Linas.P

Was it plastidipped?

I can't completely agree... more like people are ignorant and they don't research and understand what companies are telling to them. It is not secret that most BEVs have "battery management technology"... but one needs to understand what that means. It means exactly that - 100% of battery will never be available to you, because it is overprovisioned to reduce degradation. It is kind of similar to "reserve fuel" in fuel tank - car tells you the tank is empty, but there is still like 5L, the difference is that you can drive until you actually run out, you are not restricted in any way and car isn't really hurt by doing it (the fuel pump can overheat, but once fuel pump is replaced you tank capacity does not become smaller). So people don't understand and can't be bothered to understand what companies are telling them, so they end-up believing things companies didn't actually told them... and all the gaps are filled by EVangelists glossing over things and further misleading those who do just surface level research. Because imagine yourself as mildly interested individual and you decide to check something you heard during the day - "they say that BEV batteries degraded"... you put this in the google and the article which comes-up is from EVbox... which pretty much calls the degradation myth and glosses over the facts by using research which was done by biased sources and articles which are outright purchased by companies involved in the game... and you go to sleep thinking "cool I find out there is no need to worry and all that is a myth". Very very few people do in depth research, checks all the links to all the sources, checks who commissioned reports and who paid for their publishing etc. And for example I quite like that sort of thing (doing research, getting to the bottom of sources etc), but I have no doubt that 80% of population has no clue and are not even interested in finding out.

Which is the point - the only reason you can charge once a week is because you have BEV as second car. That is because you don't need to care that your BEV only has 30 miles range on Friday, because if you need to go 200 miles on Saturday you just jump into Stinger and go whatever distance. This is impossible in household with only one car! It is not bull****ing, but in principle cars carry like extra 10-30% of the battery firstly to slow down degradation of the battery and secondly to hide the degradation of the battery. Which is why I am saying all "battery degradation tests" are flawed, because they don't actually tell you how much it has degraded, it only tells you how much below the spare capacity it has degraded. And because reserves are often unknow we don't know what we measuring (to be fair testers know how to estimate the real capacity, but it is still just estimation). I understand why it is necessary, but it is still fact that it is hidden from public and not transparent even to the owners themselves. In either case - the older the BEV the faster the battery will degrade as less and less spare capacity there will be, which will mean battery will have to get discharged more and charged more to keep reasonable range. The spare capacity does not prevent degradation, just slows it down and hides it for first few year. I think it is fair to say it is kind of cheating... not cheating would be if car would openly say "I won't charge past 80%", "I won't let you drive above 10MPH after you reach 20%"... No they say "Battery is full", but it isn't and they say "battery is empty" but it isn't... even if there would be advanced menu or some sort of override button, then we could say at least it is know how much spare capacity there is, but now it can only be estimated.

Have no issue with what you said, just stating the fact that it is hard to find good source on it and it seems we agree on that. As well, I said before that focus should be making low range range small EVs (seems like you statement supports that) for the city and monsters like Model-X, Model-S, Porsche Tycan should be prohibitively taxed, not to incentivise them, but to disincentivise them... basically like ICE are (or used to be) in brackets based by amount of CO2, the batteries should be taxed by capacity... so long range EVs with large batteries should be in G category or whatever ad get £730/year tax - because they are new "gas guzzlers" with their massive polluting batteries and they are BAD. It is much easier to make good, short range BEV for city, but that is the only thing they should be used for, not for long range driving with monstrous batteries. Well I guess I get your point - by being overprovisioned they avoid being at low charge or at full charge and that in theory prolongs the life of the entire pack... or maybe just masks the degradation? The problem is that there is no reliable, accurate information about it and no transparency (because clearly negative info here would hurt interests of manufacturers). What cars do you own?

