08ISF

This came up a few years ago when I had a IS250. What some owners found was that the fuel filler cap not being done up tight triggered this warning (don't know why), so worth checking before getting more involved.

Nothing is safe from theft if a pro wants it. What is annoying me about the current situation is that Lexus have made a silly error which makes the cars very easy to steal, even by the less skillful scrotes, and have no apparent appetite for correcting it.

Thanks Fsport, I didn't realise it was that part of the wiring.

I've just responded to them with my views on their attitude, but I'm not holding my breath for any better news, as from the response you got it is clear that they have corporately closed ranks. I've now purchased a Stoplock Pro to try and make the car a bit less attractive. This has a useful extra feature in that it lays across the horn button and any disturbance of it sets the horn off. I've now learnt how to get it on and off without sounding the horn! I'll keep the car for now (or until someone nicks it) but given what I'm seeing as a gradual but perceptible erosion of Lexus' core values , this will probably be my last Lexus.

I now have the reply from Lexus and it is quite disappointing, although not entirely unexpected. It came via snail mail so I'm attaching a scanned redacted copy. Draw your own conclusions, but my interpretation is they are not going to do anything,lexus.pdflexus.pdf which is not what we should expect from a premium manufacturer whose USP is customer service. This is not over in my book but before I go back to them can anybody flesh out the exact details of the cabling the crims are accessing to steal the car. I'm guessing from descriptions so far that cabling to the interior of the car is run through the passenger wing behind the plastic lining and this is what they are getting at or am I wrong?

Nothing as yet, and I would have expected at least an email acknowledgement. This might be an embarrassed silence or it might be they don't care. Either way if I don't get a positive and non BS reply, this will be my last Lexus as a poor response indicates they have lost their way on customer service. Plenty of other fish in the sea. Watch this space. If the reply is BS I will publish it on here so everybody can see.

This is actually a brilliant idea as there is no get out of jail answer. If they say "yes" they have obviously accepted there is a problem with the Gen 4 and you can ask them when they are going to fix it . If they say "no" then to have exactly the same deficiency on the next generation is careless to say the least, and the motoring press need to learn of it, which won't help sales of the new model which is competing with some pretty stiff competition.

I haven't seen the article, but if that's what they published I would have expected better from the Telegraph. Facts: New gas boilers will be banned (the Govt says) from 2025 but you will stiil be able to get replacements for existing. Newer gas boilers can already be converted to run on hydrogen fairly easily. We will not, by 2026, be able to produce enough hydrogen to run the whole gas grid on it. Pilot projects are in place to run small areas on a hydrogen /natural gas mix as a trial. Hydrogen has a much smaller calorific value than natural gas so for the same heating effect more hydrogen will have to be supplied. This will mean that either pipes will have to get bigger (unlikely) or the pressure in the system will have to go up. Gas pipes have been replaced over a number of years with yellow plastic, not to make them ready for hydrogen but to replace the old steel pipes which are rotting. The yellow plastic may need some kind of treatment to stop the hydrogen leaking out through the structure of the pipe as hydrogen molecules are small enough to diffuse through some materials. The amount of lazy reporting and plain misinformation being disseminated by the media is breathtaking and I think is being driven by people whose interests are best served by a change to heat pumps. (Which won't work for much of our housing stock) Just my opinion.

From my experience with their customer relations dept, you will simply be fobbed off with the usual platitudes. I have written today, by snail mail to their CEO , text of the letter reproduced below and should be self explanatory: "You may remember that I wrote to you this time last year in connection with my concerns over the provisions of the Relax warranty, and your staff answered my queries comprehensively and satisfactorily, so thank you for that. I now have another matter, which is of some concern. I do not believe it appropriate to approach Lexus Customer Services directly myself as the issues require high level assurance and not the simple platitudes I have experienced from customer services staff generally. I am contacting you, as I believe you will be best placed to feed it down to the staff with the authority to deal with it. Reports are becoming more numerous about thefts of 4th generation RX450h cars and as an owner this is obviously of interest. As I understand it, the criminals gain access to the car’s CANBUS system via vulnerable wiring in the passenger front wheel arch and then use this to fool the car into thinking the key is present, allowing them to enter it and drive away. I further understand that thefts have become so prevalent that the Lexus RX450h has now entered the top ten of most stolen cars in the UK and one in sixteen RX’s in Canada were stolen last year. This is obviously a security design weakness, which is being exploited and is inappropriate to an expensive quality vehicle. The effect on owners such as myself is anxiety, possible reduced values, and by the looks of it, substantially increased insurance premiums, not to mention the inconvenience of having to use additional security such as steering wheel locks. This, in a car that is full of electronic driver aids! The bottom line here is what are you doing about it, and when can we expect a recall or service technical bulletin to be issued? I am very fond of my RX but it is approaching the age when I normally change my car and in choosing a replacement I will not be willing to spend tens of thousands on something which is so easy to steal and hence difficult to insure." I look forward to Lexus’ advice that this problem is going to be resolved shortly." My last contact via this route was fruitful but it did require a formal letter rather than an email. If he gets enough letters like this he may tell his underlings to sort it. If anyone wishes to take the time the address for the CEO was on an earlier post.

