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Sorry Vlad, not true. The UK grid currently consists of about 40% gas, 6% coal, 4% Solar, 14% wind, 21% Nuclear and 5% Biomass. The 2018 annual grid average was 217g CO2 per kWh. My Leaf drives, on an annualised average basis, about 4 miles per kWh (it's relatively inefficient for what it is - Teslas are typically 3-3.5 miles per kWh, Hyundai Ioniq and BMW i3 closer to 5 miles per kWh). That works out to 31g/km CO2 emission, compared to over 100 (in the real world, not euro fantasy figures) for any ICE vehicle, to say nothing of zero particulate or NOX emission in town (in other words, EVEN if an EV had the same emissions as an ICE vehicle, simply displacing them from city centres still has a huge benefit for the health of people in that city). Another consideration is that in 2013 the UK grid was at 474g/kWh - it is rapidly decarbonising. That means that a 5 year old EV now emits less than half the CO2/km that it did when new. A 5 year old ICE does not. Let's ask National Grid themselves, because they know better than us whether it's a problem: https://theenergyst.com/millions-electric-vehicles-sooner-predicted-no-sweat-says-national-grid/ Last of all, the far superior driving characteristics of EVs are something to relish. Controversial. Let's loop this back - WHY do people like 6 and 12 cylinder engines compared to 4? Let's think of adjectives that might be used to describe them - Smooth, refined, torquey, powerful. Electric motors are EVEN BETTER on all of those counts! Full torque, Instantly (no turbo lag or having to build revs). Huge power density. And no engine that relies on explosions hammering on a crankshaft to turn linear motion into circular motion can EVER be as smooth or quiet as an electric motor. Given the other discussions we've had about transmissions, consider the "transmission" of an EV - There's simply a reduction gear (typically about 9:1) that is permanently coupled to the motor. There are no clutches, no bands, no gears, no shifts, no solenoids, no fluid pumps or cooling loops. No being in the wrong gear or "rubber banding", no waiting for kickdown.

But that's because they're just not necessary anymore. Leaving aside the move to electric (which I am very much looking forward to), the need for anything over 4 cylinders has basically vanished. My father once had a Jaguar XJ12 5.3, with 285 horsepower and 0-60 in 7.5 seconds. Later in life, he had a BMW 740iL 4.4 V8 with 286 horsepower and 0-60 in 7.2 seconds. Now, Volvo sell the S90 T6 with 320 horsepower and 0-60 in 5.9 seconds. It is a 2 litre 4 cylinder engine. No one really needs more than that, certainly not in any mass-market exec or family car. The use cases for more than that are distinctly limited to very high performance cars. The performance and size of the ES300h are in line with a BMW E38 735i V8. Apparently our expectations have moved significantly in 20 years. In 20 years time from now we'll be wondering how we all put up with the noise, smell, fumes and horrible driving characteristics of ICE vehicles, as we all drive EVs that will do 0-60 in 4s.

Crossclimates are fantastic, and the smoothness of an electrified drivetrain makes it much easier to set off without breaking traction. My leaf on crossclimates is tenacious!