The problem is that generally there are very few reliable sources of information when it comes to EVs. I think some of recent youtube videos were quite balanced and close to the truth, but as far as actual sources goes it is either anti-EV lobby which says they are horrible or EVangelists which are saying they are fine. I would put EVbox to the later category...they seem to be strongly on the side of "defeating myths" and repeating marketing material from EV manufacturers. At first it seems like well source article, but let's just follow the money - the quotes are coming from places like Battery University with article sponsored by Cadex, which is electronics testing equipment maker, but importantly manufacturer of batteries and battery chargers. Other sources are GEOTAB (who are fleet managers), arguably more neutral source, but fleet managers I guess would have some initiative to push for "cleaner" electric vehicles and defeat the "myth" slowing down adoption... (I don't know maybe I am just paranoid). The next one is EVanex - "the manufacturer and distributor of EV and Tesla accessories" according to their site - hardly an unbiased source, they specifically quote Nissan (BEV manufacturer) who says that most of batteries they have made are still in use, which is kind of "economical truth" statement as that neither confirms nor denies the reduction in capacity... if anything recent video about 80k miles Leaf shows it has just about 42% of range left and that equates to ~56 miles or real life driving for that car. Not attacking the messenger, especially considering how difficult it is find good sources about this topic... I am just saying I never take what sources says at face value, always check their sources and if they are financially interested in pushing EVs I just dismiss the findings or at very least treat them with a lot of scepticism. Finally, again I just can't see "no daily charring" in practice. I may be incorrect, but I would plug in my EV religiously every evening. Don't care if it hurts the batter by cause paying £80 for fast charger and waiting for hour for it to charge on the go not only going to hurt the battery more, but it will hurt any savings on the car as well. So this is clear contradiction between "EVs are cheaper" and "EV batteries lasts if you charge them only once a week"... they are only cheaper if charged at home with slow charger and they only last if charged as rarely as possible. As well it still falls on same "average mileage" fallacy - people are not just averages and there is no such thing as average mileage when it comes to decision of where to charge. And finally weekly charging doesn't even work, because it would take 18-24h to charge modern EV at home... so basically their use case is extremely magical - they expect one to drive 30-40 miles a day Monday-Friday, every week all year long, for entire ownership and then plug the car in on the Friday evening and let it charge over weekend... where it is usually weekend where people do longer trips! This weekly charging practice only works if you have ICE weekend vehicle and you dedicate EV just for daily commute an local driving... which as discuss would (important to underline WOULD) work if people would be able to have multiple cars and own BEV as second or third car in household. Otherwise BEV will get charged daily...

All older IS mk2 I have seen have similar problem. Heat cycling and regular cleaning just rips them off. I guess you can try gluing them back. Kind of depends on the taste, without maybe too much chrome in my opinion. Other people as well rip them off and paint the chrome black (aka chrome delete). P.S. seems like your car was painted as there is obvious orange peel/overspray on rear door. I assume front door painted as it seems too flat (over-polished).

Same engine as Avensis 2.2TD... don't know if they have same problems as Avensis does not interest me. EGR cleaning is not part of any service schedule, so it it never get's cleaned... in principle not very complex job - just remove it and get soot scrubbed out of it, but if you not doing it yourself, then expect a trip at least once a year to some independent shop and £200 bill just for that (and that is what I pay for entire service for IS250). All IS220d/200D I have seen on the road (very glad I am not seeing them often) had black smoke from the back... all diesel owners say their cars do not smoke and all of them are wrong (or delusional). Accelerate hard and almost all of them will have black smoke coming out of the back. The theory is quite simple - when above 50MPH and with engine at 2000RPM+ and at working temperature DPF regen starts, so in theory the system should be "self-cleaning", but that is only true if you regularly drive 50MPH+ at 2000RPM and with engine fully warmed-up... meaning motorway driving. If car is used in the city, then it simply NEVER get's to regenerate.

True to some degree. The EGR/DPF problems are "all diesel" problems and related to people using the cars wrong... is honestly user error (expect nobody educated people how to use them correctly) - diesel should never do journey which is less than 30 minute or 50 miles, that is what kills them, hence they are so bad in the city, diesels should only be used exclusively for longer journeys and they are great at that. The other problems are Lexus specific - like head gasket on IS220d, or injectors, or stupid DMF, or expensive clutch. Just to be clear on how expensive - £1000 is starting point for Lexus clutch job add another £600 for DMF if it needs to be changed (cannot be resurfaced like normal fly-wheels) and usually it just makes sense to do DMF with clutch because most of cost is labour and you can't do DMF later without the clutch... so the choice is either spend £1600 today, or spend £1000 today and another £1600 next year anyway. And £1600... that is how much most of IS220d are worth, that is why so many of them are scrapped... they just not worth keeping on the road.

