Linas.P

I had similar damage to my IS250 when they were replacing passenger airbag. Sadly, I have only noticed it after a week and never bothered to contact Lexus to fix it. I agree this is annoying and I was quite disappointed when I noticed it on my car, but getting whole new dash is not very realistic. Especially considering this is 10 years old car and I don't think new dash is even made for it. I agree with other above, to see how "smart repair" will look and go from there. Now just to manage expectation I don't believe it will be perfect, but will certainly make the damage less noticeable.

I think most of negative comments are not about rotating dial system, but rather about "mousepad" like system. However, rotating dial system in 2016 RC means that you have standard and not premium sat-nav and standard 6 speakers audio.

But I guess we can both agree that it may not be solution for everyone? Hence people don't redard Lexus built in sat nav as very good system and use other ways of navigation like dedicated sat-navs or phones to get to where they going quicker.

That would be amazing news... because to be fair most Lexus'es have no issue getting to 10years/100k miles, so Lexus Relax isn't that beneficial (I guess that is why Lexus don't mind offering it for free). The only time I would really consider warranty is on older Lexus past 10 years and 100k miles, because even being as reliable as they are - mileage and age still does it's thing, so having warranty even if you have to pay extra for it would be very good thing.

Depends on who they use for that work... I mean if they work together with some professional detailer and just use their leverage of providing more work to them and able to offer detail + coating for £399 instead of what would normally be £500-600, then yes that is good deal. However, if they just ask dealership cleaner to apply coating on the car, then it is absolute waste of money. Now sadly being the pessimist I am, I am fairly certain it will closer to the later. As well I have mentioned dealership cleaner for a reason - I know Lexus dealership where they have agency to do their dealership cleaning and same agency provides staff for their car wash... and literally the same people sometimes does both jobs... and I am not being derogatory towards people doing cleaning jobs, but let's face it - detailers they are not!

But do you realistically need sat-nav to actually show you the way to Paris? I would argue that it is possible to do it just by looking at signs, because such major cities are always well sign-posted. So utility in sat-nav isn't to show you the way anymore, it is there mostly to show you the areas to avoid, or to show how long exactly it is going to take considering current traffic conditions. I am sure Lexus sat-nav is good enough to show where Paris is, but it fails at only important utility of showing whenever somebody decided to have a crash on the way... and what alternative quickest route would be.

New Lexus systems simply allows AA/CP and that is all it ever needed. Sadly, it took Lexus like 3-4 extra years after entire car industry was already there and Lexus was still tinkering with there strange to use and obsolete sat-nav. So the only problem which remains on new Lexus sat-nav is rather tricky to use mouse-pad, but to be fair it is possible to get used to it. If I have any remaining issues - there are two: 1. Is that Lexus digital dash really takes no advantage of being digital i.e. having screen leaves limitless possibilities to show whatever you like on it and customise it to insanity. Lexus does not do either and has only very limited and basic information available there. Seems like solution here would be to make space for custom widgets and leave code open source (staring Lexus app store of sorts), but in no dream that ever going to happen. 2. Lexus at the moment does not allow AA/CP on HUD and it is a bit of shame really. It means that having HUD in car becomes pointless, because you have to use Lexus own rather horrible sat-nav. Well.. it can still show speed... so I guess that is borderline acceptable. In either case new Lexus systems with AA/CP are nearly as good as any other system in any other car, 8/10, but it is not because they are themselves good, but just because they allow AA/CP to do their job.

