wivenhoe

There is an American reviewer who is extremely knowledgable on all the aspects of EV’s. I came across him whilst looking for a review of the new Porsche Mecan EV. I noticed he reviewed the RZ pre update. Other than comfort and the autonomous driving he destroys it but unlike other reviewers he explains the criticisms. Whilst he destroyed the RZ he was absolutely glowing about the new Mecan so it’s the normal Tesla fans versus everyone else. If you have an hour to spend watch his review -

It’s also in The Times. So that’s both newspapers probably most read by Lexus clients or potential clients.

More woe for Lexus - the What Car article was reported in today’s Telegraph. Lexus do say the upgrade improved things but the article is very damaging for them. The UX300e range is reported to be 100 miles less and the RZ 92 miles short in very low temps (for us in the UK). VW’s ID7 is reported to be 130 miles short. If Lexus had sorted the update before releasing the cars they would have fared much better. As The Telegraph is probably the paper most read by potential and actual Lexus owners I suspect that the MD of Lexus this morning has a severe dose of indigestion and long meetings with their PR advisers. Not at all good for RZ residuals.

Thanks for the sympathy ! I found it ridiculous that a ‘prestige’ manufacturer would say the resolution to a defect is to faff about with a heath robinson solar charger, which in any case won’t work in the majority of long term car parks. Oh and buy the way we £ 50 for you resolving our defect. We will have to pay in 2 years time when free AA cover ends as the battery is not covered by the extended warranty. I also learned today that if you leave the car connected for a few days that will flatten the battery even quicker. There isn’t anything in the manual about having to run the car every couple of days ! Toyota have known about this for years before the RZ was marketed but did nothing about it. During lockdown they issued a guidance saying to start the hybrids and run the car in Ready Mode for 60 mins at least once a week - https://mag.toyota.co.uk/coronavirus-toyota-hybrid-car-maintenance/?utm_source=ToyotaOwnersClub&utm_medium=ForumLinks

Agreed !

The 12v battery in my car went flat and the doors wouldn’t open even with the mechanical key. AA gained access and jump started the car. I have not driven the car for almost 3 weeks so my wife started and ran the car every couple of days for 20 mins. My tracker monitors the 12v battery in case it is disconnect it by thieves. It warned me that even having run the car for 20 mins 3 days earlier the 12v warning was amber as the voltage had dropped to 11.8v. I therefore asked the dealer what the resolution was and could they do it in the first service. Their response was (as Toyota also say) Your battery will start to drain when the vehicle is not driven for a period of time. A new battery will not stop it from happening again in the future. We would advise having a solar charger supplied. We can supply one for £50.00 inc. It plugs into your diagnostic port under your dashboard and will help maintain your battery when the vehicle is not driven. I pointed out that most airport car parks are multi storey so what Lexus were saying is that I will have to call the AA after 2 weeks holiday (probably waiting outside of car) for them to jump start. I cannot believe that they well know of the issue and suggest the only resolution is to use a solar charger for £ 50 ! Thought with Easter coming owners should know before flying off.

When I collected my Velar the infotainment screen was black. Salesman said it was about the 10th car in a row where the car was faulty despite the PDI. I asked him why nothing was done about it and he said it was because Land Rover saved money by having a central prep centre and doing it all themselves. The dealers lost revenue as all they were doing was literally handing the car over as received off the transporter. As he said, the muppet accountants had missed the fact that the central prep staff didn’t have to deal with the embarrassment on handover so were sending out cars unchecked. The guy was an old fashioned salesman so got a technician to sort it. He said the Land Rover procedure was for the salesman to provide a phone number to the new car owner and to report the fault so LR could arrange a rectification. Mine was a £75k car but the other car being handed over was a £ 110k SVR Range Rover and nobody could unlock the petrol cap !

