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Because this has made no modification to the vehicle. It can be entirely reversed. It has not damaged or modified any of the car's wiring.

Given that the OP has already had a 450h with the eCVT and found it objectionable enough to get rid of the car then it would seem foolish to make the same mistake twice?

SE and Executive are lower specs that achieved certain price points to be more attractive to business users. SE even has cloth seats (yet still heated and electric!). https://media.lexus.co.uk/wp-content/files_mf/1517227553180125GSEquipmentList.pdf

Probably much of what I'm saying you already know, but hopefully discussion of ideas is useful in clarifying what you want. If the CVT put you off that much before it is unlikely that you'd take well to it again? I certainly find the weight of the GS450h noticeable - similar to the weight of our previous V70 D5 Geartronic, and whilst its fine along a motorway you do feel it on a twisty road, and especially when commuting, turning through mini roundabouts, etc. I find that the weight is really rather annoying when doing day-in-day-out commuting drives. My Tesla is quite a bit lighter than the GS and far more alert for that kind of thing. You used the word sport twice... I'd say that if you are looking for a car that you want to enjoy driving through the twisties and giving the car a bit of stick then the 250 might be the better choice - it's over 200kg lighter than the 450h. Whilst not earth-shatteringly fast, the benefit of that is you can actually enjoy extending the car a bit (get the pedal to the floor and enjoy a second or two of full throttle (and a gearchange perhaps), while the 450h will a) arrive at the next corner too quickly and b) not be quite as tuneful. Like you said, if the 350 had been available here it would be an interesting alternative from this point of view. As for you, our GS doesn't do a huge mileage - when we bought it my Leaf was my daily commuter car and now that's been superceded by the Tesla. We'll certainly not make up the purchase price difference on running costs with the GS, but we got it as a luxury. Soooo.... If driving the car a bit harder, enjoying engagement with the road and through twisties is more your priority, then perhaps the GS250 F-Sport would be an interesting option, with rear-wheel steering, adaptive damping, etc missing from the luxury, as well as the lighter weight. If comfort and cossett are the priorities then a 450h Luxury or Premier.

Like you, we settled on the GS before settling on a particular model. The 300h is the lowest running cost, and with the way things are headed around diesels, electrification, etc it will probably maintain residual value better. The 250 is a solid car, although I found it hesitant (but I suspect that auto hold might have been on). Highest running costs in terms of fuel, not sure if servicing is a bit cheaper. However, they are by far cheapest to buy, with even quite modest mileage examples just barely into 5 figures. The 450h isn't a car that you NEED. However, it is so accomplished, so capable, so effortless that it is the one you WANT. For blasting down a motorway its ability to gear down to 1000rpm at any legal (and many illegal) speed is fantastic, combined with the cabin refinement and very well judged ride. Is it worth the extra thousands to buy? It was for us. We wanted a Premier spec, so that put the 250 out of the running, and then we found the right 450

@OldTrout and I discussed this a few months ago. This is what I wrote to him then: There are other options to investigate to boost the output from your headlamps, before going the 55W ballast route: 1) HID lumen depreciation. Xenon lamps suffer from Lumen depreciation. After so many hours their lumen output is significantly reduced, and in a 10+ year old car this effect will be becoming significant (to the tune of ~50%). Simply replacing the HID capsules could give you a significant increase in lumen output. 2) "Upgrade" Xenon capsules Much like Halogens, there are also now upgrade capsules for Xenon lamps. Not produced by fly-by-night chinese outlets, but reputable manufacturers. Osram Xenarc Nightbreaker Laser, for example - in the D4S (I think! please check your owner's manual!) for your GS: https://www.amazon.co.uk/XENARC-BREAKER-brightness-discharge-66440XNL-HCB/dp/B07FYSXYHZ/ref=sr_1_sc_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1553081502&sr=8-3-spell&keywords=D4S+Xenar These are fully road legal, and are a combination of improved capsule efficiency, tighter geometry (placing more lumen output at the focal point of the parabolic reflector), etc rather than more Watts. I'd suggest that these might actually perform better than a chinese 55W capsule. 3) Optical system maintenance There are various surfaces in the optical system that can attenuate light output - three in particular. The surface of the pababolic reflector, the projector lens and the outer cover of the lamp unit. The first two will over the years get covered in fine dust - a blast of compressed air might shift some of it. However, the last one is the important one - Polycarbonate lenses on lamp fittings go yellow and cloudy with age. Cleaning/restoring the surface reduces scattering and attenuation, putting more light where it should be on the road 4) Windscreen I've always found that an oft-overlooked aspect is the cleanliness of the inside of the windscreen. It takes only a few weeks for a layer of oils and fine dirt to attach itself to the windscreen, and this has a surprisingly big effect in increasing glare (due to scattering) and reducing contrast at night. Ultimately my points 1) and 2) are in fact the same - simply putting new capsules in would gain you a lot, and if you're doing that you might as well put upgrade capsules in and gain more. This also avoids any potential legalities of higher-output ballasts and the insurance connotations, as well as costing significantly less.