Agreed, first step would be to write a letter to Lexus GB MD Chris Hayes expressing concern and asking what are they doing about it.You can't email, at least I can't find his address on RocketReach or CEOEmail, but if he gets enough letters his office will realise that the ball is rolling and the media and possibly VOSA are going to get involved soon, which would not be good for their image. No point in dealing with minions they won't have any authority to move things on. The address I've used in the past is : Lexus GB Ltd, Great Burgh, Burgh Heath, Epsom , Surrey KT18 5UX This is something Lexus need to get hold of and quick. It is simply not acceptable for products of this value to be such an easy target and encouraging criminals. My local service manager advised that Lexus are looking at it, but as with all large companies there won't be any urgency until there is an incentive. It's in our hands.

Lexus will bat away any complaint and refuse to acknowledge there is a weakness, unless we all get to together and start complaining to Lexus UK. I read today that the RX450h is one of the most stolen cars this year, up there with Range Rovers! Nothing much we can do individually except use a good steering wheel lock to make it less attractive.

Oops, didn't mean to start an argument. My comments were based on my own experience working as an engineer on British Gas' transmission system for 16 years. LNG has been stored for years in liquid form at various sites around the country but the characteristics of H2 are different. However the principles are the same. Rough was used to store natural gas for a number of years until some bright spark decided we didn't need to store any gas we could get all we needed from others(!!). As you point out Rough is not yet suitable for H2 but it is encouraging that Centrica believe in H2 and are putting their (considerable amount of) money where their mouth is. I think it unlikely that they will try and store H2 cryogenically in the Rough field which is vast (31 billion cubic metres I understand). If they did we might have icebergs in the North Sea. More likely they will store in gas form at some pressure which is deemed to not allow too much to leak. There is conflicting information on the internet about H2 and not all of it comes from trustworthy sources, some if which is conflicting. In a trawl to find out how much electricity is required to generate 1kg of H2. I had answers ranging from 1.55kWh to 50kWh! Which is correct?? Who are we to believe? Often facts are quoted out of context to prove what ever the author is trying to prove. And this is the layman's problem. One faction is saying H2 is the way to go and one is saying no go electricity. The volume of noise for electricity is greater than that for H2 so people will not buy H2 cars which makes them expensive (£60k ish) due to low volume and suppliers will not install H2 filling stations due to low demand so people will not buy H2 cars because there are few filling stations. Chicken and egg! I happen to believe that H2 is worth pursuing to a greater extent than it is at present for reasons I've already outlined. We just need to convince the invertebrates in Westminster. BMW , Toyota and Centrica are obviously onboard to some extent.

Not easy, but they've been doing something similar with LNG for many years. The LNG we import comes in liquid form by boat and is unloaded into storage tanks that are kept at a similar temperature. Mature technology. Toyota Mirai etc store hydrogen compressed and the filling stations have been around for a while. The technology is well understood and established. Agreed not cheap , but neither is laying new electrical supplies to service multiple fast chargers. At least with H2 you get to fill the vehicle up quickly. There is a wealth of information on the internet about the difficulties associated with hydrogen, but as I've said before the problems are technical and economic and are fixable, unlike the problems of where we are going to source the materials for the batteries and how much of the country needs to be dug up to lay new cables. It is encouraging that there seems to be a growing groundswell of opinion, boosted by BMW's announcement of a H2 car, that perhaps H2 is a viable solution.

I's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of a one size fits all solution. Sure electric cars that are used for short journeys and can be charged at home, fine- reduces local pollution , reasonable cost to charge , no issue with finding a charge point. But heavy vehicles or those that require long range , electricity not the best solution and hydrogen will probably be the answer. In short electricity replaces petrol and hydrogen replaces diesel. We also need to factor in how we are going to heat our homes. Banning of gas boilers when a third of the country's homes are poorly insulated and not easy to insulate is going to render the heat pumps idea of limited value. But boilers can be converted to run on hydrogen and we have a ready made distribution system in place. Everything I read is pointing away from electricity as the global solution and pointing to Hydrogen as a sensible alternative. I can only assume the naysayers have some vested interest which makes them back electricity.

Yes, but these are just engineering challenges which can be overcome, as they usually are. The economic and socio political challenges posed by the headlong rush to electric power are going to be much more difficult to overcome, if they ever can. We'll be fighting wars over the raw materials necessary for batteries.