The only thing John & I have differed on is tyre noise. He found the fitted summer tyres to be very quiet. In my case I didn’t - not helped as the car itself is exceptionally quiet. I would be interested how others have found the noise of the summer fitments. Mine may have had an issue, they were massively over inflated at handover - although John said that is normal for new Lexus’s (probably for the long voyage). Anyway, I have the Dunlop summer tyres in storage and had Michelin Cross Climate 2’s put on. Totally different - they didn’t make any difference to the range and had the added benefit of dealing with the expected conditions, which never happened. For summer & winter in the UK I think Cross Climates are the way to go as the temperatures are not extreme enough to warrant summer & winter tyres.

Please please think of us poor souls that bought - the market is floored and more incentives on new ones will only kill it even more ! Seriously, where will this all end - the big manufacturers will just stop competing in markets with fines and disincentives and the Chinese will then just dump substandard cheap cars (even after paying levies) as they control the cost of batteries and other EV components. Once they have the market, they will turn the screw and as they are really the Chinese government it will set the agenda. The Chinese importers have no fear of the fines as they easily beat the 20% threshold as they are mostly bringing in only EV’s. You couldn’t have designed a more Chinese favourable regime if you had tried. The US has a far more sensible approach, they incentivise US manufacturers with subsidies for US sourced parts and gives credits on EV’s off personal tax, not the cost of the car. Lexus US will reduce the lease cost as they offset the tax saving, not by reducing the cost of the car - you have to be a tax payer to receive the subsidy. We just lump on fines and remove incentives - there are London Boroughs ramping up parking according to weight and as EV’s inevitably weigh more, they will pay more ! Governmental rant over - apologies for disturbing the peace on a Sunday

I am really glad we don’t get real low / well below freezing temperatures - this article reports the real effect on a Tesla Long Range - https://www.hotcars.com/how-winter-weather-shortens-range-tesla-model-3/

List price on any ‘prestige’ EV is a definite no no. I’ll repeat though that I’m not as depressed as I might have been as I got a ridiculous px for my Velar. If I’d kept the Velar I would have lost about the same as the RZ has melted ! I was offered a factory ordered RX450h £ 15k below list so it’s not only EV’s apparently. with EV’s I think you need to be clear about what you really need. Range and charging but nothing else, Tesla are unbeatable, reliability and good range the Koreans, comfort, well finished but mediocre range Lexus, old battery tech and mediocre and misleading range the Germans. I see loads of articles about charging and a lot of them are totally misleading. Doing down a car with 150kw capacity against say 250kw really only means about 10 mins for 20% to 80% and is that a big deal for occasional public charging. Maybe for a road warrior and thus a Tesla but a concern for a luxury SUV, probably not. I think that Lexus US provides proof of the market for the RZ - they provide an ICE car of choice free for 30 days over 3 years for road trips, shame they didn’t provide it here.

Kevin. Thorough test but pre-update - check the dash. John & I have been getting far far better figures. What Car are a very reputable testing house but for some reason they and most other tests result in far worse figures than those actually experienced. You’ll see from earlier posts that post-update 200+ real miles are easily achievable and efficiency upwards of 2.9 miles / kw. Comparing a BYD with a Lexus is like comparing a Dacia with a Lexus ! Look at the difference in claimed efficiency and actual at the end of the video and you’ll see even pre-update Lexus’s actual is better than claimed. I totally agree with John that the RZ was marketed far too early - they have totally blundered as all the reviews are for cars pre-update and the car shouldn’t have been released without it. Now the drop for heating is significantly less and use of the radiant heaters means ‘UK winter running’ is not an issue. Do I regret buying the RZ - yes. Am I happier since the update - far happier. With what has happened to EV residuals, would have I been happier with a different EV - no ! Lexus will be in a very difficult place this year as they have to achieve 20% of all sales being full EV, every car sold below that accrues a £ 15k fine - one of the main reasons in the drop in RV’s is manufacturers will reduce prices to sell rather than pay a fine to achieve nothing. There is no hope of Lexus getting anywhere near 20%. We have been totally misled by the government into buying EV’s as they then changed the rules by removing the 2030 ban at the same time as levying fines - total idiocy

Any decent dealer would install it prior to sale. You can easily tell by the battery state having a % in the display - pre-update this was not available. I am sure the update isn’t a recall as it isn’t a safety issue.