The problem is that IS200d/220d issues are becoming worse with age not better. EGR needs attention every 5k miles, DPF could clog every 20k if driving for short journeys, so it needs constant expensive maintenance to keep it on the road. I guess the head gasket could have been replaced (but that is not issue IS220d is known for), turbo may have been replaced, but turbo issues are generally caused by either EGR upstream or DPF downstream. Chunks of carbon coming from EGR can clog compressor housing and carbon from DPF can back-up all the way from DPF to clog the turbine. So sadly they are not the sort of problems which could be fixed once and then car is fine. If driven on short journeys all diesels will suffer from soot build-up and IS220/200d is worse than other, but in principle have same problems.

But... if you charging at home with slow charger, then you most likely going to try to charge it every day, to always be topped-up to ensure maximum range is available. Which then necessitates daily charging for just few % which in itself isn't good for the battery. At least my smartphone lasts me 2.5 days (Galaxy S22) so I am charging it 146 times per year, whereas one will potentially charge EV every day they drive... but as well could be twice a day if they charge at both ends of the journey... so may estimate would be between 150 and 300 times a year (for myself as I drive ~150 times per year). In short I don't think charging weekly is realistic - I cannot imagine myself leaving the car with just 30 miles range on Friday hoping that I will only going to need to go 30 miles... I would always keep it at maximum range to maximise the saving from charging at home and minimise the risk of significant time being wasted (40-80 minutes) and significant cost if I need to charge it on the go. That is correct - if temperature of the pack is -20C, then it would have only 60% of capacity:

Because it does defy the chemistry Most of EVs have some capacity cap both at the top and at the bottom to hide the degradation... it is not known but estimates are 10-30%. So that 3% loss after 5 years could mean loss of 13-33% and in next 5 years the degradation may be significantly higher. Secondly, battery degradation is massively impacted by charging type. Charging at home on slow charger the degradation may be very slow, but you you using exclusively fast chargers on motorway then this will accelerate degradation. Some batteries degrade like 10 times quicker on fast chargers compared to slow chargers - this is hard to quantify as it really depends what battery, how much discharged it was at the beginning of the charge, how full it was charged, what was the rate of charging... so 10 times is probably like worst case scenario and 50% or 1.5 times is best case scenario. But that illustrates the issue with owning BEV if you can't charge at home, or if you doing longer journeys necessitating fast charging on your way. I do not actually trust this, especially coming from biased source. Most of BEVs use standard 18650 Lithium Cells, I know Tesla has it's own type 20700 and 21700, as well they looking at 4680, but the technology and the principles are the same as consumer batteries. I guess in simplest terms - if you get good quality cells made by Samsung, LG or Sanyo, then they will be equivalent or better quality cells then those in Tesla/other cars, because big part of choosing cells for BEVs are cost cutting. So "industrial" quality just means "cheaper than consumer", because at $18 per cell and ~600cells per pack +~20% of cost of all peripherals using something like good quality Samsung cells would make the battery cost $12960. And that is just material cost alone, who knows how much should be added for manufacturing, maybe 30-50%. So we are looking at $17000-19500 for battery pack if best cells are used. Tesla is known to use Panasonic batteries which are generally cheaper for consumer batteries than Samsung, LG or Sanyo. I am not saying they are inferior quality, but cost aspect is definitely very important. We as well know that Tesla battery costs ~$13500, but it not very clear how much it costs to actually manufacture it... what I am certain of - it definitely does not cost just $540 and that means Tesla don't use best quality cells available for $12960. I reckon more realistically (using high level 30-50% manufacturing/profit margin) the $13500 battery pack costs less than $9450 in materials and less than $7560 for cells ($12 per cell)... which coincidentally (or maybe not) is the same as best Panasonic "consumer" cells available to buy. Now this whole calculation should be caveated and taken with showed full of salt as we don't know what discounts Tesla is getting for ordering gazillion of these cells from Panasonic, but overall I think the statement that "car batteries are industrial and better than consumer equivalents" is myth or marketing, or lie. They are all the same cells, just car manufacturers buys them in bulk which allows them to lower the cost per pack (most important criteria), that as well allows them to order not standard dimensions (which is just for packaging reasons and allows to fill out the pack more optimally), but I really doubt "industrial" is better than "consumer" grade.

