IS300H - how has yours been reliability wise?

[Ullager]

On 7/16/2020 at 5:43 PM, corpjones said:

Thank you all, Lexus offered £4k trade in over the phone, even webuyanycar offering £4900, my car is a 2011 E class (E250) Avantgarde Cdi, 101k miles.

Will be test driving this Sun hopefully, not happy with the trade in price though!

Are there any well regarded independents that are known to members here to sell good cars? may start considering non Lexus dealers to get a better trade in value as well as better pricing.

I bought my first Lexus IS300H last week on a 14 plate, 30k on the clock from a main Lexus dealer. Like you, I had a Mercedes E class 250 Cabrio CDI on a 61 plate with 57k on the clock. They initially offered me £6k but after haggling, I got them up to £6750. Auto Trader suggested that the going p/ex value for the Mercedes was about £7k so I was quite happy with what I got. 

[corpjones]

19 hours ago, Ullager said:

I bought my first Lexus IS300H last week on a 14 plate, 30k on the clock from a main Lexus dealer. Like you, I had a Mercedes E class 250 Cabrio CDI on a 61 plate with 57k on the clock. They initially offered me £6k but after haggling, I got them up to £6750. Auto Trader suggested that the going p/ex value for the Mercedes was about £7k so I was quite happy with what I got. 

How are you finding it compared to the Mercedes? I had terrible experiences dealing with various Mercedes dealerships (Honda were a lot better!) which also put me off the car, the last straw was when it went in for some warranty work, they damaged the trim and quoted me £550 to repair, their excuse was during diagnostics trim can get damaged and they take no responsibility, in the end my warranty covered it.

During the 35min test drive I had the seats felt more comfy compared to my car, the true test will be on a longer commute.

[Ullager]

Hi Mark,

Sorry for the late reply.

My experience with the Mercedes was good - very reliable & pretty good fuel consumption - around 40 mpg roughly. My experience with the Mercedes dealer in Exeter was good & I never had any problems with them. My only real reason for changing was that diesels are becoming increasingly seen as 'unclean' in some areas & I didn't want to start incurring penalty charges for entering various towns in the future. I'm sure Road Tax will rapidly increase for diesels. I do miss the 'cabrio' style though!

I have not driven the Lexus much - the West Country is currently packed with tourists & parking is very difficult so I have been using my Smart car as you can always find a small space big enough to park. The Lexus is much quieter than the Mercedes of course. I took it for a run yesterday with four adults up & it proved very comfortable for all concerned compared with the Mercedes which was decidedly cramped in the back. Its too early to talk about reliability but as I'm covered with a 3 year warranty, 3 year breakdown & recovery, etc., I feel that I'm future proofed for the next 3 years.

Hope this helps - again, sorry for the late reply.

 

[corpjones]

Thank you for the reply 🙂

Our situation sounds almost identical, I also had a 61 plate E class (but just the normal saloon), so far my average on the Lexus has been 45mpg, this is a mix of long motorway runs and town driving, was hoping for a bit more but its not bad at all for a petrol, I drive it pretty carefully and have followed the various tips on this forum about hybrid driving but dont think I'll get much better then that.

[Ullager]

Hi Mark,

For what its worth, I filled up with petrol for the first time yesterday & the computer was showing fuel consumption as 45.8 mpg so very similar.

[corpjones]

Thats good to know, did have a thought if there was something wrong with my car 🙂

Did have a issue on a older MB where the thermostat was faulty and was getting low MPG due to engine never getting up to 80 temp.

[Ullager]

I haven't done any motorway driving yet in the Lexus but I would hope for something a bit better than 45mpg. Where I live is very hilly with very narrow lanes so a lot of stop/start & much reversing!

[Thackeray]

There have been a number of threads that discuss mpg on this forum. Measured over a year in all conditions a real 44-45 mpg looks about average (the dashboard will be overestimating and showing around 48 mpg).

But I've just come across some other figures that we'll probably have to start looking at in the not too distant future, using kilowatt hours per 100 km instead of miles per gallon.

I've finally got around to trying out the Hybrid Assistant app that monitors the performance of Toyota and Lexus hybrids as you drive. It has a partner app called Hybrid Reporter which saves statistics from each trip and displays a vast number of statistics and graphs of what was happening during the trip.

As well as storing mpg (on a minute by minute basis if you want) the app produces a graph which shows total energy used in kwh/100 km. The graph it produced for my first half-hour trip showed the IS300h settling down at 70 mph to around 12-13 kwh/100 km.

I thought it might be interesting to compare the efficiency of pure electric cars, such as Teslas. This page says the model 3 does 14.73 kwh/100km, while the model S does 20.5 kwh/100km.

If these figures are at all close to reality, you have to wonder if it makes sense to be pushing towards purely electric cars if a petrol hybrid uses fuel that much more efficiently than a Tesla model S.

