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Britprius was a great asset to this forum, that rare thing of someone with great knowledge and a willingness to share yet combined with an open mind to the possibilities of different ways of doing things. His posts carried weight. Sad to hear of his passing, and hope that the regard in which he was held brings some joy and pride to his family.

Just as a follow up on products... I'm disappointed with Carpro reload. Essence is excellent, but needs something stronger to top it. I've still not got the confidence to try a full ceramic coat. When I did the winter protection for the Tesla this more recent time I again used essence, but then coated with Autoglym EGP and then topped that with Collinite 476 (I've loved the EGP/476 combo before, and so far haven't found 845 to last as well as 476, but I am prepared to blame that on the reload). Carpro PERL just continues to be a superb product. Brilliant for the plastic "vegan leather" in the Tesla, and I'm sure would be similarly good on the Lexus equivalent "Tahara" material.

Oh, and just to add... I think that SRP is a good product, but with a DA it is time to move on. SRP used to have reasonable longevity, but more recent SRP has very little staying power, it can wash out in a week. It's a very light abrasive, high filler product, but essence is better in that role.

I use a DAS6pro also. The GS paint isn't very hard so a light touch is good. If you want an abrasive polish then I'd recommend Farecla G3 paintwork renovator. It is a diminishing abrasive, so you're unlikely to cause any harm or risk burning-through paint with it. I use it on a hex logic green or white pad. However, I have become a great convert to using Carpro Essence with a microfibre pad, especially on softer paint like the lexus. It corrects lightly, fills lightly and gives a great gloss. It can act as a base for ceramics, but personally I like Autoglym EGP on top, followed by Collinite 476. That combo can give you about a year of decent beading if washed with an LSP safe wash, but without the difficulties of full on ceramics.

Also some info here: The 4GS battery tray will NOT accept the ~220mm wide batteries that the 3GS will, as I tried the S4 026 and absolutely no way it would go, but the battery I mention in my post should also fit 3GS, just as another alternative.

Perhaps too late to be of any help, but... When our car was serviced in late summer they said one of the rear shocks needed replacing (2015 GS Premier with AVS), at a cost of over £400. We had it done, and afterwards the "floatiness" that I complained about above was largely gone, so it could be that.

The hybrid battery can do some funnies if the 12V goes flat. Our 12V went flat, then we used a maintainer on it for a whiel before finding a reasonably priced replacement. Recently the car went in for service, and they were unable to do the hybrid health check without first clearing some DTCs. We have to take it back to them for the hybrid health check after 500 miles.

I use Viofo A129 Duo in both our GS and our Tesla 3 (as well as the Tesla's 4-channel built-in cameras).

I too find the DSG very poor. Motoring press loves it because it's very fast and smooth when shifting up or down when blatting down a back country road at 10/10ths. Most people hate it because it's hopeless at the everyday "automatic" stuff - as Sherra said, it's terribly slow and unpredictable out of junctions, onto roundabouts, it's incredibly dim-witted at dropping gears on the motorway (ie it will hang onto 6th as you slow down to ~30mph, then you prod the throttle to get up to speed again and it has to shuffle 6th-5th-4th-3rd GO!!!!, it's AWFUL for trying to parallel park on a hill (something I used to have to do daily at my old house). They do also tend to expensive issues and maintenance. I was shocked to discover that the Infiniti Q50 has the same over-head console as my Nissan Leaf did. Acceptable in a cheap hatchback, unacceptable in a "luxury" sedan. The Q70 felt much cheaper inside than the GS and we didn't like it nor the attitudes of the sales people. The Q50 and Q70 do have that legendary VQ motor (legendary as it was once suggested that "Ward's 10 best engines" should be renamed "Ward's 9 best engines and the Nissan VQ"), but it's just not enough to save them. It all comes back to the USA question. Your location and cars you talk about are USA, so will assume that's correct. Lots of choice of GS alternatives in the USA at $25k budget: Genesis G80 Cadillac CT6 These are probably the most direct V6 GS350 competitors. Stretch your budget a bit and you can get into a Tesla model 3 for about $30k, and will easily make back the $5k in fuel, maintenance and depreciation savings Then there's a raft of somewhat cheaper, slightly more "naff" cars Chrysler 300/Dodge Charger (the redneck option!), SRT8 hard to ignore Lincoln MKZ (FWD mondeo platform blinged to the max) Acura TLX/RLX (FWD base platforms, but RLX available as SH-AWD. A Honda V6 is surely a thing of beauty) Chevrolet SS if you want to go full-on hoonigan (better known to UK readers as the Holden Commodore, which came here as the Vauxhall VXR8)

Dutchie - sounds like this might be for you then:

The numbers speak for themselves. Lexus UK sales 2020 Jan-May (all 10 current models): 4612 (https://media.lexus.co.uk/2020/06/lexus-vehicle-sales-figures-1990-2019-2/) Tesla UK model 3 sales in March 2020 alone: 4718. (https://cleantechnica.com/2020/04/06/4718-tesla-model-3-sales-in-march-help-push-uk-ev-market-share-to-record-7-3/) Although April and May were very bizarrely impacted months for car sales, model 3 was the best selling car in the UK for both months: https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/new-car-registrations-april-2020-decline/ https://www.smmt.co.uk/2020/06/uk-new-car-sales-down-89-0-in-may-as-click-and-collect-sparks-hope-ahead-of-showroom-re-opening/ In those months they've moved another 1500 units, and deliveries are (anecdotally, based on what I'm seeing on owners groups - but remember that March, June, September and December are big delivery months for Tesla with the way they do things) higher for June. There is every chance that in 2020 the model 3 alone will out-sell all Lexus models combined in the UK. When model Y arrives and starts taking RX and NX buyers away then maybe they will begin to understand... Like @ganzoom, our Model 3 has gained, since we got it in August: Increased peak charge speed from 100 to 170kW Increased power 5%, 0-62 from 5.6 to 5.2 Sentry mode, 4-channel dashcam Whenever I go out I have the choice between our 2015 GS450h and our Model 3 SR+. I prefer the model 3. Lexus, please please please please hurry up and give us some cars with the following: 50kWh+ battery packs with 200kW+ motors >125kW charge rates. 50kW in the UX300e is pathetic in 2020. A decent infotainment system with over-the-air updates One note on ganzoom's post - SpaceX and Tesla are two separate companies. They have the same CEO, and they share one other employee (Charles Kuehmann, material scientist). Of course, they do work closely together on a number of things, but they are different companies.

Indeed. And a new model S gets you onto the Raven platform, which I think will improve significantly over time as the software matures. For those non-Teslarati, older model S like DJP's current car have air suspension supplied by continental. Since early 2019 the model S and model X moved to what is known as "Raven" - Tesla replaced the continental air suspension with their own designed and built system of air suspension and adaptive shocks. The reason they have done so is so that Tesla can own the entire software stack, and integrate the behaviour of the suspension with other elements of the vehicle behaviour and autopilot system. A key point to understanding why Tesla is going to cause massive underlying change in the automotive industry is software - Tesla have ditched the long-standing automotive industry model of outsourcing in favour of vertical integration of design/IP and use of contract manufacture instead of tier 1 design - not because no one else can make seats or design an infotainment system for them, but because then those parties have a hand in the software which makes life much harder when it comes to things like over-the-air updates, or even getting updates at all. The AP2 referred to above means "Autopilot Version 2.0" - AP1 was supplied by Mobileye (and very similar to other cars equipped with mobileye q3, such as Volvo PilotAssist and Nissan ProPilot). AP2 moved to NVidia Drive PX hardware (and AP2.5 is just the same but with a second processor) using Tesla's own software stack on top - however, NVidia retained ownership of lower parts of the software stack and the hardware abstraction, which ended up being a barrier to what Tesla wanted to achieve, so they hired Jim Keller (architect of the AMD K7, Apple A4/A5 and AMD Zen processors, among others) and designed their own Autopilot chip, referred to as AP3. They didn't do it because there wasn't hardware out there that could do the job - obviously there is with the number of players in the autonomous driving game. They did it because it was the only way that Tesla could own the entire software stack, and thus rapid turn around of significant updates and improvements. With regard to the salvage teslas that tesla refuse to support... Some of them were flood vehicles. Some have had the batteries cases opened. At this point Tesla do not know if the innards of that battery have been messed with, if the battery case was correctly re-sealed again, etc. In other words, the cars are an electrical unknown to Tesla, and therefore in order to ensure safety these cars have been barred from the supercharging network - Tesla quite rightly think it might be a bad idea to try to stick several hundred amps at several hundred Volts into a battery that could be hazardous. The vehicles that Rich Benoit (aka Rich Rebuilds) works on are on salvage title - the US equivalent of a Cat B. It might be possible to prove that the vehicles are safe, but it would require total understanding (and possible dis-assembly to check on things) of the state of the car by Tesla in order for them to be re-certified, a process that would cost thousands of dollars in labour by Tesla for each individual car. Ultimately this is no different to what any other vehicle manufacturer will do - you turn up to a Lexus dealer with a write-off GS that you've put the engine from a write-off RCF and stuck some bits from a write-off LS into and see how keen they are to work on it for you! The safety of the supercharger network and safety of Tesla's own mechanics and technicians must surely come above the feelings of a youtuber that cobbled some salvage together?

