Linas.P

Just my abbreviation for Hydrogen (fuel) Cell Electric Vehicle (HfCEV), compared to Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV). No - you don't need catalist for exhaust gases (as that is water), but you need catalyst for fuel cell itself so that hydrogen could be turned into electricity and water by catalysing it with air/oxygen. Iridium is used as anode and Platinum is used as cathode in hydrogen fuel cells.

If we talking about hydrogen combustion - then yes 100% agree. If we talking about hydrogen fuel cell, then I am not so sure. I think technology is there but BEV scam prevented it from getting off the ground as much as it should have (I would expect hydrogen to be on par with battery electric otherwise). Is it same as saying "HCEV is dead"? No I don't think so... if Toyota would think it is dead then they would have pulled the plug from the project, yet they still developing... if BMW would have thought it is dead they wouldn't have collaborated with Toyota on Zupra (they got hydrogen tech in exchange), the BMW hydrogen combustion tech was available in 2000s, but that is why it died and why they wanted to get Toyota tech, because hydrogen combustion as I said and as it clear from sources is dead end. For me it fells hydrogen fuel cell tech will remain and will continue to get developed for foreseeable future, it won't be mainstream, it will only be developed in few countries - Japan, China, California (state), Korea, perhaps few more... but it will tick along. I think we could compare it to LPG - Netherlands was the only country in Europe where it really took off (for new cars, excluding conversions). But you know it is still around - ~27 million vehicles worldwide. So I expect hydrogen to follow similar trend, it is small market, but it is big enough to be sustainable. Last year 68k (72% increase year over year) hydrogen cars were sold worldwide, not massive but at the same time I doubt Toyota would just drop offer which could sell nearly 70k cars especially where clear trend is that segment is growing. Yesterday I watched one interesting video... to summarise - HCEV is good idea but won't be mainstream. Main issue - Iridium and Platinum required for catalyst. In other hand it is same issue as BEV - Lithium and Cobalt... All 4 are limited resources we simply don't have enough to use either technology as full replacement for ICEVs and fossil fuels. The other problem which I disagree with is "colours" of hydrogen... basically most of it at the moment is by-product of fossil fuel production, thus not green (more polluting than petrol), making it on renewable energy is not economical and the only option is to make it using nuclear energy (so called "pink hydrogen"), the video concluded that nuclear energy is not popular, but I still think that will be the way we will make hydrogen in future and therefore I don't see an issue in producing carbon neutral hydrogen... but platinum and iridium will be an issue for sure!

I have seen this car offered privately for £14k on facebook marketplace (It may have been £14,999... so say £15k). For £17k it is not great buy. I wouldn't worry about mileage at all, 100k is completely fine for car with service history, besides to do this mileage in 7 years car must have been on motorway a lot (and that is great!). I guess the key difference will be that this car no longer gets the Lexus Relax warranty, so you would be missing out on that for last 3 years of it's life, so I expect the car to be discounted accordingly and I do believe that £14-15k was more realistic price, £17k for 100k+ miles GS300h is a lot, if it would be GS450h... then maybe... In summary I don't think mileage on Lexus matters as long as there is service history, big miles in short time is good sign, means car driven on motorway (usually), but key question is price - if car is priced based on mileage then Lexus usually are very good value for money, but if they are priced based on years with high mileage then that is automatically bad deal.

My experience is that - if they see it they will always unplug it. Lexus dealers or any other larger establishment will all do it. Why? May be policy to protect staff privacy, not sure to be honest, but will be something to do with liability, risk for brand image etc. Is this legal? Yes it is legal - your car stays on their private premises and to film on private premises you have to get permission from the owner. You are free to film in public, but Lexus dealership or any other workshop are not public spaces, so they have a right to ask you to stop filming (or not give permission), or disconnect your camera within their premises. That it is your car it actually does not matter, by extension they are disconnecting many things from your car by the way of working on it, that is just part of the contract of working on the car.

Well... this is never ending question which doesn't really have an answer. Basically there is no colour code for F-Sport wheels, because the final colour is an effect which is achieved by layering black and chrome paint on the wheels. Phantom Grey 1E3 is a standard automotive colour which gives similar colour from like 5 metres away, but depending on the light may look completely different from the original colour. The key to the F-Sport look is that it shifts based on angle and light, could look almost chrome or could look almost black. The closest I got on my F-Sport wheels was smoked chrome finish, which was basically black wheels with some chrome sprayed on to and suspended in the clearcoat. That said when insurance needed to refurbish two wheels the shop got them almost exactly matching to what they were and I quite liked them. In short - just ask shop to get the finish to back of what it is, but you can mention that it is not just "grey anthracite" finish and they won't get away with it, that said most of shops specialising in wheels refurbishment knows how to achieve matching looks.

