Finally - Mercury Grey/dark Rose Is300H F-Sport Arrived.

Steve44 · July 29, 2014

Well after 5mth wait, and about a year after I first had a test drive of a 3rd gen IS300h, the car finally arrived today on the back of a transporter from RRG Bradford via Lex Autolease.

15miles on the clock, 1/4 tank of fuel, 2 sets of floor mats (1 x Lex in boot, 1 x Lexus in car!) and a warning triangle/hi vis safety kit thing in a bag!

Car looks the bees knees in Mercury Grey and Dark Rose, very pleased with the colour combination.

Full spec is IS300h F-Sport, with Premium Nav, Dark Rose leather and Adaptive Suspension.

Done about 12 miles in it so far and loving every minute, especially how far it is possible to run on EV, with the mpg gauge ticking up! Also the elec seats and mirrors, love how both the mirrors dip on reverse to where you want them! Need more running to see what the AVS difference will bring, its subtle so far, though do get a Sport S+ mode now, which is even more aggressive.

Just sorting out the Nav, portal acct etc now. Appears SW version is V3101D, not sure on map version just yet, but will look. Will link it up to the Phone (Samsung GS3), Ipod and the portal and let you all know how I get on.

Couple of photo's, (red looks more pink using the phone camera than in real life)

tinka · July 29, 2014

As boycie would say “stunning”.

DJP · July 29, 2014

Splendid indeed! Don't forget the moving of the power gauge by pressing the button on right hand side of steering wheel, exposing a load of options to scroll through.

I love the auto folding mirrors on locking the car too.

So much to play with....

Sent from my Iphone using Lexus OC

Steve44 · July 31, 2014

well 2 days and 490 miles later, all is well sort of............

46mpg on the trip comp, can't complain, could have been more but I couldn't resist Sport+ and manual gears!

Couple of gremlins/head scratchers with the electrics though.

1. Try as I might, the Sat Nav continues to autozoom into junctions at will, despite me turning off the option in the menu's. The pop-up satnav instructions in the little display next to the clocks appear intermittently and apparently randomly. Can't figure it out at all.

2. Samsung GS3 connected via Bluetooth and all looks ok, including transferring approx 500 contacts, some with emails, addresses and other stuff in the phone, without a problem. I can also transfer text msgs and i actually rcvd one yesterday and it pinged up on the display and then read it out. Today I rcvd one, but nothing happened, though i could transfer and read it manually. Not sure what is going on here, but its a novelty really.

3. Sat Nav instructions - appears all or nothing. If you turn off the Voices in all modes, if you have the audio screen showing, it doesn't speak at all. If you have Voices in all modes on, it talks over everything, all the time - phone calls, ipod, radio........ annoying.

4. Traffic updates via phone didn't seem to work at first, then seem to have burst into life and work great, though i may turn down the auto update frequency, as I get a lot of "download cannot be completed" msgs, which I guess are because of crappy BT Mobile signal.

5. Voice commands appear to be a work in progress............ or maybe my accent is wrong.

6. Ipod use is OK, search ability is good, but had a couple of strange hangs and tracks changing on their own etc. I'll maybe try removing some of my wife's choices.

7. Car portal online integration thing, have successfully transferred a route from laptop to car via the portal, works quite well. Will do more investigating of this.

Biggest disaster of all though is that I've kerbed the front passenger alloy already and some gulls with diaorhea used the car as a toilet in Carlisle last night. :megaangry: Oh well.

DJP · August 1, 2014

Have you checked what version of the software you have? My dealer only has 'D' but some here have 'E'. Whether that helps is anyone's guess, some of your glitches (e.g. Nav zoom) I've not seen before.

Have you tried rebooting by holding the volume key down after making a change? Just an idea.

The Nav voice on 2nd Gen muted when a call came in, now it doesn't. Annoying.

Text messaging/e mail integration is a bit hit and miss too. As is the speech recognition. I have a south of England accent (barth not bath) and I struggle with it.

As far the kerbing I have done exactly the same a couple of times. There is no paint code do I'm afraid for a good match the whole wheel needs to be taken away and dipped. You might want to get the rear one done at the same time to ensure a consistent match.

Hope it's not detracting too much!

Sent from my Iphone using Lexus OC

Blisteringblue · August 1, 2014

I've just accepted the satnav is what it is. I've been a beta tester for TomTom for a couple of years so have always had their latest and greatest (Iphone version, not PND though) and it is like going back to 2003 with the Premium Nav. However I'm more anal about the traffic and their data is good. I did side by side comparisons and I'm happy.

I'm an Iphone 5 on Vodafone and have the downloads set to most frequent and also get more downloads cannot be done more than fresh data, so its not just you, but the data is still good.