I would say no - it won't change how paint behaves. Why? Because first of all as any modern paint Sonic T has clearcoat on top of it, whatever effect the paint has is made by multi-layer application which suspends the flakes in base coat of or layers of clear coat and not on the surface of the paint. By the way Sonic T is metallic paint, meaning it is gloss, just not plain colour. What ceramic coating does - it adds another layers similar to clear coat on your paint by binding silica polymers (basically glass), but it is very thin we talking nanometres (that is why they are called nano coatings sometimes). So for example you car may have say 40microns thickness, then ceramic coating on top adds few 100nanometres layer, so like it will be more than 40 times thinner (more like 200-400 times actually). In short it adds to already existing clear coat of your car nothing more, so should not change the metallic effect your paint has. The only effect you may see is that your paint looks even more shiny and deep, because ceramic coating surface is much smoother than clearcoat, again because of chemical bonding and self-levelling effect. The only caveat - whomever is preparing the car has to prepare it right. Sonic T is great paint from the perspective that it hides defects very well, but likewise it is easy to miss few defects. If ceramic is applied over the defects it may be enough to highlight them. Overall, ceramic coating is not really a compromise compared to waxes, the only trade-off is that it costs 10 times more to apply, because car has to be meticulously prepared.

How is your question relevant? -250degrees is temperature at which hydrogen becomes liquid at atmospheric pressure, as far as I know nobody keeps liquified hydrogen at atmospheric pressure. So yes - pressurised containers are needed to keep it liquified... but we have pressurised containers for LPG, helium, nitrogen, oxygen as such that is nothing new. I mean sure - it would be more convenient if don't have to keep it pressurised, but this by no means an issue. You saying it as if lithium batteries don't have issues of their own - like spontaneous combustion due to thermal runaway which is nearly impossible to stop with standard firefighting equipment and requires specialised foam.

I think it is combination of reduced power and increased fuel consumption. When I was using E85 fuel consumption was certainly not 25% higher, probably 10% worse at most. But then I suspect may car was not making the power it could.

I am getting traffic information without even connecting the phone somehow... I thought that is part of premium sat-nav? Are you sure it is available on 7" sat-nav? Maybe that is a function on wide-screen sat-nav? Besides as I said - sometimes I can see on sat-nav that it shows road ahead as "red" meaning it is congested, but still advises to continue straight into that traffic. So it seems it doesn't even use information it has. I find google maps redirection most reasonable, whereas waze sometimes is even too aggressive i.e. it sometimes suggest alternative route when the main one isn't even that bad, and send you to really obscure back roads and rat-runs.

No that is for additional insurance, but it is not mandatory - you can say "no I don't need it" and they won't charge it.

1. it is terrible, sometimes not even in the same hour. This is because real traffic information on Lexus is very poor. Sure if road is going to be clear then it will calculate average speed and prediction is going to be reasonable, but if you use it in the city during peak hours it could be on another planet.... and worse even if it knows there is traffic, sometime it still send you right into the middle of it (I assume redirection is simply not aggressive enough). Route planning is not good for same reason - yes it can find theoretically best route, but because of outdated traffic information it might send you doing circles or right into stand still. So - in terms of actual route planning I would give it like 3/10. This is 2017 RC with pre-facelift narrow screen premium sat-nav, including traffic information. I know that face-lift sat-nav with wide screen works slightly better. On top of that - it is slow... for example if you miss the turn it just get's confused for 15 seconds and takes long time to suggest new route. 2. Again - fairly terrible. Not impossible to use but takes like 4 times longer than using phone. I would simply consider whenever one can use it whilst driving or not. I consider that Lexus sat-nav one can't use whilst driving, so it is not acceptable. If I have ever used it whilst driving, then it would be whilst standing by the traffic lights. Maybe one can do it in the straight stretch of motorway, but it is just dangerous to use whilst driving. Voice commands are useless as well. Tried to use it once or twice and it is just hopeless. As I said - if you just want to go from say London to Edinburg and you want to get "general direction" instead of following the signs, then it is good enough. However, if you were driving somewhere and suddenly you decide some help from navigation would be good, then Lexus navigation would be last thing in my mind. You need to stop anyways, so you might as well just take phone from the pocket. With phone it takes at most 30s to find where you going, whereas same thing would take 2-3 minutes on Lexus sat-nav and even then you probably need to use phone 500m from destination, because it is simply not very accurate.

Some cars with Android Auto/Car Play now integrates HUD function as well.