As a model 3 and Lexus GS owner, that all sounds fair and familiar. One thing to note though is that you can pay Tesla to upgrade MCU1 to MCU2 - it's $2500 in the USA, not sure on UK price. The point here is that Tesla are allowing owners of older car access to some of the hardware upgrades without buying a whole new car. No other car manufacturer offers upgrades to keep older cars relevant. A minor correction - MCU2/AP3 uses 4 of the 8 cameras for dashcam/sentry. It does not use two of 3 front facing cameras and doesn't use the B-pillar cameras - it uses one front, the rear and the two side repeater cameras. Again, I'll just echo your comments - our Model 3SR+ is a great car and in the time we've owned it it has got more powerful, able to charge faster, added the dashcam/sentry mode features, added the dashcam viewer, added new functionality (netflix, youtube), etv. AP3 visualisations now include stop lights and lane markings, so it's possible you're not seeing the full extent of what will become FSD if you're on AP2 or AP2.5? I certainly don't think that L5 autonomy is less than 2-3 years off, and then only for USA - different road rules and marking standards in different places mean different requirements, as well as regulatory conditions. I certainly wouldn't (and didn't) pay for the FSD option at this point in time. Lexus - hurry up and make a proper EV. A good electric GS or LS would be an amazing vehicle, as the 2nd gen mirai proves (basically an electric LS, but with hydrogen rather than battery - ditch the hydrogen nonsense and put a battery in it!). Don't make silly compliance cars like the UX300e with its comically outdated 50kW charge rate. Compete!

It's entirely possible that they didn't. I have seen video of matrix on a facelift GS, and made the possibly incorrect connection that facelift full LED = matrix. It's nothing like as fancy in terms of the number of matrix elements as Audi or Mercedes use, but it is there. However, it's possible that it's a european spec and not UK spec thing. I do not know. All I do know is that even the full-LED setup on pre-facelift cars doesn't have matrix functionality.

It seems to me that Lexus (and toyota) tend to apply rolling updates to vehicles as they go, rather than saving up a chunk of stuff for facelift time. I've been watching a lot of youtube stuff lately, and they've applied rolling updates to Supra and LC500 as they've been going. I've seen instances of that with the GS as well. Our GS is a 2015 pre-facelift Premier, with all options (Sunroof, LED headlamps, PCS/ACC/LKA). There are noticeable differences to 2012/2013 GS that we test drove: Ours has HUD. Ours has a newer nav system (identified by having the mSD card flap where the Mark Levinson logo is, and the right-hand screen panel having 3 tabs, not 4), but not full-screen nav as per facelift (but uses the same map mSD card) Subjectively (and would need to try back-to-back to be more certain) ours seems to ride a bit more smoothly than the 2012 cars (GS450h Premier, GS250 luxury) that we previously test drove (and this is in line with the suspension tweaking that has gone on with the LC500 - newer cars are a bit smoother than the first couple of years). In other words, things like the stiffened body shell and tuned suspension may have occurred before the facelift, just as things like HUD and the new nav hardware did (although as I said, the pre-facelift still runs split-screen software). Don't necessarily limit yourself only to facelift cars if the ride and hud are your key features. No Pre-facelift got matrix adaptive beam headlamps (ours has active high beam and active turning(although the width of illumination they provide makes that totally irrelevant) but not matrix), full-screen nav or traffic sign recognition. For example, here's a later Pre-facelift with ACC/PCS/LKA, sunroof, HUD, etc: https://usedcars.lexus.co.uk/en/used-lexus/Lexus/Gs-Saloon/450h-35-Premier-With-ACCPCS-With-Sunroof-r1capjh but would need to see pictures to tell if it has the LED headlamps (description doesn't say) .

Reason - aero. Door mirrors are now a very significant contributor to drag of modern cars.That said, the cars upon which they have so far been implemented (audi e-tron, honda e) are not particularly aerodynamic anyway, but many low-drag models (eg merc C-class, Tesla 3, Hyundai Ioniq, Toyota Prius) would have significant reductions to motorway by implementing camera mirrors. Cost? Cheaper than a door mirror to replace. Seriously, you can buy a smartphone with 3 cameras in it for £100. One camera on a stalk isn't terribly expensive, compared to a large multi-part plastic and metal housing containing 3 motors (fold, mirror x, mirror y), heating element, high-grade optical mirror (with additionally complex convex section in most european cars now), auto dimming stuff and the indicator lighting.... Oh, and lots of car door mirrors now have cameras in anyway (my Leaf had the side cameras for the 360 parking in them). A regular door mirror now is not a few quid from a motor factors, but £500+ to replace on anything like a Lexus. Camera mirrors will be lest costly to replace should they be damaged which is much less likely because they protrude far less and represent a much smaller "target". They also offer the possibility of not being dazzled at night no matter how bright the headlamps of the vehicle behind (you won't necessarily be able to see anything more in the mirror than you otherwise would, but the lumens projected at your eyeballs will be limited by the screen which will be dimmed to night levels). As such they will also be "auto dimming" by default. Camera mirrors can potentially take in a wider field of view, reducing the possibility of blindspots. I'm not for a moment suggesting they're perfect and won't have their annoyances, but they have many advantages too.