Not inside the small tanks in car, but in large tanks underground - yes that is correct.

Hydrogen does self-discharge, by the means of venting excess pressure from time to time, this applies to both pressurised and liquified H2, but pressurised could last close to 3-6 months maybe even longer (kind of similar to petrol/ethanol) whereas liquified only lasts 15 days. But what they don't have is dreaded battery degradation - HCEV will have same range after 10 years as the day you bought it (adjusted for general wear an tear). I am less concerned about goverment short term thinking, but what concerns me is their long term impact. For example - subsidising BEVs and charging points is short term policy which may prove to be wrong and wasteful, but has no long term consequences, in fact subsidies are already cut a lot to the point where I am no longer annoyed by them. However, ban on ICEVs is extremely damaging thing with long term consequences and I personally believe government should not have power to decide on things like this, the can promote or discourage certain use, but they should not be able to ban one technology over another, it should be market to decide what works. If BEVs proves to be so good as EVangelists claim then nobody will buy ICEVs anyway and they will become obsolete naturally, they won't need to ban anything... but clearly it is not the case and the ban smells of desperation!

Toyota really needs to either built it's own network (like Tesla Superchargers) or partner with somebody, because currently HCEV are chicken and egg situation. People don't buy them because there are no infrastructure and business does not want to build infrastructure because there is no demand to buy hydrogen. I know they doing something like that in Japan, but strange they haven't tried it in Europe. And secondly they need to roll hydrogen for almost every model they have on sale, Mirai is just weird car which as cool as it is won't captivate the market for sure. They literally just need to pull the HCEV pack and put it into something like RX, ES, LC (which is basically on same platform as Mirai) and obviously all similar Toyota models, Prius (similar to Mirai 1), Corolla, RAV4 etc. etc. The needs to be choice of HCEV if they expect the technology to pick-up.

If installed correctly the catch-can should not cause vacuum leak... in fact if it does then car wouldn't run very well at all, as the leak would be on intake side. Cannot understand how catch-can could cause oil dilution? Most modern cars has Positive Crankcase Ventilation (PCV), so the crank case is not under vacuum, but rather under pressure. Sure the PCV valve is vacuum controlled (could be solenoid controlled as well), but fitting catch-can does not require touching the PCV valve... rather just fitting catch-can on the "breather" tube going back into intake. As catch-can is sealed system and ventilation is caused not by vacuum, but rather by pressure from crankcase it should have no effect on the engine - apart of removing oil vapour from getting into intake and clogging valves.

Yeah for criminal damage one can get jail time, so £1000 fine sounds very light... I guess "first time offender". Even then I think it should have been car repairs +£1000... I guess it goes to show that even judges don't understand what "just a scratch" means... + whole anti-car culture in UK, where any crime against car is seen almost as a positive act.

It should be put in perspective - carbon accumulation is natural in any engine (worse in DI) and in the picture of 29k engine it is not excessive at all, the bigger problem is that in DI it never cleans-up but just continues accumulating, whereas in Port injected engine it would stay about the same (accumulate a little bit one day, then get washed-off a little bit the other day). I think it is good time to consider oil catch-can now!

Got of fairly light as well - £1000 barely covers cost of pain, not to mention depreciation of the value of the car as the painted is never as good as factory finish. I guess if it is 1 door, then maybe it checks out, but if he scratched whole side then I doubt £1000 even covers paint. Generally there is a problem that non "car guys" don't understand how expensive is to fix the keyed car, or that it actually can't be fixed back to it's original condition... they don't even understand it needs fixing... "ahh that is just a scratch - who would pay money to fix it". So they kind of trap themselves in making damage which they could not comprehend cost of... There is that other fad spreading - letting air out of SUV tyres ... Look - I hate SUVs, but I do understand that if you let the air out of the tyre it may get damage as the car sits on empty tyre, as well if owner does not notice this could cause accident when driving... but these people are now doing it and are proud of it, whereas in my opinion this should be prosecuted as attempted murder! Again - I don't think they have intention to hurt somebody, but because they are so f**** stupid and ignorant they don't understand even basics about the cars and they can't appreciate that "just letting some air out" could cause £1000s of damage:

Ohh and to the same topic (I wonder where I have seen it before 🙂 )-

Another conspiracy - talking about hydrogen here.... and youtube straight away offers me a video... perhaps because I clicked on the link shared by John or whatever, but still creepy... That said good video which explains why I don't think hydrogen with combustion engines really going to materialise:

It is both funny and sad at the same time... I think we are capable of cleaning-up our emissions if we really wanted, same as we were able to go to the moon... I really think that if powers in the world would want to solve this issue they would solve it. The problem - it seems to me that solving the issue is the last thing they want - honestly everything they doing is not to reduce emissions, but rather to extract most profit from the pollution. And here is the conflict of interest - if polluting can be taxed or profited from, then reducing pollution is clearly in conflicts with that, so it seems to me the goal is to continue polluting and just brainwash us into accepting that we have to pay for it for some reason. Sorry for continuing on this conspiracy trail, but it just seems strange that we are listening to some 16 years old girl from Sweden and some soup spilling vegetables who glue themselves to the floor... clearly if we wanted to find solution we would be working with scientists, developing new technologies and not asking circus clowns opinion.

I think you right... and that is one of my biggest worries... I said that in a post in some other thread - that is why they banning sale not use at first... my speculation is basically that they hoping we going to "ease into the disaster" and by the time we realise how bad BEVs are it will be too late to do anything. By 2030s we still have huge stock of ICEV, so nobody is going to care much, by 2035 the electricity, lithium and taxation cost will start raising and ICEVs both vehicles and fuel will become harder to keep, but still useable... and only by 2040 we will realise "ohh **** I can't afford electricity, or there is no charging capacity... and in the end BEVs just turned out more dirty then what we have replaced... maybe we should got back to ICEVs or hybrids"... but the problem in 2040s is going to be that by that point internal combustion engines will be 10 years out of the production and we couldn't just alter our buying preference like we did after diesel turned out to be not as magic as we thought. Maybe I am giving too much credit to politicians believing that they are capable of coming-up with such cunning plan... who knows. More than likely they are just bunch of idiots driving at full speed of the cliff and not even realising it (wouldn't be the first time).

I think changes to the engine are not really that major if you just want to run it on hydrogen... if you want to run it efficiently however, then it is pretty much new engine as everything has to change, geometry etc. Kind of bigger issue with retrofitting is finding the place to fit appropriately sized tank (or rather thanks) for hydrogen. So what I am saying - retrofitting existing car with hydrogen system (like LPG) is possible, but they will have horrible range and going to be not cost effective to run and will produce more emissions than petrol or diesel. Building hydrogen vehicle grounds-up would partially deal with those issues, but by the time you do that again you better of with just hydrogen cell rather than combustion engine. Now I am sure smart people can overcome all those issues, but again I feel anyone making any changes will take path of least resistance and that seems to be HCEV route. As much as converting existing fleet would matter for us (car enthusiasts) there is little to no initiative for manufacturers, just no profitable...