As far as I know - no. They are unlicensed android versions, so you won't get updates via normal route, you may be able to do it manually if you know what you are doing and who ever makes them in chinese labour camp decides to provide new android version... but you need to be advanced user and probably understand some of the chinese language to find what you need and what will work for you. Just loading new android rom on these would most likely brick them or would make them basically into android tablet without any car functionality working. So I would say they have shelf-life of 3-6 years if you get the latest android version today. Basically android 12 will be dropped from support in September 2025 and as far as android goes usually versions still work reasonably well for 3 years after they go out of support (there are no hard cut-off like iOS, but after 3 years without support some apps stops working or are unstable). So if you go with Android 12, then expect it to be fine until like 2028-2029, but if you get Android 10... then I think it will become limited in functionality by 2026. That said this only applies to third party apps... like if you want Waze or Torque etc. the custom built which supports Lexus own functions should not be impacted as it is based on whatever 1988 design Lexus used when developing their system and that doesn't change over the years. Built in things like google maps or music player should continue working as well. I guess compatibility and stability of apple car play and android auto may start suffer once out of support, especially if you keep updating your phone. So for example if you pair android 12 smartphone with your android 10 system, that will likely continue working fine for 10 years, but if you get whatever android 16 phone in 2026, then this may no longer connect.

I guess it is too late to warn you to stay away from horror which is IS220d/200d. The general advise goes along the lines - don't touch it even with the barge pole and if possible try not to park near to it just in case it is contagious... jokes aside Lexus IS220/200d is the worst ever Lexus model as far as reliability goes and it is plagued by a lot of serious issues with the engine. IS200d is slightly better in a sense that it is detuned from 177hp to 150hp and is less likely to have head gasket issue. All the rest of the issues still remains, so you "only" have to worry about DPF, EGR, Turbo, Injectors, 5th-injector, DMF is as well known to cause issues and is expensive to replace (solid ones available instead, shared issue with manual IS250), the clutch is expensive to replace (as well shared with manual IS250) and rear callipers are problematic (shared with IS250). So in summary compared to automatic IS250 which only has 1 minor issue, the IS220d has 5 serious, 2 medium and 1 minor, IS200d has 4 serious, 2 medium and 1 minor and manual IS250 has 2 medium and 1 minor issue. The only person I would recommend this car... would be someone who is doing 20k+ miles exclusively on motorway... at that point most of diesel related issues are less likely to occur, the extra maintenance required would be paid for by savings on fuel and the only remaining issue is weird gearing which is not suitable for 70MPH... you kind of need to get to 80-85MPH for 6th gear to work. If doing less then 10k miles then automatic IS250 is way to go, works out about the same for fuel in the city, doesn't have expensive issues with gearbox and doesn't require any maintenance to the engine, except of recommended 5-6k miles oil changes. IS220d would be mk2, so you should use the next forum down below. As for the app - I guess you can use Torque with any cheap OBD2 Bluetooth adapter, Carista is useless for Mk2, but ideally you should try to get Techstream (you need Windows PC for it). I guess if car has no issue at the moment then Torque will do with basic scanning and code cleaning.