Sadly this term "warped" gets used and it isn't accurate. Standard car brake discs (ie not crazy money carbon ceramic) are made from cast iron. The reason that they are is that cast iron has very high thermal conductivity (much better than steels and especially stainless steel) as well as good thermal mass and the right physical properties (it's one of those rare cases where the cheap material is actually one of the best materials for the job). As such, once cast and machined they do not "warp" - it's not a vinyl record! What DOES happen is DTV - Disc Thickness Variation. When new, machined precisely, etc, then the disc is the same thickness all the way around. However, a number of things can cause that to change over time - for example, if you have left the car parked for a couple of weeks and then drive it, you'll often hear and feel an unevenness in the brakes because the area covered by the caliper/pad has not rusted evenly with the exposed areas of the disc. The pads scrape away the surface rust in just a few stops, but under some circumstances the unevenness can persist. This sort of unevenness can be made worse also by other causes - modern parking brakes that act on the disc rather than the older drum-in-disc (or even drum) set up leave a pad strongly clamped to the disc for the whole time the vehicle is parked. Another cause (that my old mitsubishi galant with it's teeny-tiny undersized 256mm front discs suffered from) is if you get the brakes hot, and then come to a traffic light and sit on the brakes for a couple of minutes (as is typical in an automatic vehicle) then you also get uneven transference of pad frictional material to the disc (when hot some brake pad material transfers to the disc and the material rubs against itself giving high friction - the excess deposition caused by sitting on the brakes at the lights causes a higher friction area on the disc that feels like a pulsing/juddering during braking). If a brake disc is just starting to show this kind of behaviour it can sometimes be rescued by re-bedding the brakes - on a quiet A-road get the vehicle up to 60mph. Brake firmly down to ~15mph and repeat 5 times. After doing that (so the brakes are now warm), accelerate to 60mph and brake HARD to 5mph. Repeat 5 times. Then drive gently and try not to brake at all for 10-15 minutes to allow the brakes to cool. If you must come to a stop, DO NOT SIT ON THE BRAKES - use the parking brake (ideally not one that uses the service pads, but most do these days) or put the transmission in park and get off the brakes - you absolutely want to avoid high-temperature static pad-disc contact. After doing that your brake discs should have turned a darker grey or even a blue colour (and there's a good chance your front wheels will have turned black...) and they should feel smoother in operation (it's easy to feel at very low/maneuvering speeds that they are less effective than they were because they will be less "grabby") - this process can smooth out some DTV and frictional variances around the discs. There can also be metallurgical causes. I had one set of brake discs on my mitsubishi galant that suffered from serious cementite incursion - I'll find the pictures at some point. Cementite (Iron Carbide) is a very very very hard material that caused uneven wear and friction in the disc. This came from the casting of the discs, and nothing on or off the car could be done to save them - they were just bad discs.

No. I can't find data for a 1.1, but assuming we're talking a 90s or early 00s corsa then you're looking at 12 seconds for the 1.2. Not true. My V70 was pretty poor on 0-62 time (over 8s), but with 470Nm of torque it could go 50-70 pretty devastatingly quickly. The reason that the 0-60 was poor was it was very badly traction-limited - it would spin/traction control/etc off the line, as well as be rather laggardly before it built some boost. None of these things occured on 50-70. In terms of torque, power, weight and gearing it was very closely competitive to the E60 BMW 530d - a car with a 1.6 second faster 0-60 time because it had RWD traction. Physics says their rolling performance will be broadly comparable. It's not about power - it's about Torque. A ~200bhp N/A petrol 4 pot (eg honda accord 2.4, 223Nm torque) will cope just fine while a 200bhp turbo diesel (eg my V70, 470Nm torque) can be a torque-steery mess. Of course, there's more to it than just the power and torque outputs - the honda had a double-wishbone front suspension design that was distinctly grippier than the cheap ford Mac-strut front end on the Volvo I do, however, agree that RWD feels much more "premium" to drive - the very absence of Torque-steer, the much more secure traction out of junctions and onto roundabouts, etc makes for a much nicer driving experience. The reasons for FWD are to do with packaging and cost (not only of components but production). EVs are cheaper to produce in RWD, and suffer significantly from FWD torque effects (because you have INSTANT full torque available), so in the next few years you will see the "default" driven wheels switch back to RWD for all cars, even family hatchbacks. The first notable move on this is VW's MEB electric vehicle platform (the electric replacement for the MQB platform that currently underpins everything from a Seat Leon to the VW Atlas, Passat, Tiguan, etc), where RWD is the basic configuration (with AWD option). This. Overall though, I think that you must judge the ES on its success. It has outsold the GS every year by huge margins. It appeals to the market that Lexus appeals to - a comfortable, cosseting vehicle, rather than trying to compete with BMW (as the GS has tried to do).

No, it is central

I think the reason that the motoring press loves them is because if you are having an A-road blat, shifting up and down with the paddles, keeping the engine on the boil then the speed and smoothness of the DSG is excellent. The flaws that I described occur in much more mundane situations (using it as an automatic on the motorway, maneuvering and parallel parking on non-level ground). Motoring journos seem only ever to drive and judge cars on the basis of blasting it across Wales or Scotland. Under those scenarios I've no doubt that the DSG is very rewarding. However, most of us don't drive cars that way. That's why there's a disconnect. Most of us do have to move the car around on a slope or parallel park or sit in stop-start traffic for 10 minutes every morning... the things that many of the cars the motoring press loves just don't do so well.

No. These bulbs are just courtesy/comfort and the car doesn't monitor them (they are not part of the legally required/tested/etc lighting on the vehicle). There are no errors (which people wrongly describe as "CANbus error").

