Tony Richa's last GS 450 appeared again

[tonyricha]

Hi all, exactly 3 years ago my hybrid pump failed so I leased a merc diesel (yuk) on the exact day the merc is returned I see my old girl for sale on eBay. Still looks as good as ever, only covered 11K since we parted ways. The advertisment states hybrid pump has been sorted but no mention of any Battery issues, so those batteries are now 11 years old having covered 211, 000 miles.

Not going to buy it at £3999 as I now have a dark blue 450h with the all important moon roof.

[royoftherovers]

7 minutes ago, tonyricha said:

Hi all, exactly 3 years ago my hybrid pump failed so I leased a merc diesel (yuk) on the exact day the merc is returned I see my old girl for sale on ebay. Still looks as good as ever, only covered 11K since we parted ways. The advertisment states hybrid pump has been sorted but no mention of any battery issues, so those batteries are now 11 years old having covered 211, 000 miles.

Not going to buy it at £3999 as I now have a dark blue 450h with the all important moon roof.

That`s very interesting Tony as I started a new thread earlier today about hybrid Batteries and I referred to your old car !

 

Regards

John

[tonyricha]

Saw that, you prompted me to post, can't work out how to link the add to this thread.

[Hangie]

Recently I was servicing my car at Lexus dealership. During conversation they told me one of theirs customer got GS450h with 300k miles on the clock and then batteries gave up. 

Important point is though that for batteries miles doesn't really maters but number of cycles. So if you are doing a lot of motorways miles you can do 300 miles without even going through one charging cycle, while driving in the city you can do few cycles just while doing few miles. 

In general I would prefer a car with high motorways miles rather than daily commuter/school run car as everything is getting used quicker - miles is not the ultimate live counter of the car. Cars should have hours counter for the engine and cycles for batteries ;)

 

[Farqui]

Doesn't the Hybrid tech means that neither the internal combustion engine nor the batteries/motors are ever over stressed?

Instead the power units work in tandem which surely means they should last a good while longer more than a single unit that used constantly.  

Krzysztof makes a good point about motorway miles being less stressful.

The one niggle in the back of my mind is just how complex the Hybrid system is but I'm leaning towards Lexus/ have thoroughly tested the system.  After all, it's a Lexus.  Also Toyota have been using the technology for many years so should have it pretty well set-up now.   From what I've read the implemented Battery management seems pretty solid.

I hope Tony's issue with the Hybrid pump was a relatively isolated/low occurrence issue...my pinkies are firmly crossed anyhoo!

[Hangie]

There is  a thread here about the pump. Pump was the weak point of the system and was dying quite recently. When Lexus noticed it, new version was introduced - 2008 if I remember correctly - and since then it was alright. They changed it once again in 2010 for some reason but my version is also holding strong.

another general rule: I know it is tempting to buy early version of a new model but it is much wiser to stick to a last years model of a previous one with all the bugs fixed :)

[cruisermark]

The pump failure fix has been documented here atleast twice - the bearings are pennies And can be changed   Fairly easily and quickly without even a lift - the other main issues are the batteries cells which are £700 to put right from an independent and leaking shock absorbers which is a dealer only part.