A quick trawl around the internet suggests you need 500 miles after DTC clearance to get a hybrid test carried out. If the car has been sitting around in the winter for a while then the 12v battery may have discharged and then had to be charged or replaced which could explain their comments. If they couldn't carry out the test when it was serviced, and it is supposed to be free when carried out with service, I would insist on them carrying it out for free when it comes in. They must confirm the mileage interval first though. I would be keeping an eye on the 12v battery. If it has discharged enough in cold weather it may not be able to hold a charge properly. They should test it as part of the HHC.

My Nextbase 222 dash cam has a parking mode powered by a small onboard battery which triggers a few seconds operation if the car is disturbed i.e hit. Your dash cam is one up in the range and I would expect it to have the same facility. Check your camera specs. Mine is powered from the 12v socket in the glove box, didn't bother with trying to access the car wiring.

It's not just the keyless feature that is vulnerable. Apparently there is a way of getting into the CANBUS system via the passenger wheelwell, which then allows them to fool the car into thinking the key is present. Careless of Lexus! It seems the only thing you can do is lock it away in a garage or use something like a Stoplock or Disklock, which can be defeated with some time, but makes the car a bit less attractive to the thieves.

My RX does the same this winter. Funnily enough the side windows don't mist up but the rear does and there is no sign of water in the car. I have a Pingi dehumidifier on the dash and this is not showing any wetness. I've come to the conclusion it must be something to do with the extreme angle of the screen which is radiating to the sky and becoming "colder" as a result. The screen is also hard to clean effectively because of its angle and I think that road pollution gets blown on to the glass by the a/c, forming a greasy film which the moisture clings to. I do leave the a/c on all year and let the car decide whether to use outside air or recirc.

That's fine at the moment, where the ratio of chargers to EV's allows it. But the indications are that provision of chargers is not keeping up with sales of EV's so at some point in the future there will be big queues at all the charge points....... As we saw over Xmas with the Tesla charge points.

This sounds suspiciously like a Merc I bought many years ago. 3 years old , 30,000 miles, service history book and MOT backed this up. After about 6 weeks I was becoming suspicious, it didn't feel like a 30K mile car and there were other things that didn't quite add up, so I contacted the previous owner, a leasing co, and asked for their records. These showed about 110,000 miles on it! Needless to say the dealer had to give me my money back. The trouble with cars these days, particularly the upmarket makes, they are so tough , if they've been hacked up and down motorways all day long,it doesn't really show . The MOT, as far as I know, is the only reliable independent mileage verification and that doesn't kick in until 3 years (soon to be 4) so there is lots of opportunity to take a 3 year old and clock it. Try and get the service records from Lexus and/or the previous owner and if it turns out to be a clocker , back it to the dealer. They would be very stupid to resist. as clocking is a criminal offense.

There are 24 bids on this so at least 2 people are after it!!

Fair point, but you have to make sure that cleaning your own house doesn't bankrupt you and get you evicted. The simple truth is that reducing carbon and pollution is not even on the radar of the majority of the people who inhabit China, India, South America, etc , they are too busy with more pressing things like feeding their family. There are some very bad things coming our way due to global warming and if we spend all our money on a futile attempt to reduce it when nobody else cares , we'll have no resources to deal with the effects of it. I've been involved with trying to reduce carbon emissions for many years and its futile to try and get to zero carbon unless everybody and I mean everybody is on the same page as we are a hydrocarbon dependent civilization and it's going to take generations to change that if it is indeed possible. Just my opinion.

On the subject of hydrogen: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1092555/hydrogen-strategy-update-to-the-market-july-2022.pdf It seems that someone , somewhere, in government is actually looking at it. Whether they are taking it seriously enough or funding it enough remains to be seen. 🤫 I suspect not.

This is probably the way it will eventually pan out. Electric cars/taxis that can be charged at home or in supermarkets etc and only do less than 200miles /day are most likely the answer especially for city centres/urban locations. providing the infrastructure is beefed up to suit Anything that is heavy or needs to travel great distances, then H2 is a better bet. As noted, if we have to have H2 charging stations then they could be used for cars as well. Either way we need to decide soon what the plan is. £2M for a hydrogen fuel station? So? How much do we think it will cost to put say 6 x 350kW fast chargers in a charging station? That is 2.1MW which is a serious amount of power . Depending on location this will require a substation, reinforcement of the high voltage ring, possible laying of new large cables from some way away , roadworks etc etc . That will be comfortably in excess of £2M , trust me. The one thing that is certain is, whichever route is chosen, guess who's going to foot the biil, one way or another? The article, which I haven't read, appears from the description given to be typical of the biased , ill informed reporting we have come to expect of late. When , oh when are we going to get the cold, hard, facts laid out?