Of course, electricity is a lot cheaper to buy than petrol. But that's because most of the cost of petrol in the UK is tax. If people start switching to electricity in large numbers there can be no doubt that governments that rely on petrol tax will gradually increase tax on electricity - they can't afford not to. So when that happens, does electric power still have a big advantage? I suppose if we can generate most electricity with renewables it becomes worthwhile eventually. Until then, maybe a petrol hybrid is still more efficient.

 

[corpjones]

That's interesting, my dashboard itself is showing 45-46mpg so guess real world will be even lower.

 

I looked at the Lexus link app and it mentioned in description that most features only work in post 2019 models, mine is a 63 plate, has anyone tried the app on this year of car and is it worth it? The app description suggests very little functioning with my year of car.

[Thackeray]

I haven't tried the Lexus link app. The Hybrid Assistant app is produced by a private enthusiast and is free.

[royoftherovers]

2 hours ago, Thackeray said:

There have been a number of threads that discuss mpg on this forum. Measured over a year in all conditions a real 44-45 mpg looks about average (the dashboard will be overestimating and showing around 48 mpg).

But I've just come across some other figures that we'll probably have to start looking at in the not too distant future, using kilowatt hours per 100 km instead of miles per gallon.

I've finally got around to trying out the Hybrid Assistant app that monitors the performance of Toyota and Lexus hybrids as you drive. It has a partner app called Hybrid Reporter which saves statistics from each trip and displays a vast number of statistics and graphs of what was happening during the trip.

As well as storing mpg (on a minute by minute basis if you want) the app produces a graph which shows total energy used in kwh/100 km. The graph it produced for my first half-hour trip showed the IS300h settling down at 70 mph to around 12-13 kwh/100 km.

I thought it might be interesting to compare the efficiency of pure electric cars, such as Teslas. This page says the model 3 does 14.73 kwh/100km, while the model S does 20.5 kwh/100km.

If these figures are at all close to reality, you have to wonder if it makes sense to be pushing towards purely electric cars if a petrol hybrid uses fuel that much more efficiently than a Tesla model S.

Of course, electricity is a lot cheaper to buy than petrol. But that's because most of the cost of petrol in the UK is tax. If people start switching to electricity in large numbers there can be no doubt that governments that rely on petrol tax will gradually increase tax on electricity - they can't afford not to. So when that happens, does electric power still have a big advantage? I suppose if we can generate most electricity with renewables it becomes worthwhile eventually. Until then, maybe a petrol hybrid is still more efficient.

 

Honest John`s real world figures shows 48.5 for IS 300h.

I don`t see the point of spending tens of thousands of pounds. to buy an electric car which will cost no less than one`s current car costs to service and not have significant lower running costs. ICE engines will be around for the next 50 years, but will not be manufactured after 2030 or 2035. The Lexus hybrid is the car for the here and now and for the medium term. 

[ganzoom]

15 hours ago, Thackeray said:

The graph it produced for my first half-hour trip showed the IS300h settling down at 70 mph to around 12-13 kwh/100 km.

I thought it might be interesting to compare the efficiency of pure electric cars, such as Teslas. This page says the model 3 does 14.73 kwh/100km, while the model S does 20.5 kwh/100km.

 

I think you are getting totally confused by how energy is repeated in the various apps you are quoting.

EVs have a thermal efficiency approaching 95% at the motor, and 80% interms of plug to wheel.

The latest Prius which is much more efficient than the IS300H has a terminal efficiency of 60%.

You than have to take into account energy needed to extract/refine/transport fuel, versus the ability to generate electricity from your own home.

I have both an EV and IS300H, trust me the energy efficiency of an EV is many folds higher than any combustion car. And if you have solar panels you can refuel your car for free even during a UK summer....Here is what my home electricity bill is looking like last few months including charging the car.

If you really want to compare efficiency go to the EPA website, most EVs achieve around 90empg, the latest Prius is about 50mpg.

 

[ganzoom]

12 hours ago, royoftherovers said:

Honest John`s real world figures shows 48.5 for IS 300h.

I don`t see the point of spending tens of thousands of pounds. to buy an electric car which will cost no less than one`s current car costs to service and not have significant lower running costs. 

I think this a common misconception people who buy EVs just want to save money. I certainly didn't buy our £70k EV to save money, I bought it because its the only drivetrain that can deliver performance AND economy.

My alternative car to our EV would have been a BMW M5, which would have returned 20mpg, needed lots of servicing and deprecated horrifically because of high running costs, yet in the real world no faster than our current EV which has a real world running costs of 3.5p/mile over the last 46k miles including fuel/tyres/servicing.

If you try to justify an EV purely based on costs alone its virtually impossible - not without an creative accountant. Which is why we cancelled our order for a Tesla Model 3 to replace our IS300H.

My wife doesn't care about performance and therefore 50% of the reason to swap to an EV for her was gone. A Model 3 will have lower running costs but not that much lower than the IS300H, maybe £500-600/year max. However a new Model 3 would have cost around £30k+ to swap into after trading in the IS300H, so financially it made zero sense, especially when combined with the reliability of the IS300H.

EVs really only work at present for people looking at high performance cars, otherwise prices still need to come down. The electric Lexus UX is the perfect example, it's around £50k or something crazy, yet our top spec IS300H premier was only £34k brand new as a factory fresh order. You need your head checking to buy an electric UX with real money.