Toyota and Yamaha was working on that engine for many years now, but I personally don't believe it is viable to have ICEV on hydrogen. HCEV (or hydrogen cell) does make sense just due to the efficiency and due to very limited space to store the hydrogen, basically if you managed to fit 5 or 10kg of hydrogen into multiple pressurised tanks, the last think you want is to burn it in ~35% efficient combustion engine (compared to 65% in fuel cell), because the range would be just horrible. That is not to say ICEV can't run on hydrogen (in fact they can even be converted), but because hydrogen storage is such a problem in reasonable space it just becomes impractical. So as fun as it sounds I don't think V8 with hydrogen will ever make-it into production cars... expect of maybe some weird limited run collectable/gimmick. When it comes to hydrogen powered cars I think they are viable, for example there is now new tech to make hydrogen into the gel, which then can be converted back into hydrogen, which basically allows hydrogen storage in non-pressurised tank and would fit like 30kg of it in the space of normal fuel tank... but that obviously only works in the fuel cell vehicles as that gel is specifically inert and can't be burned. And I guess yes - we can make fuel cell which converts gel into hydrogen and then burns in V8... but if we already using fuel cell, then why wouldn't we just generate energy at much higher efficiency and send it directly into electrical motor which is more efficient, lighter, more powerful and responsive? In the end of the day - I like V8s, and V10s and V12s.. V6... L6s etc... and I don't mind just burning normal fuel to power them, I don't see issue burning petrol at all... so I kind of see this as little bit pointless exercise. We have internal combustion engines which are good as they are and they require no change, if we switching source to hydrogen, then that technology can co-exist, but it does not need to necessarily power internal combustion engine as that just isn't the best way of using that fuel... This sounds to me little bit like nuclear steam locomotive... could we do it? Yeah sure - heat from nuclear reaction can generate steam and we can power steam pistons with it, but why do it when you can just connect that to electric motor. Kind of steampunk vibes and I guess 8 into 1 manifold as cool as it looks just reinforces this image. I may just be example of "non-EV" enthusiast, but I tend to believe the issue is firmly on BEV enthusiasts side, they are kind of religious about their cars, as to be fair significant mind and perspective bending is required to appreciate BEVs as they are. I personally don't believe that I am against BEVs (certainly not against EVs), but it seems simply pointing out objective issues with BEVs can get one kicked out from any EV community. Likewise I believe that there is objective truth and making mind on something is not a problem as long as that decision is correct, objective and based in reality... and further on there is no way to make compromise if you are right, because what is the point of that - to agree with somebody who is wrong and then be wrong together? Sadly in modern WOKE culture it is more important to agree with people and moderate their feelings than it is to be actually right/correct.

In which case - the price they offering is just not competitive and generally makes no sense to use dealership to get exactly same tyres. For example far superior Conti Premium Contact 6 are £166 for fronts and £224 for rears or the same Sportmaxx RT2s are £176 fronts and £230 rears, so that is difference of £180 (£992 vs. £812). As well for Bridgestones you can get more modern Brigestone Sport for £181 + £242 and RE050a cost more for rear, less for front, but similar overall cost. At some point Lexus Dealers were price matching (as special deal) so maybe worth asking if you want to do it in dealership.

Are the prices above per tyre or per pair? I as about to say - don't use Dealer for the tyre because they are rip-off... but considering we talking about RC with 19" wheels the prices they gave would be amazing per pair. If it is per tyre, then I am sure you can find same tyres for 25% less. As well - are you sure you need both fronts and rears? What are the remaining thread on fronts? Choosing between Brigestones and Dunlops - Dunlops are way better (although it is not very clear what exact tyres they offering - I assume SportMaxx RT2). I had mix of Sportmaxx SP and RT2 on my RC and then just god different set of wheels with nearly new Brigestones RE050a, all in all Brigestones are very sticky tyres so quite good for sporty driving, but at the same time noisy, less comfortable, noticeably worse of fuel and kind of dicey on cold mornings. Sportmaxx RT2s (Goodyear Asymmetric 3) are probably one of my favourite tyres with excellent price/performance - quiet, fuel efficient, comfortable, plenty sticky enough for handling, great on wet etc. The only issue with them is that they were long replaced, outclassed and made obsolete by Goodyear Asymmetric 5 and now even 6. So if I would fit the tyres I would get Goodyear Asymmetric 6, or Conti Premium Contact 6.

Regarding dealership - you need to call your local one and ask, some don't do it, some may charge you £120, or £140 for just inspection, some other may do it for free with sort of expectation you will continue doing business with them. If you do any service with them, then obviously the inspections is included anyway. As for keeping over giving it away, I would say - if you like Lexus brand then definitely give this car away. Lexus experience should be completely effortless and you should be able to do 100k+ miles with just basic service and maintenance, IS220d just falls below this expectation. IS220d is notorious and not only for headgaskets, your driving seems to be sufficient to keep the car barely alive, but if somebody does longer journeys on motorway everyday then it will be better suited for them. I would say - generally avoid any roads with effective speed lower than 40MPG/4th gear and any short journeys (say under 15min) as that is what kills EGR/DPF... and all other problems starts from there - injectors, turbos headgaskets and so on. I am sure it could be kept alive if you going to do all preventative maintenance ahead of time (like cleaning EGR and running manual DPF regen every 6k miles) and if you driving it only on motorway and for longer journeys, but overall it is just not reliable car or the one worth investing the money into.