I've moved to Carpro PERL. It's a great multi-purpose product (I know - rare that such things are any good at one thing). It's not the longest lasting, but applies really nicely and notably does not fling. Also great on mudflaps and unpainted plastic trim, interior plastic and even the "vegan leather" (plastic) seats in the Tesla (similar to Merc "Artico" and Lexus "Tahara" materials. The door cards and centre console in the GS are trimmed with similar).

Re the hybrid battery, I'd say that a 2014 car that has covered that distance is most likely a car that has lived life on the motorway - this does not charge/discharge the hybrid battery anything like as much as in-town, stop-start driving does. That means the battery will have been through relatively few cycles and should be in reasonable shape.

And it can only charge at up to 50kW. Not enough for a 2019 model, let alone a 2021 model.

The CO2e footprint to produce a typical new car is about 5.6t. An EV with a large battery is around 8.8t CO2e, so the EV begins with a 3.2t CO2e deficit. (https://www.lowcvp.org.uk/assets/workingdocuments/MC-P-11-15a Lifecycle emissions report.pdf) UK grid electricity average for 2019 was 189g/kWh (https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=1-year&start=2019-01-01&&_k=l8pyik), and an EV typically returns between 3 and 4 miles per kWh. Using 3.5 mi/kWh, we get a true emission level of 34g/km. An older petrol LS400 returning an (optimistic!) 25mpg emits 270g/km (https://www.eta.co.uk/2010/02/22/calculating-a-cars-co2-emissions-from-its-mpg/) Thus, for every mile driven the LS emits 236g/km more CO2. In 10000 miles driven the LS emits 3.77t of CO2 MORE than the EV does. In other words, the production deficit of the EV is gone in less than 10000 miles compared to an older LS. In 30000 miles the EV has covered its entire production and running emissions compared to an LS that we assume 0 production cost for as a car that already exists. Also note that CO2 emission of electricity production is rapidly decreasing, as is CO2 emission of producing EVs. This is to say nothing of the carbon footprint of refining (11% on top) or transporting fossil fuel, nor the carbon footprint of the other consumables (eg engine oil, spark plugs, oil filters, air filters, transmission fluid, etc).

For some models there's price parity at purchase. Our Tesla for example cost £38290, which was actually cheaper than a slower 330i that has far higher running costs. It is not possible for the gov to apply duty on electricity. They have no way of knowing what I use for the fridge and what I use for the car. And can you imagine the headlines if they try to hike it on all electricity? "Millions of pensioners pushed into fuel poverty" Of course, they will have to recoup the billions that fuel duty currently brings in, and that will be done through dynamic road pricing - drive along the M60 from Ashton to stockport at 8am on a weekday when it's bumper to bumper and you'll pay £1 per mile. Do it at midnight and it'll be a penny. The neat bit about that (from government point of view) is that they won't stop duty on fossil fuel... ICE cars will have to pay both taxes.

Please please please don't do this! Your wire now crosses the curtain airbag. If it deploys.... Worst case scenario - the wire is strong enough to prevent the airbag correctly deploying, risking injury/death for your passenger. Best case scenario - the airbag correctly deploys by overpowering the wire, which will then whip across the cabin, potentially causing serious injury. This is what it looks like with the A-pillar trim removed: You should wire down the A-pillar and cross the pillar at the bottom, more info in my thread: It takes a little longer to do this way, but please don't risk injury to yourself or your family.

Slight clarification... the £320 per year applies for 5 years, but it's years 2-6 of the car's life. First year: Showroom tax/first year tax/etc 2-6: LCT (luxury car tax) + VED So, my Model 3 has so far cost me zero VED because its first year rate is 0 as a ZEV. But later this year I'll have to pay its first LCT when it reaches 1 year old. Another entertaining wrinkle with this is that the second owner of a car must pay LCT immediately. In other words, if you buy a model 3 from a speculator who bought it to immediately resell at a profit then you'll have to pay LCT when you register the car in your name.

I use the CTEK MXS3.8 on our GS450h. What's really nice with the CTEKs is that they come with not only the alligator clips for battery posts, but also ring terminals to a connector that you can attach to the battery loom in the car - that way you can simpy plug in the connector rather than messing about with risky clips that can come off and short out.

Can you not access it through the central screen?