Rabbers

Earlier this week I had a chat with my insurance broker, who originally trained as an actuary, about the influence of safety devices such as pop-up hoods on vehicle insurance. He confirmed, without going into too many technicalities, that when a vehicle is first put on the market, insurers supplement official safety ratings with other data, if available, about the effectiveness of factory-fitted devices and systems, and once quantified and statistically projected, an overall assessment of safety is factored into the calculations on which premiums are based. Because the weighting of the data in the calculations is not disclosed, there is no way of disproving the claim that advances in safety technology help to prevent premiums from rising too much and too quickly but are insufficient ever to reduce them. Or, to put it another way, we have no means of knowing if and to what extent insurance companies exploit those advances to improve their profit margins. Which, of course, they are perfectly entitled to do. Personally, however, I would like to see more transparency and find the lack of it to be sufficient to annually conquer my laziness and shop around for alternative quotes, any significant differences between companies for similar cover for the same cars having always struck me as mysterious or illogical or even suspicious. On broadly the same subject, I was intrigued to hear that whereas insurance companies like "passive" safety devices (such as pop-up hoods), which purport to limit the extent of damage from accidents, there are some concerns about the increasing popularity of "active" ones such as active cruise control, rear-view cameras, blind-spot monitors etc., which purport to limit the chances of accidents happening in the first place. According to one school of thought the latter devices may have the effect of reducing a driver's overall perception of danger and thus give rise to excessive complacency with potentially dire results. Again, one is left wondering what impact, if any, this might have on the science of risk assessment.

Craig: I am unable to offer you an explanation, but something not wholly dissimilar once happened to me. Very early one icy morning I started the car and, not wanting to wake the neighbours, immediately pressed the EV button. When I took my foot off the brake the car did not gently move off as usual, and nor did it do so when I pressed on the accelerator. When I put my foot back on the brake, it felt loose and inactive. Having checked that I had not accidentally put the car in N, I turned the power off. Satisfied that I had done nothing wrong or out of sequence, I gathered my thoughts and re-started the car. To my relief, it moved off normally and drove perfectly thereafter. All this probably took less than half a minute. Nothing similar has happened again, including when I move off after pressing the EV button, and I still wonder whether I may not myself have suffered some kind of momentary cognitive lapse with the car being blameless.

The presence of a pop-up hood on the 300h as a means of doing pedestrians potentially less harm in the event of a collision is a desirable thing on ethical grounds alone. No question about it. However, until pop-up hoods are made compulsory on all cars, hopefully at an acceptable cost, their presence needs to be reconciled with considerations of a practical and economic nature. For example: * Why should my insurance company have the benefit of a prospectively lower payout to a pedestrian because of a reduced amount of harm while having charged me the same premium as for a car without the pop-up hood? * Why is the pop-up hood incorporated into the car as a fixture and not offered as an optional? In other words, how much lower would the price of the car be without it? Does it constitute an element of profit that Lexus would be unwilling to relinquish? * Why does the pop-up hood not have a switch-off option useable, for example, where danger from pedestrians is relatively low (e.g. motorways) and that from animals specifically high (e.g. animal warning areas)? * Why, as appears to be the case, are Lexus dealership personnel not in possession of ready information about the potentially very high, indeed alarming, repair costs consequent to the pop-up hood's activation?

I used to think that Shell V-Power or similar brands of high-octane fuel might yield a combination of better economy and performance but have never found objective proof of it. As regards performance, I liked to think that the 300h accelerated better and was generally perkier in its responses, but have concluded that clever advertising claims may well have been fooling me into pampering the car, of which I am very fond, with "better" fuel in much the same way as premium-priced pet foods are supposed to give your dog a wetter nose and your cat a glossier fur. As regards economy, I occasionally make motorway journeys of 1500km+ on identical routes with fewer variables of speed, traffic etc., than you might get in everyday motoring. On the couple of occasions when I started out with tankfuls of V-Power I found myself pulling into exactly the same filling station as I customarily did with normal petrol. In other words, after 900km or so the V-Power did not get me to the next filling station 50-60km further along the route as I hoped it might. Certainly, I may have needed to put a bit less petrol into the tank but, if I did, the amount was nowhere nearly sufficient to have justified the price difference.

IMO the 300h is far more rattle-free than previous generations of the IS, especially the 200, which was bad from this point of view. I've only ever had one rattle in the 300h that was not attributable to loose keys, coins, Tic-Tacs etc., and this consisted of a noise that came and went according to the roughness of the road surface, sometimes intermittent, sometimes continuous, not unlike chattering teeth, and "plasticky" rather than metallic. Strangely, passengers in the back thought it came from the front of the cabin while the driver and front passenger thought it came from the back. It is interesting that Rayaans should have mentioned a stethoscope earlier in this thread, for, in a final attempt, after many, to trace the origin of the rattle, two mechanics, one in the back and and one in the front, took turns at running a stethoscope along the dashboard, door-panels and sills etc., while I drove. Thus did I learn that some high-class car workshops consider a stethoscope an essential tool for detecting the source of rattles. Not that it proved effective on this particular occasion, a consensus of six unaided ears having traced the possible source to somewhere in the area of the boot. To cut a long story short, the rattle was finally discovered to come not from inside the boot itself but from one of the two numberplate-light covers that had come loose as the probable result of the boot-lid being slammed too hard. That the rattle should have been audible as far forward as the front seats seems to defy any acoustic law, but the fact that it ceased when the cover was clicked back into place is proof of it.

