i-s

Ours doesn't understand voice commands either - neither my accent (RP English, reminiscent of 1970s open university videos) nor my husband's (NW USA). My Leaf is also hopeless. I'm vaugely curious as to what accent actually is required for it to work.

Any pictures? Had mudflaps on my honda, added them to our volvo, but I'm pondering looks and aerodynamic impact on the GS, I've never really seen one with them fitted, so would love to see.

Just a few other random thoughts about the 7 There were a few touchpoints on the 7 were you'd hold or use something and be left in wonderment, EVERY SINGLE TIME, at how solid it felt - two specifically were the exterior door handles (which were actually a solid metal casting, not plastic) and the gear lever (certainly felt like solid, real wood). The wood on the 7 was a league ahead of the LS - the LS was still very much in the japanese "then we'll stick this bit of wood finishing on the top", especially on the doors of the LS, around the window switches. The wood trim in the 7 was really, really high quality and solid, beautifully matched around the doors, dash and centre console. I think it's only much more recently that Lexus have come up to that level (and I think BMW have come down since then - I found the touchpoints on newer 5 and 7 to be much more plasticky and cheap). The finishing of the rear door cards on the 7 was lovely, with the leather quilting flowing down into the armrest. Ventilation was another plus - the LS400 mk3 had "dual zone" climate, but the 7 was a TRUE dual zone - you can see it had separate fan speed controls for driver and front passenger (which I've not seen on many cars since either, even "luxury" cars), as well as separate driver and passenger controls for face/feet ventilation. In other words, the driver could have a cold gale blowing in their face (and my father always did!) with nothing to the feet while the passenger could have toasty hot feet with nothing from the face vents. It was two totally independent systems. My father's car did not have it, but it was an option on the 7 to have a third zone for rear passengers (again, a third independent fan speed and temperature). Although our GS has "3 zone" climate, it only has a single fan speed setting for the whole lot. I am reminded at times that european (at least BMW, Merc, Audi - I'd hope RR and Bentley aren't this way) luxury cars are very much designed and built for the first owner. The manufacturers are not interested in how something will be in 5 years time, they are only interested in the now. To that end are things like the BMW E65 phone integration (it had a drawer in the dashboard that you could dock your Ericsson T28 in - totally useless 5 years later). Now they're doing stupid stuff like built-in fragrances in the 7 and S. Lexus build the cars to last and last well. In other words, as a new to 3-year old buy, the European cars may have more to offer than the Lexus. As a 10 year old buy, the Lexus is a FAR better choice (for your wallet and sanity).

Certainly true - by the time of those pictures part of the dash had "sagged" - the gap above the wood strip was larger than when the car was newer - it was previously flush.

My dad's 7 never really had any serious electrical issues other than the display pixel problem (endemic to ALL BMWs of the era with the orange reverse-polarity displays). There were some minor ones (it went through a phase of regularly pinging up "Check Brake Lights" when they were fine, but a change of bulbs (FoC by dealer) solved that, and the alarm was super-sensitive and set off by an adjacent hornbeam hedge in the wind (again, FoC by dealer altered the sensitivity or replaced the sensor or something)) but no stranding events due to it. The 7 was a good car. It had a real sense of being in something special when you rode in it, and it could simply devour the miles. We left Biot (near Antibes, south coast of france) in it at around 6am one morning - we were back in Canterbury by 5.30pm, despite a relaxed picnic lunch. There were a couple of fun memories with that car on that trip.... we pulled into a tiny little rural french petrol station to fill up, and the (appropriately matching) little french lady came out to fill the car (yes, attended service!). Many minutes later, still pumping (95 litre tank), she commented, totally deadpan, "C'est soif, non?". The other incident was when heading down a country road at about 120kph, crested the brow of a hill and a group of gendarmes were sat under a tree by the side of the road. British plates on a BMW, time to fill a quota so one gendarme stands up and about to flag us down when... out of nowhere a black, German-registered Alpina B12 5.7 flies past us. The gendarme changes target, flags him down and we continue on our merry way (and may or may not have given the alpina occupants a little wave as we went past :-)). My dad's XJ wasn't terrible (and I myself don't really remember much of it - I was brought home from the hospital in that car, and I was 4 or 5 when he sold it. I crashed it into a tree when I was 2.) but it had constant ignition issues (my father described the ignition wiring as resembling a 12-legged octopus) and the suspension wouldn't stay aligned for more than 1000 miles at a time. He described the fuel economy in town as "perilously close to gallons per mile", but on a good day he said it was a dream to drive. Around the same time my father got the 7, a school friend's dad got an XJ X300 4.0. The X300's relationship to the previous generations of XJ were apparent, with far less interior space and a very shallow boot. I think that Toyota would have done themselves a disservice by simply copying a dated design like that and the approach that they took with the LS was one that paid off. I think the underlying engineering of the LS was brilliant and in many ways better than the 7 (or S class, or any other euro competitor). The LS certainly made a huge impression on me as a teenager (culminating now in our having the GS - I think my dad would have loved our GS450h, it would very much have been his sort of car (in his life he only had 5 cars - S-type 3.8, P6 3500 V8, XJ12 5.3, Nissan Silvia 1.8T (this one was not his choice and he hated it, but money was in short supply at that time and my grandmother sold it to him at a very favourable price) and then the 740iL).

