Herbie

The problem is, you've still got the battery connected to the car, so how do you know if it's the battery itself or a problem with the car that's causing it to drop?

Unless the connector can be locked in place I can just imagine lots of fun being had by the local feral gangs disconnecting the charging leads as they wander around looking for something to vandalise or rob.

I would expect the answer to be 'no' but I've never tried it, so....

It's just not going to happen in the timescale it would need to. By the time new infrastructure was installed and existing infrastructure modernised, the 'next best thing'TM (probably and hopefully hydrogen fuel cells/stations in the required quantities) will have arrived. We currently have almost 9,000 new homes being built to the north-west of our town and I'm sure there are other such things going on in other towns too, but no new power stations will be coming onstream any time soon. The demand created by these new housing estates alone will bring the grid down to its knees, let alone EV charging as well. And so we come to the real reason behind 'smart meters'. They aren't there to help us save money but to allow the generating companies to remotely switch you off supply for a while so that they can manage demand on an already creaking network. A good place to keep your eyes on is http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ It shows current and historical demand and how much each fuel is contributing (screenshot below):

I agree Vadim, but he said the part won't be available until the end of the month so that sounds like they're ordering it in for him.

That looks very suspicious to me! They are going to take your word, the word of an untrained member of the public, that that part is faulty without any checks at all? Will they give you a refund or supply the correct part free of charge if this doesn't fix the problem? I think not. At least if they diagnose an incorrect part it should be their responsibility, but as it is, the onus is on you. Having spent all my life in maintenance, the only way I would do that is if I'd had dozens and dozens of the same item failing and when the next one came in, I could then say, "Ah yes, it'll be this. We've had x-number of these fail and it's always been this that causes it." However, that last sentence seems to contradict that.

Have a look to see if there's a branch of Pirtek somewhere near you or a similar place that will make pipes up for you.

And understanding what a Biohazard is, which is even less likely I would have thought.

Remember, at this stage we know the battery has been flattened a few times so it may be damaged and not able to accept as much charge as it used to. For accurate measurements you really need to take the battery into the house and put it on charge for about 12 hours or at least overnight so that (a) we know that electricity is only going into the battery and nothing can be draining it or lessening the charge it's getting, and (b) this will give us a known baseline voltage to work with and we'll know it's the best that can be achieved.

The problem with that is that they are already in the car before the Ghost comes into play. If they can't get it to start they may just trash the interior out of vindictiveness. As I said earlier, prevention is better than cure and this video proves it:

What actual voltage do you get at the battery terminals (a) when the car is open but NOT in ACC or READY mode, and (b) when car is in READY mode? The chart below will show (a) and (b) should be about 14.5V:

Aha, fair enough then.

Just for the avoidance of confusion, this isn't key cloning. The usual method of key cloning involves the criminal using a device to block the signal from your remote fob as you lock the car. Either you don't notice that it's not locked or you do notice but think there's a problem and you'll sort it out later. When you walk off to the shops or whatever, the criminal goes in the car, plugs a device into the OBD socket and less than a minute later they can have a blank key cloned with the information necessary for that key to work just as if it was the one in your pocket. What's happened here is more likely to be a relay attack. Your key fob is constantly transmitting a signal, 24/7, that the car is looking for. Even if those keys are at the back of the house, someone stood at the front of the house with a relay box will be able to pick up that signal, which is then amplified and sent out again to a guy stood by the car with another box of electronics that now pretends to be the key. Doors unlock, car starts, and it'll keep running until it either runs out of petrol or the criminals turn it off, whereupon they won't be able to get it going again.

Somehow I doubt that very much, as it surely would defeat the whole idea of keyless entry/start? How would the key (or even the car) differentiate between "stationary" as in I'm in Asda doing my shopping and will need the keyless entry when my hands are full of bags; or "stationary" as in I'm going to bed now so you can turn the key off for 8 hours?

Sorry to hear of your loss. Sadly, not all metal boxes are created equal when it comes to this and there are a couple of videos (maybe more) on YouTube showing that, say, a biscuit tin is no good. Best results come from a metallic mesh or if the biscuit tin is lined with aluminium cooking foil. Prevention is the key and a visual deterrent is best of all, which is why I still use a big yellow steering wheel lock - one look at that and they'll hopefully move to an easier target.

Is that one run of 1.5 hours or lots of short journeys of, say, 10 minutes that all add up to 1.5 hours? Short journeys will do nothing at all to keep the battery charged. Toyota's advice in the first lockdown was to put the car in Park and READY mode (with all other electricals like radio, climate control, lights etc off) for 60 minutes per week if you couldn't drive it anywhere.

I think you're getting your units mixed up there Alan, because that seems very, very low? 0.05A is 50mA, which most people seem to think is 'normal', but 0.05mA is only 50uA so to consider anything above that as a fault means that there's a lot of faulty cars knocking about 😊

Not by any chance a relative of Steve Catterall, ex-BT/CWU are you Phil?

Lexus Teeside are excellent in every way. We live in Preston, Lancashire, but Teeside was the dealership where the car was advertised, so off we went in the RX300 and left Teeside in our RX450h later that day. Now that Preston have their own dealership I've just taken out an extended warranty and service plan with them, so I'm still to learn how they'll shape up against Teeside.

I think that third unit is a resonator rather than a cat - but would the dumb scrotes who are intent on nicking them know that? I doubt it.

It'll depend on which make and model you've ordered but my clamp ammeter is very accurate when measured against the other test gear I have. It's a Uni-T UT210E and I'm well chuffed with it. If I was still actively working I'd have all Fluke gear but couldn't justify the expense now that I'm retired. Absolutely! I think the RX400h has the 12V battery in the engine bay so in order to read it and get an accurate reading you'll need to leave the bonnet up and make sure to short out or tape the alarm switch closed so that the system thinks the bonnet is shut and the alarm can be activated. Doing it this way will only give you the total current draw. If it's high and a fault is suspected, you'll then have to start looking at individual circuits to find the culprit but don't start pulling fuses and watching for when the current drops because that will start waking up ECUs and other circuits. Reconnect the battery as normal, open both front doors and the bonnet for access to fuse boxes (not forgetting to set the locks and door/bonnet switches so that the system thinks the car is locked and can go to sleep) and after an hour or so, start looking for voltage drops across the fuses - highest drop should be the faulty circuit.

TL:DR - but I wish some of those people knew how to use paragraphs! It is indeed a very well known issue and has been done to death, to be honest. It's a design 'fault' and could have been avoided by specifying larger capacity batteries, but they didn't so it's just something that we have to be aware of and live with.

A couple of people in the Lexus Owners Club Group on Facebook reckon that the quiescent current draw should be in the official spec sheets for the car but I've never seen it mentioned anywhere, nor would I know how to go about finding it. Maybe a call to a dealer workshop may provide an answer, I don't know. What I can say after watching many YouTube videos and doing a lot of Googling, is that most people (both professional and hobbyist) seem to say that a figure of about 50mA +/- is considered to be 'normal' for a modern car, with anything much above that indicating the presence of a fault. Unfortunately, the only way of confirming if this is correct is to find out the manufacturer's official figures.

Have a look here at this place on eBay A member here bought them for his RX300 conversion but they also do a set for the RX350. Also have a read of his thread below:

Why not? What happened when you tried?