Thackeray

So, what are your first impressions of the IS300h compared with the LS430? Are you regretting the change?!

It sounds as if the UX behaves differently from the IS. Maybe a UX owner can confirm this. What I noticed from the video was that, for example, you don't seem to be able to get the engine above 4500 rpm until you hit 50mph. By contrast, from your experience, the UX seems to be going straight up to maybe 5,000 rpm or more from low speeds (say, 30 mph?). The newer electric motors (like on the ES and maybe on the UX) can spin faster without damage. This must mean that the engine can spin faster, too, than on the IS, thus delivering more of its power at lower road speeds. It will be interesting to hear how the ES compares with the UX. The IS transmission (L210 I think from memory) as well as being a rear-wheel-drive setup has an additional reduction gear, as compared with the Prius transmission in the video above, which allows the car to go faster without making the electric motors spin faster than their maximum design speed. I noticed that the ES transmission doesn't have this reduction gear. Perhaps in a front wheel drive configuration there's less space for extra gear wheels, so the faster spinning newer electric motors get round the problem without the need for a reduction gear. (But am I right in thinking that even so, for these reasons the maximum limited speed for the ES is a bit lower than on the IS?) So clearly your experience suggests the engine revs faster at low speeds than in the IS. It'll be interesting to hear how the ES behaves and whether it's similar to the UX.

I think what's happening is that the computer is making the best judgement about how to deliver the request you've made through the accelerator. If the accelerator is pushed to the floor your message to the car is to deliver maximum power. This means get the engine to the highest revs possible, where the engine delivers maximum power, But this is limited by the fact that the electric motors can only spin so fast without damage. So the computer adjusts engine speed and gear ratios to achieve the maximum power you're asking for through the accelerator. By contrast, in a conventional car, pressing the accelerator has traditionally meant feed more fuel into the engine. Here the concept is a bit more computer controlled. This seems to mean that you can only get the engine to maximum revs if the car is going fast enough to accommodate this without damage to the electric motors. Here's a video of the IS300h that shows how the engine revs only increase as the car gathers speed. (Thanks Herbie for explaining how to embed video in the forum! Pretty simple!) So if you ease off the throttle, the rate of acceleration will slow. But depending on the circumstances the engine may not reduce revs yet. However, the good news is that the advice for good fuel consumption is to accelerate fairly hard and then coast. I suppose this is because the engine is at its most efficient at high revs. The other good news is that when cruising on the motorway (on the IS300h at least) the engine is generally turning at around 1200-1500 rpm whatever the car's speed. This makes long journeys very relaxing.

That sounds interesting. Could you give some links to this evidence?

That old cliché again? Tractors sound great! Modern diesel cars come nowhere close! Here's one...

This is quite an old page but I haven't found anything more recent that explains the e-CVT (power-split device) more clearly. Scroll down the page to try out the slider controls to vary the speed of the different gear wheels. This simple device takes the place of the starter motor, clutch, torque convertor on an automatic, gearbox and alternator. It also provides gentle braking, which means the conventional brakes aren't used so much and don't wear out so quickly. If you're interested in what it actually looks like, here's a video explaining an early Prius e-CVT. The configuration has changed with different models but the fundamentals are the same in the Lexus hybrids.

It's more like a jet plane or a power boat under hard acceleration. The engine revs hard and the plane or boat (or e-cvt car) builds up speed until the power can be cut back. I know what people mean about the lack of gearchanges but I suspect it's just because we've had 100 years of having to have conventional gearboxes on cars. People get used to the jolt as you change gear and come to expect it as part of the driving experience. On the other hand, you don't get passengers on planes saying to their friends, "When's the pilot going to change gear?" I think we just develop certain expectations in certain circumstances and instinctively are wary of things that don't seem "normal". So much so that Lexus felt they had to install pretend sound effects to make it seem that the car was changing gear - but without the conventional jolting between gears. From what i've read, most people pretty quickly turn off the sound effects when they get used to the silence from the car most of the time.