First_Lexus - bear in mind that the Soul is only available (with what little availability kia hyundai are giving) as an EV from here on out. If you want one in your "over a year" timeframe you need to order it now.

What year 7 series? My father bought a 1996 E38 740iL 4.4 in 1999, and the LS400 was the car that made it into the final 2 (S was too big and too slow (needed an S500 to match the 4 litre cars from other manufacturers), XJ was far too small and cramped (belying its very dated roots) and the A8 was idiotically uncomfortable (extremely hard suspension, extremely hard seats and horrific roadnoise - suitable for a sports car, not a luxury saloon)). At the time, we got the 7 because of a number of things that swayed the choice that way. The budget that my father had in mind didn't quite stretch to getting us into an LS400 mk4, and the mk3 was a little off the pace of the BMW in a few ways - the BMW had a 5 speed transmission and the (then new) 4.4 V8 in the BMW was a decent engine. The LWB 7 series had more space in the back than either LS400, and electric reclining seats in the back which the LS couldn't match. His BMW had the comfort seats, which were better than what Lexus were offering at the time, and really nicely trimmed and finished, and the cabin plastics and wood were a little higher quality than the LS. Another factor that swayed it was that we knew the original owner of the 7 (but it was sold through the BMW dealer). The LS was quieter inside and had a smoother ride quality. The BMW was more powerful (than a mk3 LS), faster, more spacious and handled better. Over the years (he owned it from 1999 until his death in 2017) that car covered over 100k miles, at significant cost. On the mechanical side I think the LS is a far sturdier car - the BMW had problems with the cooling system (belt shredded, fan blades everywhere, coolant leaks), it had a persistant high-load misfire (and limp mode) for a long time that after they replaced a whole bunch of parts (one bank cat, plugs, coil packs, etc) was eventually diagnosed as a bad inlet manifold gasket. There were ball joints and all sorts. Even when the car was 20 years old he would not dream of taking it anywhere other than a BMW dealer, and a visit there rarely ever came to less than 4 figures. There were also persistent niggles - the parking brake release system was idiotic and fell to bits regularly. The orange inverted LCD displays were all losing pixels (the cables inside die). By the time I sold the car in 2017 corrosion was seriously taking its toll on body and suspension. In retrospect I do think the LS would have saved him thousands of pounds on maintenance costs (but many years before he had a British Leyland Jaguar XJ12, so after that there's no such thing as unreliable or expensive to run), and the BMW brought out the worst in his driving which might have been a little more relaxed in the Lexus I think both were great cars, with different strengths and weaknesses