It does not make to burn leaner (kind of opposite), but it has less power per volume, meaning you will be making less power. On turbo charged cars, this effect could be eliminated by increasing pressure - basically squeezing more fuel and more air into cylinder to effectively increase compression ratio and get same power. Now as I said E85 increases fuel consumption by ~5% that is the fuel with 85% pure ethanol, as such I would not expect to see any meaningful difference on E10 .. something like 0.5% or in worst case less than 1% difference is not something to worry about. I am much more worried about it costing more money, whereas it should actually be substantially cheaper. I am under no illusion that goverment would allow this to happen... so they will introduce inferior fuel but will keep same astronomical duties and taxes, yet continue to demonise motorists despite making billions out of us.

Yes, for most people excess for insurance will be higher than cost of replacing cat. Meaning there is no point in trying to claim it from insurance. What is as well important to know - don't tell about it to your insurance. Even if you don't claim your insurance prices will go up next year, because your insurance company will put you in higher risk profile for being honest.

You never going to get 50MPG on RC300h, maybe if you drive it at 50... at most 60MPH for long time, but not in any realistic traffic conditions. Further, it will get you lower MPG then say IS300h, because RC comes with 19 inch wheels and much wider tyres on top of being heavier car. ~40MPG is probably the most you can get.

No, because 2AR-FSE can run on E10 or any ethanol, there are only few exception for few older Lexus engines like 4GR-FSE in IS250 before 2007. Apparently, the issue is not the engine, but fuel lines and fuel pump components which can corrode over time. Even then - I have used fuels with various ethanol levels (including E85) on mine and never had any issues. The only thing I noticed is that cars uses ~5-10% more fuel on E85. That is simply because ethanol has lower power density so engine needs more of it to reach same power. At the same time it burns little bit cleaner and could even reduce accumulation of carbo deposits in DI engines.

I would say because software is generic and Lexus just been a bit lazy on it. For example same sat-nav would have been fitted to manual car which has it on 40k maintenance schedule.

It is just very slow and usually outdated, on top of that touchpad is pretty terrible way of entering address compared to phone keyboard. In comparison there is no such thing as out of date map on the phone - if may changes it instantly gets updated for everyone. The only car where I believe sat-nav was somewhat useful was BMW with it's iDrive, the dial somehow was easier to use and system would pre-filter address in country you are at, meaning you only need to enter first letter and suddenly instead of whole alphabet you will get just 5 possible second letter and so on. Basically in 3 clicks you have your address in sat-nav and it was easy enough to use when driving, I would argue easier than tanking phone out of pocket (which one should not do when driving anyway). Obviously, even BMW has same issue with outdated maps in the beginning, but I believe ~2012 if you got their professional system, the maps would update automatically every few months. Still not as new as google maps, but good enough. So to summarise - Older Lexus systems just had poor screens with low sensitivity and outdated maps, newer systems have rather tricky to use mouse touchpad and still has outdated maps. not convenient to enter the address and nearly impossible to do it when driving. As well you need to know address precisely, there is no search like on google maps i.e. you can enter approximate name and let the map to suggest you close matches. On top of all that traffic information on google maps is just instant - if it says 3h to drive, it will be 3h... if it says there is closure or congestion, there will be. At most it could be outdated for like 15 minutes. Finally, having sat-nav in car is rather obsolete nowadays - most modern cars comes with CarPlay or Android Auto, meaning your phone automatically connect to the car infotainment system and you have best of both words - intuitive user interface where you can quickly enter any address and latest maps. For example new MB system is good (arguably one of the best in the market), but nobody uses it, I certainly don't - just connect the phone and use Android Auto.

If you had your car detailed to high level - Lexus complimentary wash and valet is certainly thing to avoid. It all depends on how much attention to the details owner has - for some it may be good, for other it may be terrible. I could make rather relevant analogy here - if you have a "thing" which has the surface finished with 500 grit sand paper and you are offered the service where that surface will be refinished with 1000 grit, then it is great, especially considering it is free, that will obviously improve the surface finish! But if you sort of the person who got to the trouble sanding the surface with 5000 grit and then polishing it to mirror finish, then 1000 grit service is really not for you. Sadly in the world of detailing where everything is polished to mirror finish Lexus (like any cheap hand wash) only offers 1000 grit "complimentary scratching" service. But let's face it - 90% of customers they have don't have cars detailed or even washed for long time, so they would not understand where we are coming from.