100% - Code is just vague location of the fault, identifying the actual fault still requires understand of how systems work and sometimes the fault is not even caused by the system which is giving the code (like common battery and alternator issues can throw error in different side of the car). One useful thing is that if you have workshop manual and the codes for your car, then you can start trouble shooting it step by step. But in my experience code is extremely rarely just points to say broken sensor, it does happen, but it is not common that you get the code, check the description, it says sensor-x, you replace sensor-x and that is done deal... I wish it would be that simple. And if there are no code but one just need to interpret results by live data, then there is whole other of level of complexity. I guess what I am saying - Techstream is great tool, but it won't fix the issue for you, and it won't even troubleshoot the issue in most cases, it just points you to the area which you have to research yourself.

Techstream or Torque Techstream requires cheap laptop (£100) + dongle for £40.... and then you have a choice of paying £20 a week for official subscription or else... Torque requires app for £5 and cheap adapter for £5... but it only covers like 10% of what Techstream does... so value is about the same. They are all pirated... The only place to get "genuine" Techstream is Toyota itself, they don't sell it, it is subscription - https://techinfo.toyota.com That said they want £1200 for dongle and if you really want to go genuine, then you can get ebay dongle + subscription when you need it, the correct drivers should handle it.

Honestly ANYTHING is better than Lexus OEM, so I think starting from there you can start building up expectations... I am not saying android 10 is good choice considering it is out of support by the end of this year... but it is still light years ahead of Lexus system. So if you can get Android 12, that is certainly worth the effort, but even out of support Android 10 will circle around Lexus system at every step without problem.

Good theory... but I suspect internal volume of air is not great enough to create the differences in pressure we are talking about. On top of that dry air doesn't really change in volume that much, what has higher difference in volume is water, especially going between hard, liquid and gas form... so as long as they are hermetically sealed there should be no problem. To calculate gas volume we can use Charles' Law - and the difference between -50C and +50C would be about 44% for "ideal gas" (but ~78% of air is nitrogen which is quite close to ideal gas), so let's say 50% difference for the dry air. Meaning that if at 0C the air pressure in the taillight was equal to atmospheric pressure, then in +50C it would be 1.25ATM and in -50C 0.75ATM... So in conclusion - no 0.25ATM difference won't cause plastic cracking... BUT introduce some water and the results can be drastically different.

Exactly the problem. And the most ironic thing is that they are most beneficial in towns, yet the city-dwellers are least capable people of owning EV (because of parking/charging constrains)... and instead of focusing of city cars with low range to maximise the environment benefit... we increasingly manufacture large cars for countryside with large batteries and long ranges which are less environmentally friendly and likely to be used outside of the city where they have the least benefit.

That is all assuming you can charge at home... which is very big assumption and I don't think many EVangelists grasps the numbers well. Majority of people can't charge cars at home (don't even have place to park a car) and they won't be getting charging points in the near future either. And that is before we even consider that there is neither generating capacity required, nor network capacity required to transmit enough electricity if we assume that everyone will need their cars charged at home. Overall... EVs are fine, for certain people, who have houses, who can charge at home, who already have cars and buying EV as second or third car in the household... they are fine. Problem is that such people are minority and that the plan in UK is to force EVERYONE to have EV by 2030. And that is the main problem - it works for some, it DOES NOT WORK FOR EVERYONE, so the problem is this uniform approach which doesn't recognise the fact not everyone (by that I mean majority) can have EV, nor puts specific steps in place to enable everyone to have EV (which is impossible, but that is another topic). Yeah... and that is even before we consider the fact that majority of people don't even have luxury of owning 2 cars. Nevermind the hypocrisy of the whole "planet saving" idea.