It was a Passat B6 2.0 TDI DSG that I had the "pleasure" of experiencing it in. I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who had this experience. Utter garbage. Press the throttle to get out of a junction/roundabout and the clutches would engage (perfectly smoothly) right away, less than 1k rpm and no boost. No go. At all. The car would limp forward for 10-15 feet until that truck that was 200 yards away when you started doing this is coming worryingly close.... and then the car would launch forward in only a semi-controlled manner... The next flaw was on the motorway, sudden bunching traffic caused me to decelerate from 70 to 35mph in lane 3. Traffic cleared and pressed throttle to accelerate again - however, the box had kept hold of 6th gear the whole time until I decided that I wanted to accelerate - it's response to the throttle was not to go, but to change down a gear... that's normal for an autobox.... except that the DSG didn't need to change down one, but three gears and each one had to take their turn - you could see the numbers reeling down on the gear display as they ticked by.... 6.... 5..... 4...... 3 aaaannnnnnnd go! I've never experienced that amount of lag with any torque-converter auto I've ever driven (including all manner of dismal rentals in the USA). The NEXT flaw was on the road where I used to live - quite a steep road of terraced houses (can you tell I live in Yorkshire?) - steep enough that each 16ft wide house was 1ft higher or lower than each neighbouring house. Driving up this road to the turning area at the top, 15mph, let the speed come down to 10, down to 5... just by easing off the throttle, no brakes required. However, the DSG decided that 2nd gear was the right gear for this, and the engine lumbered and laboured until eventually as I tried to turn into the ginnel at the top it came grinding to a halt. THEN it decided (finally!) to try 1st gear and attempted to then catapult me full-pelt towards the neighbour's car. Eventually having got it turned around I came back down the road to park in front of my house. Parallel park. On a steep road. If you've ever tried parallel parking a DSG car on a hill you'll understand. DSGs are not capable of gentle easing of power against a slope - the software prevents it because it would burn up clutches in no time. That means that parallel parking on a slope is distinctly kangaroo-like and needs a generous space. My automatic Volvo V70 I could put into a space just long enough that once I was in it both the front and rear parking sensors were going continually - this passat needed a space 50% bigger. By no means do I regard torque converter autos as anything like perfect (very variable performance depending on software, fluid condition and quality, maintenance, etc) but they are far superior to the DSG.

I personally don't get the fuss over the e-CVT. You put your foot down, there's a couple of seconds of engine noise as the car accelerates, then you back off because you're at speed and the noise goes away. It's no different to a torque converter auto in that regard. So far the GS e-CVT is my second-favourite car transmission type that I've used. Torque-converter auto is third, and manual and DSG are joint 964th (not exactly sure what's in the 961 places in between, but they're both down there). Hands-down favourite is the single-speed reduction gear (all current EVs) - no lag, rubber banding, clutches or anything.

The old ones are the best:

So I had a mixed day of success with making (or not) a few lighting mods on the GS. Boot Light The easiest and the most successful mod. The boot light in the Mk4 GS is.... bluntly, abysmal. It's a single wedge bulb, but for some reason it isn't even a 5W but a 3.8W. You could be forgiven for not noticing that there is a boot light. Very very simple to replace - unclip the light cover, pull the bulb out, replace and refit the cover. The key is the correct choice of bulb - the bulb is held pointing directly downwards, so you want an LED W5W 501 that emits in that direction. I used the (very expensive, but brilliant) Philips X-treme Ultinon: So, without further ado, the result (same exposure value on the camera) Puddle Lights Next up, the puddle lights in the bottom of the door mirrors - the ones that light up when you approach the car with the key. These are 5W 501s, and a bit of a pain to change. I followed a guide from ClubLexus, but really struggled getting the second mirror back together. This is nothing like as dramatic an improvement, as the housing design is more efficient and it has a 5W bulb. The housing holds the bulb side-on, so the end-emitter LED doesn't work as effectively as it does in the boot. However, I did it more for the more sophisticated colour (the murky brown of a filament lamp seems rather dated these days). I have some pics I'll process if people are interested, but they're not brilliant. Indicators I also wanted to change the front indicator bulbs for chromed bulbs (I prefer the look - sadly the rear cluster can't be de-oranged). In this, I failed. The bulbs I bought, Silvatec WY21W, turn out to be identical (even to the part marking on the bulb) to the XTEC ones I have in my Leaf. However, they could not be fitted into the GS (nor could I get one of the XTECs in) - the bulb holder in the GS is very tightly designed and the clip features of the chromed bulbs simply would not fit in (even after I attempted to grind a bit off the bulb using a whetstone). It's a shame that Philips and Osram don't offer their chromed amber bulbs in a wedge fitting