Look at the other thread on here and see the actual miles achieved by owners, rather than critics. Particularly look at the range change after the update - they are significantly more than 2.4 and the review was possibly a pre-update car.

In the RZ App you can set a stater and stop time - you set the start and then the turn off time. In the car you can set the maximum charge %

I had a problem with Siri in messages in CarPlay. After dictating a text Siri would only read back the first word ! Consequently, sending a text I had no way of knowing whether Siri had compiled it correctly. Did a lot of research and concluded it was caused by IOS 17 - I updated to IOS Development Beta and problem solved. Maybe that is your issue.

SamHe after the update in my car if the a/c or heater fan is turned up to 3 (eco comes up) the loss in range is less than 10 miles but over 20 miles if put on faster. Today I repeated my last charge using a 350kw charger and was getting 32kw at 86% which is far higher than the charging curve I have based on the pre-update - it says only 8kw could be achieved.

John. Had a trouble free drive. Stopped at Rugby Moto Services - loads of rapid chargers available. The 20 Tesla ones are now live too so helps. Was even getting 20kw at 91%. I averaged 3.2 m/kw driving at 65mph the whole way. Now using a 75kw rapid at 40% and getting the charger max so happy with that.(The 25 in the shot is the speed of the CA charger not the CCS) I noticed that the range drops marginally (about 7 miles) if the aircon / heating is up to 3 then 25 miles if on full. Again, very happy with that. I asked and they did update the map to what looks to be Dec 23. The traffic cameras are shown much better. See the screenshots for your discussions when you take your car in for the DC work.

Last summer, I had to use public chargers for 6 weeks and in those temperatures on 150kw chargers it was taking about 30 mins from 20% to 80% so ok. I have a longish drive next week so expecting it to take longer - I hope it does better than 40 mins for 50% but not expecting it. We’re taking the car to Jersey in August - from what I can see they have only 2 ultra rapid chargers on the whole island, vast majority of chargers are 7kw so that will be a ‘challenge’. I think it is an indicator of what could happen here - they don’t have the infrastructure and power generation to allow loads of ultra chargers, which explains why there is not the even spread of chargers here.

Glad to see the owner membership growing - I think up to 4 of us now ! I believe the update increases the range by reducing the buffer with some other software improvements including reducing the dramatic indicated loss in range for using the aircon / heating. When was your car manufactured ? The cars built late 2023 had the update installed at he factory - that may be why you seem to be achieving 3.0 miles / kw ! I think it is a fault with the design but maybe it’s just my car - can you have the fan on without the a/c and so the indicated range doesn’t dive ? In my case, having the a/c button on r off doesn’t make a difference. Pleased to see a favourable review by someone who has driven the car for more than 30 minutes or read American reviews. I posted an extract from Car Magazine which you may find of interest to quote when the Tesla fans deride the RZ for lack of range - https://www.lexusownersclub.co.uk/forum/topic/145762-diminishing-range-on-a-full-charge-and-slow-charging-rates/?&page=2#comments

I came across a very detailed review and comparison in Car Magazine. A UK magazine so without the American bias. I found it very interesting seeing the ‘official ranges’ versus their actual test ranges. They tested in fairly cold conditions with heating on at reasonably fast driving. The Polestar particularly, makes the RZ (especially after the upgrade) look a much better option

Luckily I haven’t had any probs with the charging cover. My car was delivered last May. I’ll ask if they can provide my locking wheel nuts next week. Somehow I managed to bend the ‘Lexus’ scuff plate on the drivers door cill. Did some research and found a supplier of genuine Lexus parts - if you ever need any parts or accessories give them a try, the service has been fantastic and you know it is the correct part as they use the VIN to ensure it is and it comes in Lexus boxes - https://lexuspartsdirect.co.uk Must be well cheaper than through a dealer.

Mine is in for the update next Tuesday - the dealer offered to collect or I can go to them and have a curtesy car. I suspect it was this that pushed the booking until next week. I’ll be really interested to see if both of you report a real increase in range and particularly a great increase with the heating on.

John. Another screenshot for your dealer to see.

John. My average is 2.9 miles / kw over 6k with about 60% at 70+ on dual carriageways and some air on / heat