Certainly very similar to how we feel about our 15 plate 450h Premier. Handling is superb compared to our previous Volvo V70 - the GS has much better weight distribution, much less roll, grips WAY harder. The drivetrain is much more securely mounted in the car (in the volvo you could feel the engine flop about on its mounts) which gives a much more predictable feel, and when you really pitch it into a corner and the adaptive dampers do their thing... well, it's the most capable roadholding car that I've ever had (or driven, come to that). Drivetrain is superbly refined, able to cruise @ 1500rpm at any speed. Acceleration doesn't FEEL super fast, and doesn't have the peak punch that our V70 did (twin-turbo 5-cylinder diesel, 470Nm torque), but the EV-like linearity of the acceleration means that it actually gathers speed with so little fuss and effort by comparison, and in a much smoother manner. This fools you into believing it's slower than it actually is. Fuel consumption is as per my fuelly sig at the bottom of this post. I'm very pleased with that, as our V70 only returned 38mpg (225bhp, diesel). The 450h is 50% more powerful and petrol so to get basically the same economy is remarkable and welcome. The CD thing doesn't bother me - our V70 was the same, and we never once used it. Our honda had a 6-disc changer which we did use, but in a world of USB I don't miss that faff at all! The infotainment UI isn't very good. I'm not complaining about the mouse-thing - I actually think that works very well. It provides useful haptic feedback (we have it set to max strength) and once you understand that it has an absolute relationship to the position on the screen (rather than a relative relationship like an actual computer mouse) then it's a very good bridge between hand and screen. The problem is that the actual UI of how things are accessed is really awkward, taking many more presses and actions than it should. For example, when playing some music off the USB stick and deciding that I want to listen to a different artist I must take the following steps: Select right-hand screen, select music panel, send music panel to left-hand screen, select browse, select artist, select letter group (or scroll list), select artist, select album. If partway through that process I come to a road junction or whatever that requires my full attention then if I do not return to it quickly enough it will time out and I must start again. Another example is that it is not possible to cancel the navigation when it is giving you instructions - we have been a couple of times to a shop where the postcode doesn't quite align, so pulling into the car park the sat nav is constantly re-routing and trying to direct. Every time it does this it blocks you out of the menu to cancel the route navigation. And why are postcodes (the PRIMARY method of destination entry in the UK) on the second page of the nav screen? We once tried voice commands to cancel navigation with totally hilarious (and depressing) results - completely useless. Now, in fairness most car infotainment UIs are awful - our volvo was limited and tedious (for example, choosing an artist from USB required scrolling through a list - could not jump the list using the physical number/letter group keys, and every time you went to the list it started from A). My Leaf is extraordinarily annoying (Doesn't give a list of Artists, but instead the complete list of Albums, sorted in Artist order.... Then don't get me started on its interpretation of finding charging points (Start a journey with a full charge, ~90 miles range. Put in destination 150 miles away. Warns you that you won't make it on your current charge, and offers to find a charge point for you - guides you to nearest charge point which you will arrive at with 95% battery remaining and still won't make your destination)). In other words.... the Lexus system has its annoyances and idiosyncrasies (and idiocies), but so do most others. Another issue is the spray of buttons and some settings buried in menus. I spent 10 minutes looking through the menus one time because the mirrors weren't folding in when locked. Gave up, and 5 minutes later noticed that the "auto" button on the door mirror control panel did not have the little green tell-tale LED lit. Similarly the auto-wipers are only indicated by a little green tell-tale on the wiper stalk, that is obscured behind the steering wheel (our volvo had a similar tell-tale, but it also put an icon up in the instrument panel - and the wipers defaulted to off every time you started the car (sensible because it meant it wouldn't try wiping while you were deicing the car, clearly an important consideration for volvo)). How many buttons and telltales are there in the car marked "auto" (one on the mirror panel on the door, one on the wiper stalk, one on the headlamp stalk, two in the HVAC controls, one on each seat heater control, one on the rear climate panel, one on the rear view mirror....) The build quality is excellent, although the paint isn't particularly good (we have a couple of patches of crazing, and it's soft, picking up scratches easily). The most remarkable aspect of build quality to me is the way that when you shut the doors the noise of the outside world is so comprehensively drowned out - my Leaf has very thin glass and lets a lot of noise in, whereas the GS does not. Noticeably quieter than our V70. Seats are generally very good.... but I have a funny shaped back and I just can't quite get the lumbar to work for me, even the 2-step lumbar in the Premier. The problem that I have is that even the higher lumbar control isn't quite high enough up the seat for me (and I'm only 5'7). It's a shame that despite super-many-way-adjustable seats, the Premier does not have a proper 2d lumbar (ie in/out, up/down) but rather 2 separate 1d controls (lower in/out, upper in/out) - the lower is so low as to be useless for anyone, and the upper one is not high enough for me but may suit others. I love the adjustable bolsters and thigh support, but the memory functions are weird. It's extremely annoying not being able to recall the memory position whilst the car is moving or even stationary but in gear, and the passenger memory does not recall the thigh support position. On the plus side, the ventilation and heating are great, and I love being in the front passenger seat, set the thigh support out, recline a bit.... way too comfortable. Visibility is excellent! The A-pillars are designed exactly right in terms of size and angle. The V70 wasn't great in this regard, but the Leaf is truly appalling (you can literally lose a van in the A-pillar blind spot). There's a few little things you don't notice at first about how lexus designed the vehicle to improve this - the windscreen bonding overlap is moved as far outboard as possible, so the windscreen covers the front of the A-pillar, and with minimal masking applied on the screen, so there's not 1/2 inch of visible (from the inside) black masking at the edge like other cars. Then the A-pillar trim is angled to not project into that space, and the door overlap is also slightly carefully designed. You can see a similar overlap on the rear screen on the C-pillar, that the rear screen is wider and overlaps further onto the C pillar than other cars, making the view from inside wider. Really lovely piece of design work. BSM is good, ACC is ok - not as good as a VW hire car I had recently though (66 plate touran. It was the only good thing about that car). The ACC tends to pick up vehicles in adjacent lanes on curves as obstacles (which the VW was much better at), and the ACC is only a guide (the VW, I quickly discovered, allowed you to use it as a virtual bumper - once it was locked onto the car in front you could floor the throttle and it wouldn't move, which was a nice way of driving - felt like there was something the car was pushing against). AHB is totally useless - it works for a minute or two, then gets confused, doesn't dip for oncoming cars and then goes into a sulk and never turns high beam on ever again. I've not really played with LKA. LED headlamps (I know, a VERY rare option in the UK) are excellent, but confusing. Excellent in that they provide extremely wide, bright coverage, although in common with many high-power flat-beam systems they don't project as far down the road (in order to avoid dazzle) as a good halogen dip-beam setup (but that is very dim by comparison). The optic design isn't great, with extremely strong chromatic aberration at the cut-off (blue-red-yellow). The confusing element comes from them turning with the steering (which the xenons on our V70 did also). They turn much faster than the volvo and that works fine - I just don't understand why bother? The LED lights project light SO widely (pavements on both sides of the road well illuminated, pool of light extends out almost perpendicular to the motion of the car) that what's the point of turning them? You don't see any better over that way because it was already lit over that way. I understood the purpose with much narrower projected Xenon and Halogen lights, but it's just a totally unnecessary complication on the LED lights. So, I know it sounds like I'm focused on the negatives... I'm not - I just don't indulge in blind fanboyism with any car. I love the car and it's easily the best car we've ever owned (but I might not be saying that anymore once my Leaf is replaced with the Tesla). It's brilliant for what we do with it, and if you live your life on the motorway I can't think of a car I'd rather have. It feels special to be in and to drive.