On the IS300h the voice recognition for calling contacts works well for me. I expect the ES300h would use a similar system but it seems from an online manual you should be able to do more with the ES300h system than on the IS300h - selecting music tracks for example. I have no idea how effective this is but making a phone call by pressing the steering wheel voice recognition button and then saying the name (which has previously been recorded) works well. Here's the manual I was looking at for the ES300h.

Many decades ago on an ancient Renault we had the problem of the starter motor not turning. Just silence. The local garage said the problem was that it was coming to rest at a kind of neutral position where the magnetic coils couldn't get it turning. Their recommendation was to hit it with a hammer. This worked every time. We carried the hammer in the car for this purpose for quite a while. (Please note: - I'm not recommending you hit your car with a hammer!)

Click here for some important advice about driving in France.

Do you mean selecting Sport instead of Normal on the "Driving Mode Select Switch" as they call it? Or are you using the gear selector to select "S" instead of "D". These functions have confusingly similar names. I also find that although selecting Sport improves the accelerator response, especially compared with Eco, there can still be a lag before the acceleration comes through. But I find that switching to S on the gear selector, instead of D, improves the engine response. Changing down a ratio or two I also find gives a much quicker response - certainly the lag isn't as much as a second and I'd say that the acceleration response is much faster than on an automatic diesel turbo. Agreed! I've got round the problem by memorising which letter on the number plate is just below the switch. I find if you leave it long enough the auto-wiper will come on. But I still might sometimes operate the stalk for a single wipe. I still make mistakes with the indicators, even though I think I fully understand how they're supposed to work. And it's still irritating that they cancel too soon when going round roundabouts. On the plus side After quite a long time with the car, I discovered a couple of small features that were nice to find. When you're on a fast dual carriageway broken up by frequent roundabouts, I discovered that if you re-engage cruise control as you come off the roundabout at 30 mph, it increases the rate of acceleration progressively to take you back up to 70mph. My experience of other cars has been that the cruise control would accelerate hard from 30 mph until it got back to 70 mph. The progressive approach is much more relaxing. When I first had the car I read forum complaints about how the voice recognition was hopeless so I didn't even try it. Just recently, I decided to try programming voice recognition for phone numbers I use frequently and found it works well. Now to call someone I just press the voice recognition button on the steering wheel, speak the name and the call is made when I press the off-hook button. This is much easier and safer than having to look at a screenful of contact names. These are both small points but enough to bring a smile to the face of someone who's easily pleased.

I always run the petrol tank down to about a quarter and then completely fill the tank. But I've wondered whether fuel consumption would be improved if the tank wasn't completely filled. A tank full of petrol must weigh as much as a moderate sized person. Have you ever looked at the impact of keeping the tank less full so that the car is carrying less weight?

Here's a link to a maintenance schedule for the IS in Europe. It says the spark plugs should be changed at 90,000 km. So if the car has done 105,000 km the garage would probably assume it was done last time if that was around 90,000km. I found it on a French forum about the Lexus IS. I didn't expect there would be such a thing! Here's the link if anyone's interested.

The invoice says the car has done 105,000 kilometres. Is that correct? I think that's around 65,000 miles. Is that why it should be a 60,000 mile service? When measuring by miies, spark plugs should be changed at 60,000 miles. But if the car is showing kilometres, maybe the change comes at, say, 100,000 km. But if the plugs are changed at 120,000 km they would assume it's not due yet.

Not a definition but here's some background https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ppv3a9/international-lorry-drivers-swiss-truck-stop-876

Of course, all the contributors to this forum are above average drivers (most people are, when you ask them). So it seems like an infringement of personal liberty for people like us to have speed limiters imposed on us. But then I wonder, does it make sense that we already have speed limiters for professional drivers but not for the amateurs? Maybe it should be the other way round. Hands up anyone who thinks we should take the limiters off professionally driven vehicles.