If you're using the Viofo 3-wire power supply (that can enable parking mode) then you need your permanent live - this is the line that power is actually drawn from. The switched live (NV-IR) is actually only used as a signal to tell the camera when to wake up into run mode instead of parking mode. If you're not going to use parking mode (which, in the event, we don't) then you can simply connect both wires to the switch NV-IR live and the camera will behave as normal (come on with ignition, go off when stopped).

Expensive? Not really - my SR+ was almost bang on the same price as an equivalently specified BMW 330i, Jaguar XE 25t or Merc C300, all of which are slower, FAR more expensive to run and will depreciate significantly faster. Reliability? Hmmmm. https://www.whatcar.com/news/2019-what-car-reliability-survey-electric-and-hybrid-cars/n20068

We used the Carista app to enable this feature on our 2015 GS. Found it very useful on our previous Volvo.

My husband's nephew lives in Colorado Springs. It's not unusual there to see cars like this:

Can't offer any suggestions on getting the exhaust done, but we can offer you overnight accommodation not too far from Leeds, if it would help?

Thanks It's actually exactly what I expected. It's not as good as the GS for flying down a motorway - the GS rides smoother and quieter. The 3 is epic down Scottish A-roads, with amazing balance, poise and power, so easy to place and awesome grip. I love the minimalism in the interior, the infotainment system is easily the best I've used in any car (but not without its flaws). Our Scotland trip covered more than 1000 miles, and I had to pay a grand total of £6.00 for "fuel". It's better than the Leaf in every way (Shock! Surprise!). As a daily driver it just feels absurdly special (in fairness so does the GS, in a different way... We're not spoiled at all with cars!)

The sheetmetal of the roof of a car is basically just there to keep the rain out and hold the paint. You will notice when you wash a car with a large roof that it pops and flexes under your hand - it has no structural value and is kept as thin as possible to save weight that would cause an adverse shift in the car's centre of gravity (this is why high-performance cars such as the M3 CSL put a lot of cost into a carbon roof that although it only saves 2-3kg it moves the CoG disproportionately). Interestingly, and counter-intuitively, a car with a fixed bonded glass roof has a much stiffer and stronger structure than one with a metal roof.

Apologies in advance for OT then.... We just got back from a 1000 mile road trip around Scotland, so a few opportunities for moody/atmospheric/scenic photos of it there: Not sure why the first few aren't showing up properly - the links work

We sold our Leaf in July, after my previous post earlier in this thread. 7th Nov 2017 , 2.5 years old 13300 miles, paid £11k (£3800 up front, £7200 3 years 0% HP), and included 2 years warranty, 2 years servicing. July 2019, 4 years old, 25500 miles, sold to a dealer for £10650. WBAC was £10500. 2.8p/mile, or £18.40 per month depreciation. I was pretty pleased with that. I'm sure over time we'll lose a bunch on the Model 3, but it's too awesome to care...

Our 2015 GS450h has AFS on full-LED lights. But it's totally unnecessary. Our Volvo V70 had AFS Bi-Xenon lights, and on that you could see the benefit as they turned (although they were a little slow at turning - the lexus is much faster). However, the LED lights on the GS cast illumination so widely compared to older halogen and Xenon lights that there is simply no need to turn them - the width of the illuminated field is so wide that turning it doesn't achieve anything at all (other than increased cost and complexity). My Tesla Model 3 has full-LED lights without the turning function and they're absolutely fine - again the width of illumination they provide means that turning them is unnecessary. It may well be that Lexus have dropped this feature because it's not needed any more.

Sorry to hear that you were disappointed. The search continues. I think it will come because it appears that these brakes are also being used on the RC300h F-Sport now. In terms of the UK though it only represents a few hundred cars (GS450h Premier and F-sport + RC300h F-sport) equipped with these brakes, so a UK company like EBC is not going to bother with the rather high tooling cost of a 2-piece disc to supply the small fraction of owners that would come to them rather than Lexus.

Correct. Rawdata's car is the smaller disc. There's no argument that there are alternatives and sensibly priced parts for the 334mm disc. However, it's the larger 356mm that is the expensive and only available from the dealer part. For gs fitments: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://media.toyota.co.uk/wp-content/files_mf/1484733564170112MGSTechSpec.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiHuf-E8bLkAhUFLewKHaK1DwUQFjAJegQIBBAB&usg=AOvVaw33YJO_bKYaEe2HHApOIMbv&cshid=1567453085016

I wish you luck. If they are indeed correct then please post up the part numbers so that others can use them.

