Farewell to my UX 300e

Slucky · October 15

Bidding farewell to my UX 300e.

I have had the pleasure of a UX 300e for a while now. It was the Takumi model and was comfortable to drive around town with minimum fuss.

My model was on the lower 54Kw Battery, but it was more than enough for London driving, anything beyond required planning and contingency .

Mixed driving without AC or heating saw realistic 140 miles average. With AC on minus 20 miles off it.
I have driven to France and on the motorway if you drive above 70mph you can kiss 100Km of range goodbye.
And using the Chademo charger is a pain as it has a very low charging speed, so I was waiting around 40-1 hour to top up at charge stations.
This is good and comfortable city car but not one to venture out outside its comfort zone.

I have since then sold it as the chademo charger was a big issue for me, as many charge stations I came across either do not have the charger or its not working.
With more support for CCS and faster charge, I cannot understand why Lexus did not make the newer UX 300e with a CCS.

The Lexus RZ did not appeal me, so hopefully if they release a EV model that meets my needs, I should be back.

Thanks for all your support.

levensnevel · October 20

Understand why you parted from your 300E

Same here. It is a perfect runaround in town but, except for the summer season, an absolute disaster for roundtrips of 300+ km in autumn & winter.

We found out the hard way. From mid May to mid September we averaged around 16.5 kWh/100km but when the temperatures dropped the energy consumption rose to 23.3 kWh/100 km. First we thought it had something to do with a brakecaliper which got stuck s we used a infrared thermometer to check. This revealed a slight increase in temperature on the left front wheel so we visited our workshop where the serviced all four brakecalipers. But that was to no avail, the energy consumption remained around the 23 kWh/100 km with the temperatures in the 15 degrees celcius region.

So our workshop contacted a Lexus dealership [ one where they service 5 other 300E's] Their reply: that is a product feature. Energy consumption increases when the temperatures drop. Which in itself came as no surprise to us as we drove a Hyundai 64kWh Kona for 2 years / 20K km. Only during the 'cold' season this increase was limited to a 12.5% [ I've been told that the 300E uses exactly the same 'engine' as the 64kWh Kona ]

So for one or another reason Lexus uses, compared to Hyundai, different supporting Hard- & Software. And they indicated that they have no plans to update the supporting Hard- & Software to increase the energy efficiency on their EV's [both the 300E and the RZ]. Anyway not in the Netherlands.

So we took our loss and will part-exchange next week our 300E for a NX300H.

ArneT · October 23

On 10/15/2024 at 11:32 AM, Slucky said:

Bidding farewell to my UX 300e.

I have had the pleasure of a UX 300e for a while now. It was the Takumi model and was comfortable to drive around town with minimum fuss.

My model was on the lower 54Kw battery, but it was more than enough for London driving, anything beyond required planning and contingency .

Mixed driving without AC or heating saw realistic 140 miles average. With AC on minus 20 miles off it.
I have driven to France and on the motorway if you drive above 70mph you can kiss 100Km of range goodbye.
And using the Chademo charger is a pain as it has a very low charging speed, so I was waiting around 40-1 hour to top up at charge stations.
This is good and comfortable city car but not one to venture out outside its comfort zone.

I have since then sold it as the chademo charger was a big issue for me, as many charge stations I came across either do not have the charger or its not working.
With more support for CCS and faster charge, I cannot understand why Lexus did not make the newer UX 300e with a CCS.

The Lexus RZ did not appeal me, so hopefully if they release a EV model that meets my needs, I should be back.

Thanks for all your support.

Sorry to see you have left the Lexus family Slucky.

I share some of your concerns re: the Chademo vs CCS and smaller Battery. At least the newer 300e has a larger capacity Battery which helps.

One things I have found on the public Chademo chargers .. some don't work.. but I saw a BMW driver press the red emergency stop button on the charger (no alarms went off and no emergency services arrived!) This reset the unit and then after it started up (a few minutes later) it worked fine!! Worth trying to any other UX300e owners out there!

We only do short journeys in ours, so the 54kWh Battery is fine for us and is granny-charged over a 3-pin plug overnight at home. We use my NX300h for longer / unplanned journeys.