Or anyone that has some clue about the work and costs involved. As well assuming the car gone trough the insurers auctions this information would be available to anyone willing to spend like £3 for history check... if car goes trough Copart or any public auction all the pictures ever published are kept and could be access. Besides I think it is big positive to see the pictures of Cat-S vs. just having to judge the car on the spot without any clue how it looked after the accident. So yeah... I don't think this thread did any damage to the sale apart of pointing out the obvious risks and some educated takes on how good was the deal. If intention is to turn it into track car, then in my opinion the quality of the repairs to the rear doesn't really matter. Put the roll cage in, brace between the rear towers and as long as geometry of the rear suspension hasn't moved then who cares about C-pillar (which looking at the picture doesn't seem like the damage was that bad to affect it). After all, apart of suspension mounting points, the rest of the rear is just "cosmetic". However, when building track car I think the overall competitiveness of the car matters and there are simply more competitive options around for £9k i.e. why buy IS-F which was already fixed for £9k if you could get some other car which will perform just as good for £5k... both still going to need like £10-20k of mandatory equipment to prepare them for racing and much of the repairs which were done to car doesn't help anyway... because in it's stock form IS-F would need a lo of suspension upgrades before being competitive racing car anyway. I guess what I am saying - IS-F isn't really that great track car, if that is only purpose. The strength of IS-F comes from reliability and being great daily... which can as well do a track day with some minor mods at the same time. But when the positives of daily driving are removed, then as pure track car it doesn't make that much sense in my opinion.

I assume bad seal on the bulbs...

Ended without bids... seller reckons Motorway would give £10,500 for the car any time... which begs the question why is he even bothering listing it on ebay for £9000, when he can get £1,500 more in 15 minutes. The answer is that he is is checking price for the car as if it is not written-off and in perfect condition, despite disclaimer clearly stating the price is only true "if car was never recorded as total loss and does not have damage except of normal wear and tear". That it was poorly fixed does not make it unrecorded again 🙂

yeah I tried £6,000, £6,100 and £7,100. As I had no intention to pay more than £6,000 I didn't try to find out where exactly the limit is set, but I assume it is either £8,000 or £8,500... would be funny if it was set to £9,000 LOL!

Just for fun put in offer for £6,000... don't really have space for the car, but thought for £6,000 I would figure it out. However, it seems seller has set "auto-decline" probably for anything below £8,000. Did a little bit more research and it seems that guide valuation just on year/mileage is £8,650... which in recent years doesn't mean much because car prices are a bit ridiculous and to be honest it never worked well for rare cars anyway... i.e. if you have something like IS-F then you have to get insurance with agreed value otherwise they will give you random valuation out of nowhere. Anyway that said guide is guide and if such car in perfect condition is £8,650, then -20% for Cat-N and another -20% for Cat-S... this would makes the car £5,190 in the best case assuming it is otherwise perfect condition. Which it clearly ISN'T... As well just did quick check on "we buy any car" type of page, they always low balling, but it can be assumed that right prices is something like 20-30% higher. They reckon £3650-3970 just considering Cat-S and "cosmetic" damage to the rear +20-30% and we end-up in the same ballpark as guide price ~£5190 (£4380-5161). So perhaps it is good that seller disabled offers as even at £6,000 it is a bit generous... although maybe would be fair considering market conditions and it being a rare car. One thing for sure - seller expectations for £9,000 are unlikely to be met.

If it is dealer then there should be no problems getting your money back. Obviously before that it is important to to figure out what is the real mileage on the car, but as far as tyres goes something is very wrong. There is no way car has different tyres after just 2200 miles, (they don't come with 9-10mm of thread as suggested above), I believe brand new Turanzas are something ~7.3mm, but still after 2200 miles the tyres should look virtually new, literally to the point where you should still be able to see the painted lines from the factory. The tread life of these tyres are at least 20k miles. Now it is kind of hard to believe somebody would put 75000 miles on car and would try to pass it on as 2200 miles car, perhaps 30k miles car with set of new tyres - that is probable, but 2200 miles just kind of sounds ridiculous. I know there is one mainstream dealer which is known for this sort of thing, but even they would do something in realms of reality i.e. maybe clocking last MOT, or clocking 50% if it is before first mot... but not 95% like here. For example I have mileage discrepancy on my car and I knew it before buying it, but in my case it is clear it was typo by MOT centre... car went 34K> 43K> 92k> 58k on MOT, which quite clearly probably should have been 52k and the service couple of months after that shows 54k. I am still kind of annoyed at the previous owners that they didn't notify DVLA about mistake, but at least it is possible to trace it back and it just doesn't make sense that car suddenly did 49k miles in one year despite doing just 43k in prior 5 years.