....... There's a good reason why you should use it, not that I can remember what it is! I'm told that habitual non-use of the parking brake can increase the chances of it seizing up when you really need to use it.

In my experience, the compass can be helpful if used in conjunction with the map-scale setting in rare situations when your map is out of date and you are driving on a long stretch of newly-built road not shown on it, the car itself being depicted as moving within a featureless landscape. If your destination or your route towards it can be identified on the map, or you are vaguely aware of where they are, a compass bearing may help you take a correct exit and keep you in the right direction, especially if the previous roads no longer exist or have been closed.

Presumably the model is integral to Lexus' advertised policy of encouraging craftsmanship through sponsorship, the aim being to reinforce its own image for quality. I imagine that the only practical value the model has for Lexus is as a display piece at shows and selected dealerships, and it is pretty impressive for this purpose. The publicity value for the small Bermondsey industrial design firm that constructed it is both higher and more direct.

I've spent the last hour looking at pictures and videos of an all-cardboard full-scale model of a 300h built in the U.K. and sponsored by Lexus. A truly mind-boggling piece of hi-tech craftsmanship and well worth gawking at. Google it and see.

Few owners would disagree with anything said in the review. It reads, in fact, like a compendium of the largely positive comments posted on the IS300h Forum since it started - and, of course, this is no bad thing!

I too was initially surprised by the absence of a windscreen de-icer on the 300h, especially on the top-spec, but was then pleased to find that the de-mister (or should this be "de-fogger"?) works very well even with quite thick ice and quickly unsticks the wipers, albeit at the risk of shredding them if left on auto. Maybe the de-mister also causes less battery strain when the rear-window/side-mirrors heating is on at the same time as it usually needs to be.

Gang: I don't disagree with anything you say in your post. It seems to me that car buyers divide into two main groups: those who are constantly thinking about the next car they are going to buy and those who do so hardly or not at all until the need occurs. The first consists largely of car enthusiasts and the second includes people such as myself whose definition of what constitutes a nice car is more superficial and perhaps less demanding - and who, of course, gratefully exploit such knowledge as is comprehensibly made available to them by the first while reserving the right to reject it. The people making up both groups are subject to financial constraints which they overcome on the basis of what they can individually afford, and surely all of us keep ball-park figures more or less firmly in mind about what we are willing to spend on a car whether as the result of a long-term plan or a short-term decision.

No, not at all. A car is not the sort of item I would ever buy on impulse, which is not to say that quick and uncomplicated purchase decisions are necessarily undiscriminating ones. Because my IS250 had started to lose its bloom, I armed myself with as much information about hybrids as my brain could easily absorb or would hopefully ever need to absorb and then took a 300h for a test drive. I was so mightily impressed by its performance that, having established that I could afford it, I proceeded to buy one out of the showroom after a quick and satisfactory negotiation. As in the case of the four IS's that preceded it and apart from some minor niggles, I have had no cause to regret my decision. I can well imagine this same scenario being repeated when the 300h itself starts to bore me, but, until then, I won't worry too much about whether its replacement will be an improved hybrid or a plug-in or whatever else may be on offer at the time. I do sincerely hope, however, that it will be a Lexus.

Having attentively followed this thread, I am lost in admiration for the ability of some contributors to think ahead and project themselves into future technical, economic and financial situations of which it is good to be aware if they are going to change cars within the next few months but may otherwise prove to be academic in an evolving marketplace. I remember that maybe a month or less before deciding to buy a 300h I would not have imagined myself owning a hybrid. I wonder, therefore, what kind of car I will imagine myself not buying before next deciding to change. For sure, this is not going to happen anytime soon given my undiminished technical and economic satisfaction with the 300h in any comparison with any other cars I presently see on the road that might suit my pocket and taste.

Ben: Personally I have been so confused about the firmware codes and discussions about them on this Forum that I have never updated from "D". Dealers, including my own, that I have asked about prospectively updating either unashamedly admit their ignorance or tell me that queries to Lexus technical people leave them none the wiser about the benefits. Anyway, as specifically regards version VC03100L mentioned in your post, this jogged my memory because it was the one also mentioned to me by Lexus Italy (Tech Dept) in late 2013 or early 2014 when I phoned to get information about an update, and it would have been the version my dealer would have installed at the time of my next service. Then, to my surprise and irritation, I discovered that it was not only out-of-date but also the subject of negative comments on IS300h owners' forums in France and Spain (respectively www.forum.clublexis.com and www.clublexus.eu). I think, therefore, that your dealer is mistaken.

