Thackeray

If you're planning to change the battery yourself, are you aware of the discussions about early models having the radio system fail while the battery is changed? If I remember rightly it can happen on 2014 and earlier cars. There are two types of fascia to the radio, one is sort of matt and the other one is glossy. I can't immediately remember which one is prone to failure when you change the battery but I can search for it if you're not aware of this potential pitfall. Edit: here's a link to some comments from @rayaans who had this problem on his car. There may be a longer thread elsewhere but I think this one gives the general gist.

I recently noticed, while checking specifications in the 2015 brochure, that they said the IS300h is "built on the same line as the LS flagship saloon..." I hadn't seen this before. In practice, since there would have been far more IS models than LS, another perspective is that the LS was built on the IS line. This probably meant there was a lot of attention to quality on this line and this will have gone some way to expalning why the IS has been so reliable. Mine has just turned 10 years and after eight years of ownership, literally nothing has gone wrong. It's been serviced on time by Lexus, tyres and 12v battery have been replaced but no actual faults or failures. So if your question is whether one of these cars will last until 2029 and still retain its value, the experience of LS owners on this website seems to be that they last forever. Let's hope the same is true of the IS.

This is a very long thread and someone may have said this before, in which case apologies. However, another way to consider the so-called winter fuel payment is to regard it as just part of state pension income. If the standard pension is around £12,000, a cut of £300 is a 2.5% cut in income. It seems almost inconceivable that any government would happily announce that it had decided to cut pensioners' income by 2.5%. And yet this is what they have done. There was a considerable outcry when Gordon Brown oversaw a meagre 50p increase in pensions . (This was the figure in line with inflation.) But to openly announce that a government has decided that its best solution to cutting back on government expenditure is to cut pensioners' income by 2.5% seems extraordinarily poor public relations. In practice, of course, many pensioners don't get £12,000 - probably the majority get far less. So the cut for them will be much more in percentage terms.

Sorry, yes, I'd forgotten that the parking brake on this car is also a footbrake! I generally call it a parking brake because you can't really call it a handbrake, like in a traditional car. I should probably have called the other one just a "brake".

I don't think there's any French legal requirement for right-hand-drive cars to have stickers on their headlamps. So the police wouldn't do anything if you didn't have them. Instead, there's a legal requirement not to dazzle oncoming traffic. So if you drove at night with unadjusted headlights that dazzled oncoming traffic on your left the police might intervene. But as Colin says, the IS300h has a flat beam rather than raised on the left as headlights used to be, so the stickers aren't needed.

The puzzling thing about this noise is that it happens when the car is stationary. In the video at around 13 seconds and 34 seconds the car is stationary and the gear selector is shifted into reverse, while the brake lights are still on, and you can hear the same noise as when the car is edging forward. It seems to me that this suggests it's unlikely to be something to do with the suspension as the car is stationary. With a conventional automatic the wheels and suspension would be under pressure from the torque converter but in this hybrid the engine doesn't drive the car in reverse. It's only driven in reverse by the electric motors. While the footbrake is fully applied, my memory is that there is no power being transmitted to the electric motor on a flat road like this until the brake begins to be released. So it's hard to see how the suspension would be under any stress to make the noise while the car is stationary. Although the noise happens when the car is still stationary, we can't tell from the video whether the noise is happening as you shift the gear selector or as you begin to gradually release the footbrake. The brake lights don't tell you when the brake pads are being released but I suspect the noise may be happening as the brakes are being released but the brake lights are still on and the car hasn't yet begun to move. It would be good to rule out whether it's anything to do with the gear selection by shifting into reverse and keeping the brakes firmly applied for a couple of seconds after doing this and see whether the noise happens as you move the gear selector or only as you begin to release the footbrake. To help hear what's happening, make sure the engine isn't running. Switch to EV mode and turn off the climate control so that the engine doesn't start because of a need for cabin heating. Let us know if you think it's happening as you release the footbrake or when you shift the gear selector.

I don't think it sounds normal either. When you're doing more recording and checking what happens, it would be worth checking what happens when the car doesn't move at all while you select drive or reverse. On your first video it sounded as though when you selected reverse it made the noise before the car was moving. Does it always do this? Does the sound occur while the gear selector is moving? Or is it while the brakes are gradually being released? If it happens when the car is stationary as well as when it is moving this might help to establish what's causing the sound.

It would be good if you could check whether the noise happens when the car is stationary as the video seems to show. If the car is not moving and the footbrake is fully applied as you select reverse, it's difficult to see how the brake discs can generate noise when the brakes are fully on. Does the noise always happen when you select reverse? Or in the video is the noise happening as you release the brakes but the car is still stationary?