It is indeed possible... Polls for tyre choice is quite difficult to do thought, because every tyre is compromise and literally every size will have different performance and every driver driving style needs to be considered... In short this is way too complicated topic for just simple poll... but you certainly can do it! As for me - I am quite happy with information here and would gladly follow recommendation for RC-F (compared to Zupra). I think you can't get wrong with top 3, so it comes down to the budget.

It wasn't bad damage actually, guy showed me the picture, not sure what it hit, but it was straight on - basically bumper and grilled was crushed in, light mounts broken, very edge of the bonnet slightly dented, potentially radiator got damaged as well, but no structural damage. All in all, it wasn't too bad and by looks of it could have been fixed for like £5k, honestly more damage was done by people fixing it than by the accident itself. Again I am not sure on the circumstances, maybe insurance stripped the car and lost all the parts or whatever, but basically the car now ended-up uneconomical repair, because it is missing literally 1000 small pieces of trim which are hard to track, hard to find replacement for and for Lexus every piece of plastic is like £500. And I am not even talking about sourcing ACC radar and all the harnesses to connect it... As for writing off the car - it depends on what owner wants to do, what assessment they get, if owners wants to repair the car and does not agree with insurance price, then often insurance will send car to different workshop, get's different estimate and get's the car repaired without ruining the history... If owner just wants to get the money out and often that is better option, then they write it off. To get Car-N it only needs to be ~40%+ of car value (insurance is weird on the categories and in some cases it is 40%, in some it is 60%)... so it could be combination of factors, maybe they only valued the car at £26k and maybe they said damage is £18k, which is easily possible if you use all original new Lexus parts, 50%+ means it is Cat-N... now if I am the owner and I am not happy with it - I can get my own assessor and I could get car valued at £35k and damage at £13k and got the car repaired. Insurance categories really don't mean anything - I have seen cars with scratch on the bumper in Cat-B... and I have seen cars which have rolled over and burned and still listed as Cat-N. It is completely arbitrary and insurance company can put any car on any category, generally Cat-N is when repair exceeds 50% of car value, but I have seen cars with less damage still get-it. Cat-S suppose to be "structural damage", but actually it has nothing to do with roadworthiness, most often it is just when repair cost is 75-100% of car value, Cat-B again should be for cars that cannot be repaired due to structural damage, but in reality it is given for cars where repairs exceeds 100% of car value, which is not difficult to achieve if your car is worth only £2000. On top of that other things comes into insurance costs, like recovery, storage, hire care etc. So when they see car which is worth £2000, they usually just write the check for £3500 and get rid of it without even doing assessment as could cost more than the car is worth.

Well... it is literally Track Edition with different colour - Fuji Blue Exterior, Blue Alcantara inserts and I think Red or Orange Callipers, but as per article it is technically "Fuji Edition". Ohh... that one is horrible - I have seen it in person. At one point I wanted to trade it 1:1 to my RC200t (~£18k), but decided it was way too rough, the previous owner told me he would let it go for £16k cash privately, but even that was too much in my opinion and it seems he got even lower offers trade. I wanted to negotiate it further down, but at the time I still had not sold my RC200t and by the time I sold, he sold as well to some car trader in Birmingham area, not sure what was the price, but probably £12-14k. It is worst repair I have ever seen, despite the original damage being quite small (just straight on front). Basically, all front is completely gutted, there are no crash bars, no foam, no liners or plastics, it was literally just new bumper and new grille hanging in the air, the front edge of the bonnet was straightened, not even painted so the paint is chipped-off, the Lexus badge just sticker, corners of headlights chipped etc. As I understand insurance has stripped the car when estimating the damage and whomever bought the car got it stripped and not replaced anything, the car meant to have ACC, but let's just say it was "deleted" for weight saving reasons. I am not sure if any further fixing was done since the car was relisted for £23k, but there is no way it is worth that money. It think it would be decent buy for £12k track car or something like that, doesn't look like it was hurt mechanically at all, but to sort it out cosmetically it would probably be £10k.

It is actually special Fuji Speedway Edition - https://www.motor1.com/news/530914/2022-lexus-rc-f-details/ But I agree that RC-F special editions are a bit of joke, in US RC-F is priced to compete BMW 440i M-Sport, whereas in UK is costs more like BMW 840i M-Sport... honestly there is no way they going to sell, they even more expensive than LC500... no surprised they don't sell at all!