The same thing happened to me when the car was only a few weeks old. One of the sensors was found to be defective, but, because my dealer did not have a replacement in stock, I was obliged to drive off on a long trip with the warning light on but confident in the knowledge that the tyre pressures were OK. This was extremely irritating, and remains so in the memory, but I am pleased to say that two years later this has been the only thing that has ever gone wrong with the car. Of course, the problem is just as likely to be cold tyres, in which case the warning light will switch off once they have reached their proper temperature after a few miles or maybe less. If the issue persists, it can be resolved by raising the pressures a tiny bit.

As evidenced by Rayaan's pictures, the 300h, especially a white one, looks a lot better without the protective films. In fact, it is difficult to imagine anyone liking the films regardless of the colour of the car. And yet, even if the chances of damage from stones etc., on the areas protected by the films are low, they are evidently not so low as to have prevented Lexus management from signing off on the marketing of the 300h without them. Presumably the risk of damage to those specific surfaces was felt to be sufficiently high on the basis of road and wind-tunnel tests as to override aesthetic considerations. Could it be that the films were added to the 300h's final specification as a quick and cheap fix to an issue identified so late in the car's development as to have suggested costly body-design modifications and/or production delays that management was unwilling to accept? For sure, the decision to add the films would have seriously dismayed the 300h's design team. After two years, the films on my car are showing no nicks or grazes that would prove their usefulness, but this could simply mean that I have been lucky or that the films themselves are adequately resistant to surface damage. Whatever the case, it is noticeable that the streaks of dirt that cover all surfaces of the car after long motorway drives in bad weather and are, of course, a direct reflection of the aerodynamics, are always thickest on or around the areas covered by the films, thus identifying the tendency of potentially harmful particles of road dirt to strike and accumulate there when the car is in motion. For this reason, I have kept the films despite my ever-increasing dislike of them. Maybe I'll give in to the temptation of removing them the moment they show signs of yellowing, which so far they have not.

Rayaan: I called my dealer to ask how the films were taken off the red 300h mentioned in my post of 24 Aug (see Rear Door Plastic Protection). He said a simple hairdryer did the trick, with tar/resin remover to get rid of residues. He added, for information's sake, that the replacement of damaged films with Lexus originals (manufactured by 3M) is a devil of a job even for the best professionals.

Right enough, Colin, but I always fear the worst as the result of twice experiencing flat batteries with other cars after long-term parking in cold weather. On both occasions I was told that the alarm had sounded, reportedly with diminishing frequency and/or loudness until it finally stopped, presumably simultaneously with the death of the battery itself. And on neither occasion was there apparent evidence of an attempted break-in, so I was baffled as well as inconvenienced.

Last January I left the 300h in an airport car park for 16 days with sub-zero temperatures at night and probably also during the day. I was so worried about the possibility of the alarm going off and finding the battery drained that I sometimes woke up in a cold sweat. The car started at the first attempt, which must mean that the alarm never sounded despite vibrations, wind, temperature changes etc.

My impressions of driving the 300h in wet conditions are more than favourable, by which I mean that I recall no occasions when the car has behaved unpredictably in situations varying from slipperiness caused by oily drizzle to voluminous surface water, flowing and/or standing, caused by violent downpours. The feeling of helplessness and momentary loss of control and/or lateral wobble inevitably experienced upon aquaplaning at approx. 70mph =110kmh (which is today the motorway limit in the wet in much of Europe) on OEM 18" Bridgestone Turanzas is no different from that you get with less fat tyres, and, as long as the road is fairly clear of other vehicles, especially heavy ones that kick up a lot of spray, and there are no gusting side-winds, I personally judge this to be an acceptably safe speed even in heavy rain. This is really another way of saying that, in terms of safety margins in poor driving conditions, I tend to worry less about myself in the 300h than about other people in other cars.

Malcolm: see another brief thread on this subject (Rear Door Protectors, started by Nerdboy on 27 Jan 2015). I asked the same question as you but got no response, and despite my continuing (but nowadays somewhat half- hearted) efforts to remove the grime along the edges of the film with a variety of detergent products, the problem persists and appears to be permanent. The "silhouetting" effect is present on every used 300h I have seen but, obviously, it is worst on white. I have seen one 300h, a red one, awaiting service at my dealership, on which the films had been removed because the owner considered them unsightly, and the surfaces looked perfectly fine. But, then again, this had been done so recently as to make it impossible to judge the films' usefulness as protection. My own advice would be to keep the films for a while and see if you can learn to live with them.

Intrigued, indeed somewhat worried, by the OP, I asked my wife to flash the lights as I stood watching on the pavement. The flashes were both instantaneous and highly visible. As a result, I remain intrigued but no longer worried.

Maybe the reviewer doesn't think Lexus and Jaguar are "rivals".

Flush-fitting cups without the embossed lit-ciggy symbol would certainly look better, though personally I would prefer not to pay £80 and keep the two empty holes. If you really want, you can fill the holes with your own choice of some very nice designer travel mugs at maybe half the price or less.