We saw that - there's also an Atlantic blue at Sytner with PCS and LED (no sunroof though). So yes, suddenly they're all coming out of the woodwork! There's 3 differences on ours though, which came about with rolling updates that Lexus seemed to apply. 1) Wheels - the 18 spoke Premier wheel was dropped, and ours has the gunmetal 10-spoke which are the same as the Luxury (I prefer them and easier to clean). 2) HUD, as we've previously discussed. 3) Gear Gaiter - Ours has the leather gear gaiter, like GS250s and GS300h do, rather than the (in my opinion) rather dated-looking open gate that earlier 450hs had (and the one you linked does). 4) Satnav - ours has some slightly different graphics and button layouts on screen. I need to do some more research on this, but ours is updated through a microSD slot hidden behind a flap which has the Mark Levinson logo on it. From what I can tell (and Shahpor - perhaps you can verify from yours) earlier cars did not have the microSD and were updated through a USB stick? We purchased a new mSD and updated to 2018 revision maps (so a notable update is that the new maps have the new A556 from M56 to J19 M6, whereas the old maps showed the old road (Now the B5569)). I think there was a minor update from USB to mSD somewhere around 2013, and then the more major update from split-screen to full-screen satnav that came in with the facelift.

It's not easy... https://www.allcarpartsfast.co.uk/toyota/toyota-4351630061-disc-fr-lh/ https://www.allcarpartsfast.co.uk/toyota/toyota-4351230371-disc-fr/ https://www.allcarpartsfast.co.uk/lexus/lexus-4351630060-43516-30061/ I'm not totally 100% clear on the exact p/n required. But the prices that I'm seeing, both here and in the USA, say that £345 fitted from your dealer is excellent.

You probably could, if you got new caliper carriers (the bracket that holds the caliper to the knuckle) from a vehicle that uses the smaller disc. Then it would just be a matter of trying to insure a vehicle that has been deliberately modified to a lower-specification braking system than original... (read: good luck with that one).

So far as I know (and this may not be correct or may be incomplete or whatever)... There are two different front disc setups and two different rear disc setups on the mk4 GS. Fronts The standard front disc, used on most GS mk4 models, is 334mm x 30mm, ventilated (standard bell). The GS450h Premier and GS450h F-sport, however, have 356mm x 30mm ventilated floating rotors. Rears The standard rear disc used on most GS mk4 models is 310mmx22mm ventilated (standard bell). The GS450h Luxury has 310x18mm rear discs. I have no clue why they bothered with this particular change. Calipers and pads So far as I can tell all models use the same calipers and pads - of this I am not entirely 100% sure though, so if I'm wrong then please let me know!

These appear right - in which case, snap your dealers hand off! https://www.ebay.com/itm/GENUINE-OEM-LEXUS-GS350-450h-200t-F-SPORT-2WD-FRONT-ROTOR-BRAKE-DISC-PAD/173592411113?fits=Model%3AGS450h|Make%3ALexus&hash=item286ae9fbe9:m:mAQDeIfC6tAvCABMDJeEC-g

£345 sounds like a good price for pads and discs and labour! I'd take it at that price. I've not seen any third-party discs for the GS450h (floating rotor), and genuine discs alone for a mk3 are almost £200 - Maybe there's £260 of parts there, in which case £85 to have them fitted is as much as you'll pay at any other garage, so I'd go with the dealer on this one.

Him and a few others - Parker Nirenstein, Doug Demuro (possibly the only person on youtube MORE annoying than Shmee). Bjorn Nyland's videos are very useful if you're actually looking to buy one of the cars he covers (he ONLY covers EVs) as he goes into very small details and really shows what the car will do in the real world - If you're not interested in that car though there's no way you're going to sit through one of his videos. Then there's stuff like Hoovie's Garage, Savage Geese, etc - there's useful information out there, and youtubers aren't restricted to fitting a car review into a TV-friendly time slot. You get more in depth, more useful info from a lot of those reviews than from car magazines with advertisers to keep sweet. You may or may not be aware that Robert Llewellyn (Kryten on Red Dwarf, Scrapheap Challenge) runs a Youtube channel dedicated to EVs - Fully Charged, now alongside Johnny Smith (Fifth Gear). Many of these outlets are actually becoming more seriously entertained by the motoring industry than the traditional motoring press. Still don't like Shmee though.