If you want to know about reliability I hope the The Consumers Association (which.co.uk) doesn't mind me quoting a couple of sentences from their report on IS reliability: And when they mention battery reliability, they're almost certainly talking about the small 12v battery in the boot, not the main hybrid battery. In the UK the hybrid system is guaranteed for a further year each time you have the annual service up to 10 years. I'm also pretty certain I read recently that this had been increased to 15 years as there are so few failures but I can't find confirmation of this on the internet. Just reading through this forum should give you a feel for what problems come up. Just to compare, you could look at the forum for the Mercedes C300h.

When you say the footbrake, I expect you mean the foot-operated parking brake. I have an IS300h and I'm guessing that it works pretty much the same as the CT200h. Most of the time I don't use the parking brake. There's are two reasons why there's often no need to use it. Like all automatics, when you put the gear selector in Park, the transmission is locked. So if the car is not on a hill, this is enough to stop the car rolling forward. The user guide even recommends you do this in icy weather, so that the brake pads don't freeze to the discs. It has a "hill-start" feature, which stops you rolling back when you've stopped on a hill, you have your foot on the brake (the normal pedal not the parking brake) and are about to move off again. The hill-start function holds the car stationary for about 2-3 seconds when you take your foot off the brake - enough time to move your foot to the accelerator and move off. So you only really need to use the parking brake when you're actually parking to leave the car on a hill. Then you can apply the parking brake, which is easy to do. But you don't use if for hill starts. Here's a video which shows how it works on a CT200h. The IS300h is slightly different as it doesn't have a flashing light and it just works when you need it.

2012 is right. Here's what the MOT handbook says: The inspection of the tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS) is for M1 vehicles first used on or after 1 January 2012. The TPMS warning lamp (see diagram 3) can operate in many ways depending on the vehicle type. You must only reject vehicles if it's clear that the lamp indicates a system malfunction and not simply indicating that one or more of the tyre pressures is low. That sounds open to interpretation. Is it a system malfunction if you haven't got a TPMS valve in one or more tyres? And how can the tester easily tell whether a tyre has low pressure. Are they going to go round checking what the tyre pressures are? Then inflate any that are low. Then reset the TPMS system to see if the light goes off?

It is possible, of course, that the parking brake became faulty in the few days you've had the car. I don't know how the brake works but if it's purely mechanical (a cable attached to the pedal) then you'd probably notice a change in the feel of the pedal when it stopped working. (Perhaps the cable snapped.) If the pedal suddenly became much easier to press, that would indicate it happened after you got the car. If it's always felt the same (probably very little pressure needed to press it) then the fault was probably there when you collected the car.

The car manual says the fuel should be "Research Octane Number 95 or higher".

Same here. I just tried my parking brake on a steepish hill. I engaged neutral, applied the parking brake and then released the footbrake. There is the slightest movement of the car as play in the parking brake system is taken up. But only millimetres as wharfhouse said. I doubt the car moved as much as a centimetre.

Your video confirms the parking brake is faulty. The dashboard shows the parking brake is on and the gear selector is in neutral. The car should not move. But the video shows it is rolling back several yards. The parking brake should be holding the car stationary. It's true, as others have said, that you can easily override the parking brake if you put the car in Drive and press the accelerator. The engine is powerful enough to overcome the resistance of the parking brake. But when the car is in neutral, the parking brake should hold the car stationary. This is tested in the MOT and it's a fail if it doesn't work..

Your test seems to confirm the parking brake is not working. This is actually an MOT fail so it shouldn't have been sold to you like this. It should be an easy fix, I would have thought, so take it back to the dealer so they can get it working properly. The car stops rolling back when you engage P on the gear selector because it locks the transmission as on conventional automatics. But there's still a bit of play, which is why the car moves a bit when you take your foot off the footbrake. But it shouldn't move at all when the parking brake is on.

Spark plugs are supposed to be changed at 60,000 miles, which puts up the price of the 60,000 mile service. Inchcape is now showing prices for Essential Care on its website - £645 for normal 60,000 mile service; £355 for Essential Care. (Click here for the website.) The difference being so great makes me wonder if the Essential Care includes the spark plugs. You may not be near an Inchcape dealer but you can use their prices for information. As you had a major service last time, perhaps what you need is an intermediate service, plus the spark plugs, which are based on mileage rather than time.