will never make the carbon balance work.

Just reporting back on my attempt to get strong fuel economy in a 2015 IS300h. Treated the engine to Toyota's cleaning agent first, running it almost empty, then filled up on Esso super. Nearly 250 miles in after a round trip, most of which was on the A3 and the M25 today, the computer-reported mpg is at 56.7. I'm chuffed. It was a good run, conditions don't get much better around here, traffic was both a curse (some standstill traffic, acceleration-breaking) and a blessing (slipstream of many cars moving in front). Theoretically it could be a little higher, but at a major compromise to pace, and absolutely no hard acceleration. Also, clearly it cannot achieve the economy of the fourth generation hybrid powertrain of the new ES300h, but still excellent. Very impressive of Toyota/Lexus engineering, especially that they significantly improved on it still.

You mean an 450h? If you put it into sport, prime the engine with a downshift (or 2 if needed to reach revs of between 2000-3000), it will have enough punch going from 40-50 to 60-70 in no time. That is a very torquey setup with a V6 backed up by electric assistance, I'm sure at its maximum it can produce plenty torque - more than 400 Nm I reckon. The computer-controlled gearing takes some getting used to, but its smooth comfort far outweighs the loss of direct control and sportiness.

I wouldn't know, because I don't know you and your circumstance. Maybe you don't mind driving only between charging points. It suits your needs. I did not say it must be horrific for you. It would be for me. EVs are great around town though.

First off, I bought my car for less than your depreciation. Second, I did not say it's impossible, but I seriously question the general truth to triumphant reports on very long trips in EVs, that pretend there is no range anxiety, that it's all smooth sailing, and it's the same pace, flexibility and peace of mind. My examples were actual trips we did, and out of interest I looked up what would have happened in a T EV, because that's the best there is for journey planning. Our trips would not have been the same either in schedule or routing, that was clear. In multiple destinations of ours, there was no charging. Not even around, within miles. I'm not interested in general 'you can go to Cornwall or Scotland in an EV', because I'm not going just anywhere in Cornwall or Scotland, but I will go anywhere exactly where we want to go. That's a fundamental point: I drive where I want to, you drive where the car can. As EV infrastructure builds out, the two will converge for sure, but let's be honest for now. You're driving through one of the richest and most densely populated areas of Europe, heading to EV Land. I don't doubt you can make it to Oslo without a major event. But I seriously doubt you could repeat my recent routes and schedule across Europe with no change. I also dismiss that charging time is a non-issue. It is when your bio breaks don't align with charging points. Also, it is when you're on the limit of your own endurance (for me, 10-12 hours of hard motorway driving is the far end of my comfort zone). Adding another hour of delay on top of that would really be painful. For me. Our needs are varied, but EVs can only serve a subset of those needs. Safe travels!

the ES is abnormally efficient for a self charging hybrid...also, ridiculously more attractive than most EVs...

It's a plugin. I might have mixed up the model. NX? Found the comment. It's an NX plugin.