Well it sounds like you're doing everything right then! Fully comp cover may not be any more, and might even be less expensive. Much of insurance cost is about assessing risk and people taking comprehensive cover are often more risk-averse than those taking TPFT, especially in your age bracket. I'm guessing you've used confused.com to get quotes - be aware that confused.com is owned by the same people that own Admiral and Elephant insurance, and that they often come out top on confused.com. If you have a pension with Aviva you can get a discount on their car insurance and we got a good deal with them - once you've got a quote you can get a further 20% off if you use the Aviva Drive app for 200 miles before you buy your insurance (but of course that means having access to another car for that length of time - might be worth a one day hire of a car to execute).

Maybe. Maybe not. Like the others said, check some insurance quotes first. My husband passed his test relatively recently and our GS450h is insured in his name with no NCB - he's 57. Slightly different situation, however, as he's been driving for a very long time but moved from the USA to UK and had to take the driving test to get his UK license. However, there's no box for that on the form! My Honda Accord was an excellent car, and in ways close to what the GS is - they have a similar feel out on the road. I can share your lack of excitement about Skodas, but give a couple of hondas a closer look - the blobby Civics (06-11 and 11-16) are brilliant to drive and absurdly practical within their class (the way the rear seat folds down is epic and turns it into a compact van) - I had one as a hire car and ragged the nuts off it (which it almost begs you to do, it's SO willing), absolute hoot to drive AND returned over 40mpg (1.8 i-VTEC petrol). The Accord (03-08) is excellent with double-wishbone suspension all around, great seats. In both cases play to Honda's strengths - avoid diesels, avoid 1.4s, etc. Get the 1.8 i-VTEC in the civic or the 2.0 or 2.4 i-VTEC in the Accord, with a manual box (accord had the nicest manual I've ever driven - rifle bolt precise, more a mind-link between you and gearbox than a gearlever). An Accord Executive is very much getting towards Lexus (and bear in mind that what we had here as the Accord was sold as an Acura in the USA (Acura being to Honda what Lexus is to Toyota) - the Executive has heated power leather seats, etc. There's not much on this earth more reliable than a honda petrol engine. https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201901073698385 https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201812293527681

Indeed. My implied point was that even the old ES300h would offer better real world fuel economy than a T4 or T5 S90. The new one should be better still. Can't disagree there at all. The V70 was my first (begrudging) diesel, and my last. I'm very hopeful that the GS450h will be our last ICE at all.

I don't think you'll get 40mpg real world out of a T4 - most reports of the VEA petrols are coming in mid 30s at best. The same seems to be true of all of the 200-250bhp 4-cyl 2.0 turbos (eg BMW 530i, Volvo T4 and T5, Lexus 200t, etc). Fuelly.com is a great way to see REAL fuel economy figures. A quick browse of S90s shows T5s (which will be very similar real-world to the T4 - similar weight, similar power outputs the vast majority of the time, same engine other than software, etc) coming in sub 30-mpg(UK) mostly. Here's a couple of examples: http://www.fuelly.com/car/volvo/s90/2017/hilton954/620840 http://www.fuelly.com/car/volvo/s90/2017/aneurin/818718 Meanwhile, previous gen ES300h are all kicking around the mid 40s: http://www.fuelly.com/car/lexus/es300h/2017 Of course these are small sample sizes, and fuelly isn't very good at splitting out cars by engine (it's up to what people put in the description for a car like the S90, whereas lexus are differentiated by model number). There are variables like location, driving style, etc. Still, I'd bet on better real-world fuel economy from the ES than the S90. I'm expecting to get mid 30s real-world from our GS. Meanwhile our diesel Volvo V70 got high 30s: http://www.fuelly.com/car/volvo/v70/2011/isaachd7/228382

It has even afflicted the rich and famous - Michael Owen got a sponsorship deal with Jaguar when he was a teenager, but was unable to actually drive the car because of insurance. Jensen Button could only get insurance on a 320d when his day job was with Williams BMW (didn't stop button from getting nicked for speeding in said 320d). Alex - I understand where you're coming from. When I was 17 and learning to drive was when my father was shopping for a new car. I went out with him on test drives in LS400s, S500, A8 4.2 Quattro, 735i, 740iL. Eventually he bought a 740iL and I didn't get to drive it until I was around 30. I had grand plans that I'd not have an FWD car or anything less than 6 cylinders but reality put paid to that pretty quickly. In the end, my first car (at 21 years old) was a 2 litre which was pretty good going at the time.

No, driving other cars is usually not included on fully comp policies until the policy holder is over 25.