TBH I tend to sit with the infotainment screen on the home page so I see what is playing on the ipod because I tend to use dynamic playlists on shuffle the most.

I get the odd freeze from the ipod, and tend to just pull the cable and put it back in and all is good again. I have tried DJPs reset but that will drop my wifi and it won't come back till I toggle the Hotspot on the Iphone (apple quirk not Lexus) which is a little dangerous when driving.

For a Premium car though the infotainment is by far it's weakest feature.

Silver Arrow · August 1, 2014

I've just accepted the satnav is what it is. I've been a beta tester for TomTom for a couple of years so have always had their latest and greatest (iPhone version, not PND though) and it is like going back to 2003 with the Premium Nav. However I'm more anal about the traffic and their data is good. I did side by side comparisons and I'm happy.

I'm an iPhone 5 on Vodafone and have the downloads set to most frequent and also get more downloads cannot be done more than fresh data, so its not just you, but the data is still good.

TBH I tend to sit with the infotainment screen on the home page so I see what is playing on the ipod because I tend to use dynamic playlists on shuffle the most.

I get the odd freeze from the ipod, and tend to just pull the cable and put it back in and all is good again. I have tried DJPs reset but that will drop my wifi and it won't come back till I toggle the Hotspot on the Iphone (apple quirk not Lexus) which is a little dangerous when driving.

For a Premium car though the infotainment is by far it's weakest feature.

Agreed - hasn't really changed too much from the Gen 2 IS from 2005....

Steve44 · August 1, 2014

I've just accepted the satnav is what it is. I've been a beta tester for TomTom for a couple of years so have always had their latest and greatest (iPhone version, not PND though) and it is like going back to 2003 with the Premium Nav. However I'm more anal about the traffic and their data is good. I did side by side comparisons and I'm happy.

I'm an iPhone 5 on Vodafone and have the downloads set to most frequent and also get more downloads cannot be done more than fresh data, so its not just you, but the data is still good.

TBH I tend to sit with the infotainment screen on the home page so I see what is playing on the ipod because I tend to use dynamic playlists on shuffle the most.

I get the odd freeze from the ipod, and tend to just pull the cable and put it back in and all is good again. I have tried DJPs reset but that will drop my wifi and it won't come back till I toggle the Hotspot on the Iphone (apple quirk not Lexus) which is a little dangerous when driving.

For a Premium car though the infotainment is by far it's weakest feature.

Yep, it is pretty weak, but if you go read the Audi/Merc/BMW forums and see some of the quirks and issues with their premium systems, there are similar issues everywhere. I think mine is on version D, I'll try and find out a bit more about version E.

Refilled the car with fuel this morning, tank to tank was 43.4 mpg on first tank, quite happy with that. Need to check tyre pressures. Have experimented with eco mode and normal on motorway, I've come to the conclusion if it is possible to cruise with cruise control on, then Eco mode is best, if you need to regulate your own speed, then normal mode is better. The relationship between Eco mode and throttle pedal/power output is just too weird for me and I find myself hunting up and down in speed, especially as there is no reference of engine noise/speed to set your brain too, it is just visual, seeing the rev counter moving up and down as the car climbs hills etc with the speed not changing is just plain odd! This is worse on the F-Sport as you only get a digital readout for speed. It might have been good to have an option of the speedo to select.

re. BT mobile is a MVNO on Vodafone, it gets the bit of signal that's left over, which combined with their general network coverage isn't a lot. We are moving to EE hopefully, here's hoping its better!

tinka · August 1, 2014

I've just returned home with my ultra blue F-sport, what a fantastic car, I’ll let the picture show you what the mpg was, over the 130mile journey home, I’m amazed. Also, how do I get the dial to change from tacho to the charge, power, eco gauge. Ahh, that didn’t turn out great, it was at 59.1 Mpg.

Steve44 · August 1, 2014

Great result! There is a setting in the mini-display, which allows you to set whether the Tacho is displayed regardless of mode. Someone has set it to show tacho, you need to reset it back to auto. It confused me whan I saw it with Eco-mode and a tacho!

ColinBarber · August 1, 2014

given the suggested mpg of the IS is around 60+ I don't understand why all the gauges/graphs max out at 60 mpg. Would have made more sense for them to show up to 80 or 100 mpg.

tinka · August 1, 2014

Just filled up and it's showing a range of, 543 miles, I would of thought it would of been a fair bit higher, given the mpg I was getting.

Blisteringblue · August 1, 2014

Take the computer with a massive pinch of salt though. Just finished a full month with the gauge showing 55 mpg most of the time.

My sums from my expenses with actual litres used and it's pretty much bang on 50 mpg.

That's still great for a car like that but it's way off the computer.