[200h]

Hi Gang

this is the conclusion i came to aswell when considering an Ev this year,

the manufacturers are alway pushing how cheap it is to run an EV and

what it costs per mile this is why you wrongly assume they will save you money,

to have the cheap electric for 7 hours overnight your day KW rate goes up

when you calculate how much extra its going to cost throughout the day you have

2 options

1) stay on a single tariff for your electric so you dont pay anymore throughout

the day to run the household and pay more for charging your car

or

2) carry on using your fossil fuel car

[royoftherovers]

Thanks Gang.As ever another thoughtful contribution. I did expect to be in a minority of one with my contribution, but it seems as if the World has other things on its mind at the moment!

It does strike me however that many of the Tesla and other electronic vehicles on UK roads currently have been bought because of their Corporate and Personal taxation advantages and not bought by the "man on the Clapham Omnibus."

I am not saying that Corporates and Private Ownerships do not have a social conscience, far from it, but the current taxation policies do encourage such acquisitions via them.

It seems that Mark(200h) has seen through the Sales patter and is safely esconsed on the Omnibus. Good for him. 

[Thackeray]

3 hours ago, ganzoom said:

I think you are getting totally confused by how energy is repeated in the various apps you are quoting.

EVs have a thermal efficiency approaching 95% at the motor, and 80% interms of plug to wheel.

The latest Prius which is much more efficient than the IS300H has a terminal efficiency of 60%.

You than have to take into account energy needed to extract/refine/transport fuel, versus the ability to generate electricity from your own home.

Yes, I agree, it's confusing. Efficiency perhaps wasn't the right word to use. I was really just comparing how much energy the various cars consume and thought it was interesting to see some figures that you can compare. And, of course, the Tesla figures are probably overall results, so aren't directly comparable to 70mph in the IS300h.

I was really more interested in it from the government policy point of view rather than whether one car is preferable to another. If you can generate "free" electricity from renewables then electric cars make a lot of sense.

But for today we're comparing a 40% efficient petrol engine (IS300h) with fossil fuel power stations that from memory are also around 40% efficient. (Correct me if that's wrong.) In addition you've got to get the fuel from the oil well to the car's fuel tank (I don't know what that consumes in terms of energy.) And you've got to get fuel to the power station and then the electricity from the power station to the car and I think you lose around 25% of the electricity in transmission grids. So efficiency of conversion of fuel to motion of the car is fairly low in both cases.

If you generate your own electricity from your own personal array of solar panels out in a field or on your roof and you feed it straight into your car, then presumably that's going to be a lot better than using a power station to generate electricity. But for the moment this still seems some way off for the average driver.

 

[ganzoom]

38 minutes ago, Thackeray said:

So efficiency of conversion of fuel to motion of the car is fairly low in both cases.

There is a ton of publications on this, if you ignore the EV bashing ones (usually paid for by Shell/BP etc) you will see EVs are leagues better interms of energy efficiency regardless of how you generate electricity - even via an inefficient local diesel generator. A very simplistic way to look at it is that if you take all the electricity currently used just to refine oil and stop refining oil, that electricity 'saved' can than be used to drive cars directly, so the net effect is you don't need to generate any more electricity and NOT use any oil. 

https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/gasoline-costs-6kwh.html

Renewable electricity takes things to the next level, every-time I drive past a wind turbine I remember this advert from Jaguar for the iPace.

There are loads of issues with EVs, but interms energy efficiency for personal transportation they are hugely better compared to combustion cars. That is not to say EVs are 'better' for the environment, am not convinced they are, nor are they really a solution to our excess consumption. I'm trying to do my bit these days by cycling rather than driving - doing currently 50 miles a week on the pedal bike instead of the car, but overall anything we do personally I fear is all too late anyways interms of global climate change :(. 

 

The UK grid is getting 'cleaner' too, renewable electricity generation will hit around 30%+ for total 2020 UK grid demands I suspect come the last day of the year. 

https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/renewable-generation-jumps-32-in-q2-driving-down-britains-carbon-intensity

[ganzoom]

2 hours ago, 200h said:

Hi Gang

this is the conclusion i came to aswell when considering an Ev this year,

the manufacturers are alway pushing how cheap it is to run an EV and

what it costs per mile this is why you wrongly assume they will save you money,

to have the cheap electric for 7 hours overnight your day KW rate goes up

when you calculate how much extra its going to cost throughout the day you have

 

Am on a spilt E7 tariff - Our overnight electricity is 7.8p per kWh, day time is 15p per kWh. The 'normal' day time rate is 13.5p per kWh with our supplier. If you than add in washing machine + dishwasher at night, overall E7 split bill is much much cheaper than a normal single day tariff. 

[200h]

hi

in my area it is 12p and 20p per kilowatt

[ganzoom]

2 minutes ago, 200h said:

hi

in my area it is 12p and 20p per kilowatt

Have you looked at Bulb? They apparently have 'one rate' across the UK.