Premier and F-sport use the same front disc. The EBCs are 334mm single-piece discs, but your car is fitted with 356mm 2-piece. As said, I know of no third party options currently.

Just hang on a minute. Is your GS a Premier or an F-Sport? If so then it uses a larger 2-piece front disc that EBC etc do NOT offer. Someone else on here even fitted the smaller discs on the car... The 2-piece discs are very expensive, and we've not currently found a cheaper source for them, although @Shahpor got an amazing deal from his dealer (£350ish discs and pads fitted).

It's not a criticism, it's simply the way that most of the auto business works. I don't know who the specific OEMs that Toyota use are, and it varies between models anyway. Each oem bids on various projects from each auto maker. For example, Garmin just won the contract for the next generation of BMW iDrive. Another example is Gentex, who have over 90% market share for auto-dimming mirrors. They also own Homelink. Each tier one supplier will supply multiple auto makers, and each auto maker uses multiple tier one suppliers, so that way everyone is hedged against any one company having a problem.

The problem for most car manufacturers is that they don't design or make what is in their vehicles. Most cars are basically a box of bits from different suppliers - Infotainment from PASA, seats from Chevalier, glass from St Gobain, window modules from Pektron, lights from Hella, Ignition/ECU from Denso, turbochargers from BorgWarner, wheels from Enkei, shocks from Sachs, etc. Traditional car makers basically produce engines and bodyshells and put all of the bits together. This is then the reason why they can't do this - the Infotainment system is from a third party supplier (PASA, Garmin, Aptiv, Conti,etc) and is completely separate from the engine/driving electronics. Ceding authority over starting the car to an additional third party supplier opens the car manufacturer up to significant risks (especially if the infotainment system has connected services, ie an internet connection - you've now opened up the possibilty for external attack to have authority over disabling the car). FCA suffered from this: https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/ Tesla are much more vertically integrated than other car makers - they design their own hardware for all body electronics and infotainment and ADAS, and write all of their own software. They make their own seats even. They have engaged very positively with white-hat hacking groups, often running hackathons (and offering up cars as prizes - hack this tesla and you can have it, as long as you help us fix the vulnerability: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/25/pwn2own-hackers-found-a-bug-in-teslas-system-won-model-3-and-cash.html) and they have a long-running "bug bounty" scheme. Of course they are not perfectly secure, but they are doing the right things to resolve vulnerabilities as far as possible. The other part of this puzzle is that Tesla are able to make updates to all Tesla vehicles (well ok, not the roadster, but all others) remotely, over-the-air. Every other vehicle on the market requires a trip to the dealer to update software (and in my experience, dealers are very unwilling to perform software updates on vehicles unless the vehicle is specifically recalled to do so). Tesla introduced Pin-to-drive in 2018 in response to the relay theft threat, and pushed to all Tesla built from 2012 onwards. Other car manufacturers can't do this because, as I said earlier, they do not own the hardware nor the software design of the systems inside their vehicles. This will have to change as cars move forward. Car manufacturers have to take ownership of electronics hardware and software, otherwise they will lose out in the marketplace. This is beginning to take place (for example, Ford bought Research In Motion (aka Blackberry, the phone people) in order to acquire skills and experience in these two areas, and through that are bringing the design of their systems in-house).

Security theory says that there are 3 ways to verify a user's identity: What they have - a key What they are - biometrics, fingerprint, facial recognition, iris/retina scan What they know - password, pin Single factor security is what most of our cars and houses rely upon - possession of a key. 2 factor security requires something from two of the above groups (for example, to withdraw cash from your bank account you need your card (something you have) and your PIN (something you know)). Tesla have a PIN-to-drive option, so that you must know the PIN in addition to possessing a valid key (whether it's a fob, card key or phone key). 2 factor security isn't new, as the above peugeot example highlights. I'm sure we've all heard tales of people hiding fuel pump switches under the dashboard of old cars - something as simple as that still requires the user to know something. Relay thefts overcome the need to have the key, by exploiting the weakness of keyless entry. Relay thieves don't want to mess about, they want to be in and gone. A simple steering lock typically deters relay theft

A few weeks ago I sold my Nissan Leaf. To hand the car over I had to drive it 160 miles from our home down to gloucester to hand it over. I planned my route and charge stops in order to minimise time spent, and needed to cover 76 miles to the first charge stop. Usual hypermiling techniques applied - very gentle, smooth, 55-60mph, etc. My husband was following behind me in our GS450h. When we arrived at the first charge stop after the 76 miles the trip computer on the GS was showing 52.8mpg. When we arrived at my mother's house (near gloucester, a bit over 150 miles from start) after a second charge stop, it was still showing 50.9mpg over 178 miles (since it had been reset a few days and miles before starting this journey).