According to the Which? guide to your legal rights (see this link), you can reject the car in the first 30 days and get a full refund. Their article says:"In the first 30 days after you buy a car, if it is unfit for purpose, of unsatisfactory quality, or not as described you can ask for a repair or replacement. You are not obliged to accept one and can insist on a full refund, which the dealer will be legally obliged to give." I think the key phrase to use in any letter of complaint is that the car is "not of satisfactory quality". Have a look at the Which? guide so that you at least know what your legal rights are. You probably don't want to reject the car as it seems like a hassle. But the threat of doing so may persuade the dealer to take your complaint seriously.

I noticed from the video that you also hear the noise when the car seems to be completely stationary and reverse gear is engaged. So I wonder if it could be something to do with the gear selector. This seems a bit unlikely as the gear selector is really just a fake gear selector to make the car look like a traditional automatic. The selector does almost nothing mechanically, if I understand it correctly. Instead it simply sends instructions to the computer to control what the power split device (the transmission) is supposed to do. The one thing the gear selector does do mechanically, I think, is to engage and disengage the parking pawl on the transmission. Some Toyota/Lexus hybrid transmissions have electronic engagement of the parking pawl but I think this one (model L210 for rear wheel drive cars) has the parking pawl engaged manually as you move the selector. It seems really unlikely that there's an issue in the transmission. I've never seen any transmission problems reported on this forum. But I can't think what else could be making the noise when you select reverse unless it's loose linkage in the gear selection or something loose in the parking pawl mechanics. This is something I would want to be sure could be ruled out - I wouldn't want to keep a car which had the potential for parts coming loose in the transmission, which, as I've said seems extremely unlikely unless someone has previously dismantled parts of the transmission or gear selection. Incidentally, I've never heard a similar sound on my now 10-year-old car.

Actually, according to the documentation I have with my 2014 IS300h the spark plugs are changed by mileage not by age. This says that they're due for change at 60,000 miles. This used to be an issue because it used to make the 60,000 mile service more expensive than other major services. But Lexus now seems to have switched to fixed prices regardless of what parts are used. So it's no longer much of any issue. Having said that, obviously there are forum members reporting faults they have had but i can't remember anyone ever reporting engine mechanical issues. I wonder if anyone has had any engine problems. There have been problems with starting because of immobiliser faults or because the 12v battery is dead (which is very common!). But I don't remember seeing reports of any actual engine faults. Has this been a concern in your previous cars? In fact, the hybrid system operates to avoid much stress on the engine. For example, when starting the engine it spins it to around 1,000 rpm before it provides any spark to fire the engine. Conventional cars start at much lower rpm, where greater stress and vibration is caused as it starts up. I'm not sure about this engine but I also remember reading that the Prius hybrid system would fire initially only on two cylinders to make the start as smooth as possible. The engine also idles at around 1,000 rpm instead of the more stressful 400-500 rpm of a conventional car. I've found that most of the time in everyday driving the engine will be running at only around 1,500 to 2,000 rpm, even at 70 mph. There's also no turbo to add stress to the engine. So you may not need to be concerned about the engine itself. Maybe you've had problems in other cars which makes you cautious about the engine.

Here's a picture of a car where the popup hood has activated; https://www.clublexus.com/forums/lc-model-2018-present/934329-pop-up-hood.html I Imagine the gap here is bigger than 2 cm but it gives an idea of what we're talking about. I may be wrong, but just a word of caution - I think the popup hood actuators are explosive. A bit of caution might be needed in pushing them down or hitting them!

For the bonnet to be sticking up about 2cm on just one side seems very surprising. This is such a big gap that it would be impossible not to notice the need for it to be repaired. How could it get like this? Was the metal bent? Had the popup hood been activated? Had the car been in an accident and had the bonnet badly repaired (or not repaired at all)? It would be interesting to see pictures to clarify what you're describing.

Don't expect too much from the fuel economy on short trips, especially in winter. If you buy a car now, you will see the fuel economy deteriorate as the weather gets colder. The fuel saving features don't become fully effective until the engine has warmed up, which might take five minutes from cold or longer in winter. So if you're doing short trips to the shops or to school, the engine will have little time to fully warm up. Having said that, it will probably be better than a cold diesel engine.

Have a look at this thread . Jayw13702 reported that his IS300h had reached 230,000 miles using it for private hire.

This reply might be a bit late but you could check with Merit Tyre in Southfields. I haven't had TPMS done there but I've bought tyres in the past.