I think some people have sense of direction, some people don't - I don't believe using paper map somehow improves it. That said - knowing how to use maps is beneficial, even if you use digital maps after that it is still useful to know what the map is as many rules applies to nay map anyway. I guess one of my issues with paper map is that it is not possible to use it whilst driving (or would not be safe anyway). Second reason is that - I don't actually use maps or sat-nav because i don't know where I am going.. sure if it is middle of nowhere and I have never been there before it is useful as well, but most of the time only need it to see traffic condition and to advise me on alternative routes. If it won't be there I would still reach my destination, maybe just not as quick.

Not necessary, it is more to do with what level of detail you are expecting and what services you are getting. £170 I would see as more like "maintenance detail" - that is car is in good shape, just need few swirls removed, maybe some decontamination from road grime and brake dust. That would include full wash, chemical decontamination and light pass with polisher. To finish-up maybe a layer of good quality wax for protection. This however, would not address deeper scratches and would not include long lasting protection like ceramic coating. When you see prices around £500-600, then this is more comprehensive detail - it involves same preparation, maybe adding few more steps to make sure car is clean as it could get (e.g. claying or even wet sanding the areas with deeper scratches). later it could include, 2-3 or even more different grade of polishes to refine paint to the standard exceeding that of even new car. This all sounds over-kill, but sadly it is necessary if the goal is to apply ceramic coating as a long lasting protection (2-3, maybe even 5 years with right maintenance). And it is necessary because applying ceramic coating on paint imperfections, swirls, scratches would only highlight them. So the paint has to be nearly perfect before ceramic coating could be done. In short - not all detailing jobs are the same or includes same level of work... and that is what dictates the price.

Yes that is what I mean - I only used paper map in the mountains, because google maps didn't have smaller paths there.

Lexus dealerships are not detailers that is for sure, some don't even clean the cars themselves, but simply take them to local hand wash and that is all. Those dealerships who clean the cars themselves (I know Lexus Reading does) do no better job than same £6 hand wash guys. Yes you get your car clean, but rest assured they don't detail it. When I bought RC it was in terrible shape cosmetically, I mean it was one of the reason car was rather cheap - loads of stone chips, swirls and rather deep scratches. I am fairly certain that same car would have been £2000 more expensive would the dealer have had it detailed to high standard. For me that was actually great, got my polishing supplies out and in a week after delivery it looked like a brand new car. It came out very well and none of the scratches really gave me any trouble. So I saved the money on it and had good reason to play around with the detailing on top of that. Now there is one more thing which has happened since - I took the car for the warranty job and it was cleaned by Lexus Woodford... overall it was clean car and probably I should have asked them not to touch it, but I forgot. So they washed it and somebody have applied wax or glaze after washing. Obviously that was not necessary as car was ceramically coated, but worse - they forgotten to buff it of the grille and left it to dry on. It took me a bloody week to scrape that dried on crap from what is huge grille. Moral of the story - if you buying car from Lexus, be prepared to pay for proper detailer and it will make huge difference. As well as Lexus not to wash your car after service, because they may make it worse. It is certainly not an issue for people who don't care and who don't detail their cars, but fi you have had your car detailed professionally, then Lexus cleaning may make it worse. As for expectations... Yes I agree for Luxury brand like Lexus having in house detailing and providing sparkling cars would be great, but probably slightly unrealistic. I don't know any mainstream brand which would do that (Audi, MB, BMW) and frankly Lexus has far bigger issues with their used approved cars. Mine came without brake-pads, other guys had cracking tyres etc. So in the order of priority, this isn't even biggest issues I think. But I agree it would be cool indeed if they do it.