Martin F · August 1, 2014

. BT mobile is a MVNO on Vodafone, it gets the bit of signal that's left over, which combined with their general network coverage isn't a lot. We are moving to EE hopefully, here's hoping its better!

Don't hold your breath !

They recently switched all our company mobiles over to EE and there have been loads of complaints. I have no idea why as everybody knows that EE have the worst coverage compared to Vodafone and O2

ColinBarber · August 2, 2014

Vodafone have good coverage but absolutely poor 3G coverage and data throughput - unfortunatley my work provides me with a Vodafone SIM so I end up carrying a 3G MiFi on Three when I need data.

O2 seem to be a good compromise for voice and data.

Blisteringblue · August 2, 2014

Agreed, also vodafone and you get 3G in a city centre and that's about it period. However its enough to get the traffic to the car in a timely fashion. I looked at the Mifi devices but I'd have to pay for that

Steve44 · August 2, 2014

We seem to have gone a bit Off Topic, but needless to say, I agree with comments about Vodafone, 3G, Data etc. BT mobile is moving to be a MVNO with EE, so we are either moving to that, or changing to another provider. we were with O2 before BT and to be fair, they had coverage and bandwidth/contention issues too. I'm not sure there is a provider in the UK that gives good coverage virtually everywhere. Anyhoooooo.......

given the suggested mpg of the IS is around 60+ I don't understand why all the gauges/graphs max out at 60 mpg. Would have made more sense for them to show up to 80 or 100 mpg.

I thought this the other day too, the numerical readout below goes up to 99.9.

Starting to get the hang of this Hydrid driving thing, but it is very counter-intuitive, accelerating briskly to speed, then letting off completely the throttle and then re-applying gently to keep in EV mode as long as possible, but the proof is in the pudding, 50+mpg around town this morning!

Halved the amount of songs on the ipod to 4000 and the voice control is still greyed out for the Play Music command. Disconnected it and put in a CD I bought, which works great BTW, with Gracenote filling in track listing and cover art............ but still no voice control. :(

Blisteringblue · August 3, 2014

Halved the amount of songs on the ipod to 4000 and the voice control is still greyed out for the Play Music command. Disconnected it and put in a CD I bought, which works great BTW, with Gracenote filling in track listing and cover art............ but still no voice control. :(

I don't get this at all, it can only be the size of the ipod? My 80GB has 11,000 songs on it and works perfectly.

Steve44 · August 3, 2014

I don't get it either. I re-read the manual last night and it refers to the voice control only being available on Ipod and USB drive, not CD/Radio etc, so that explains why the CD player didn't work with Voice. It specifically says on pg 278

A USB memory or iPod must be connected

to enable track searching and

playback. (P.220, 225)

 When a USB memory or iPod is connected,

recognition data is created so

tracks can be searched using speech

commands.

 Recognition data is updated under the

following conditions:

•When the USB memory or iPod data

has changed.

•When the voice recognition language

is changed. (P.73)

 While the recognition data is being

created or being updated, a track

search cannot be performed using a

speech command.

 When “Play music” is dimmed in the

“Shortcuts” screen, it is not possible

to search for a track using a speech

command. In this situation, reduce the

amount of music data in the USB

memory or iPod and update the recognition

data to enable searching by

speech command.

I've never seen it showing any message about recognition data, only about "getting data from Ipod....." when trying to change tracks sometimes. To be fair it is a bit hit and miss on this, sometimes I press to change tracks, it displays that message, then nothing happens until I press again.

I've got my Wife's Ipod Nano 4th Gen to try and see if it is specific to the Ipod I have. It is a new (3mths old) 7th? Gen Ipod 160Gb Classic, on the latest firmware according to itunes. I'm also going to load up a usb stick with music and try that. I might try a complete reset of the Ipod too. I've already tried the Lexus system reset (power off button hold), but that didn't do much.

Steve44 · August 7, 2014

Well, first experience of Lexus service wasn't spectacular, but they recovered.

I called into Lexus Leics on Sunday to see if anyone could answer my question about the Nav/Voice/Ipod. Saleswoman on shift couldn't but she took my details and said someone in technical team would call me Monday. No call.

I called back in today and got it sorted out though, with Carl the tech team manager being extremely helpful and getting me onto Version E of the software there and then - about 15 mins total to do the update.

Early days, but it doesn't appear to have fixed any of my issues though, with the "Play Music" command still greyed out, the voice system generally not much better and the pop-up sat nav in the dash display still conspicuous by its absence. The system did seem a bit quicker, less lag though.

Carl has taken some photo's of the issue and has said he will look at some other cars and see if they are the same. He says he is compiling issues from owners and sending them to Lexus HQ every week. He expects a version F and G to appear as well.