A couple of weeks ago there was an astonishing (to me, at least) report on solar energy growth in The Economist. There's still quite a lot of antipathy towards electric cars on the internet. But setting aside whether or not enthusiasts prefer petrol engines to electric, there seems little doubt that solar energy is the future for much of the world, if not for the cloudy UK. (I'm reminded of the Flanders and Swann song about the weather in Britain: "In July the sun is hot. Is it shining? No it's not.") Just to quote some figures from the article: in 2015 the wholesale cost of electricity from solar energy globally was around 12 US cents per Kwh. For comparison, electricity from coal was around five to 7.5 cents. Just nine years later, solar and onshore wind are both around four cents, while coal is little changed. (They're quoting the "levelised cost of electricity", which includes lifetime costs including installation. They quote the price as around $40 per MWh, which equals four cents per Kwh if I've got the decimal point in the right place.) Another statistic: in 2004 the whole world installed one gigawatt of solar power capacity. By 2024 it's predicted that installation will have risen to around two gigawatts every day. The big issue is storage and distribution. As levensnevel says, "This somewhat strange construction is the result of the limited capacity of our electricity grid."

Mine's about the same age and in addition to being reliable it has had the advantage of being fitted with magic brake pads. About seven years ago, these had worn to 10.2mm on the front (8.5mm on the back) . The dealer told me pads on the car when new would have been 12mm front (10 mm back), so they were only slightly worn at that time. At the service for the next year they were recorded as 9mm (and 8mm on the back). Then the following year there was a bit more wear taking the measurements down to 7mm (and 6mm on the back). But fortunately, the following year they went back up to 9 (and 8) and the year after that up again to 9 (andnine). And now in the latest service the good news is they're back to 10 (9). Cynics might say they're not convinced these measurements are being carried out carefully, if at all. But I look at it as evidence that if you use the brakes gently, the hybrid transmission means that brake wear over the years will stop at some point and the pads may even regenerate themselves if you barely use the brakes at all.

That's helpful to see a graph for the computer's strategy for the state of charge. My own testing on the IS300h (I had nothing better to do during Covid lockdown!) showed that the engine would start when the battery charge dropped to 40% (two bars showing) and would stop when the charge had risen to 50% (three bars). Four, five and six bars represented levels of charge from around the low to mid-50s up to around 60%. From memory seven bars would only appear above about 70% and eight bars at 80%. I was reading the percentages from the Hybrid Assistant app. The videos on the Hybrid Assistant app website seemed to show higher percentages than I was finding, so maybe the fine tuning varies from one model to another.

Most people's first instinct is to regard the battery charge level in the same way as the fuel tank level - Full is good, Empty is worrying. But this is not the way to look at it. On these hybrid cars, the hybrid battery is not primarily to drive the car along. Instead, it's a receptacle to store regenerated electricity. If the battery is full, there's no room for any more regenerated electricity so the power has to be discarded as heat instead. Trying to keep the battery full would be like going shopping with a full shopping bag so that you have no room to carry your groceries. After the electricity has been stored, it can then be used to help drive the car along and make use of power that would otherwise have been lost as heat from the brakes. The computer aims to keep the battery about half full. This leaves plenty of room for more electricity to be stored, while at the same time having a decent reserve available to power a sudden burst of acceleration. As others have said, the gauge doesn't represent reality. On other models and probably the NX too, one bar represents around 40% full. The engine will start if it reaches this level to prevent it going any lower. Eight bars is around 80%. Keeping the battery in this range helps to extend its life.

Just out of interest, are all the VIN stickers present and undamaged on the inside edge of each metal panel? Or are any missing or painted over? There should be about eight of them.

Air is already 80% nitrogen so I've never bothered to pay extra for the other 20%, which would be mostly oxygen. It probably makes a difference on formula one cars but I doubt it makes much difference on road cars. Even if all the oxygen were to gradually seep out, which is quite unlikely in the short term, one topup with air would take it to 96% nitrogen.

The Which? magazine website has a useful guide to Consumer Rights. It looks as though the website will also help you draft a letter of complaint if necessary.

One thing to check is whether all the VIN stickers are in place, or possibly painted over. Each metal panel should have a VIN number sticker on the inside edge. This includes the bonnet, boot, the inside edge of all four doors and the central pillar. If panel repairs are done, Lexus workshops will replace the VIN sticker if that's necessary because of respraying. Other workshops may not bother because each sticker costs something like £100. This may not be relevant to your problem but it may be worth checking as an indication of whether repairs have been done. If you decide to reject the car, which I suspect you can still do, I believe the key phrase to get their attention is "Not of Satisfactory Quality" which can be included in an email subject line, as well as the text of your complaint.

This topic came up a few days ago on the IS300h forum. I expect the principles are the same. Here are the comments about it.