Thank you for posting this. I am in the process of procuring our next year's worth of insurance on the Lexus and Adrian Flux were actually strongly in the running (read: cheapest). However, today they tried high-pressure sales ("We can't hold this price for you, it's only guaranteed until the end of this call") which deterred me somewhat. Then I read this thread. @DAN@ADRIAN FLUX You can take this to whomever - you're losing business because of this kind of behaviour as we will now definitely not be using you.

Interesting that they rate the older mouse-based system higher than the touchpad. Also note that for 2019, Lexus have re-introduced the touchscreen to the RX, presumably other models will follow.

Interesting, will have a look/think on this one!

Excellent! How much is that kit?

As he said - wash with plenty of water and detergent (you can use washing-up liquid for this - it strips off waxes, tars, etc (the stripping of wax is why it's not recommended for regular car washing - in this case you're trying to do a deeper decontamination and you want something that will strip this all off)). Then apply tar remover and let it soak in, that should dissolve a lot of whats on there. Then polish with a metal polish - autosol is the go-to product. Once you've done that and got them nice and shiny then apply a coat of a hard wax, Collinite 476 is ideal. This should reduce the tendency for things to stick to it in future. This is one of the exhaust tips from my diesel volvo at 8 years old and 84k miles (although you can see from the inside of the pipe that the DPF on that car worked!):

Me! Mind you, I've been very impressed an satisfied with the fuel economy of our GS450h - very similar to our previous diesel Volvo, despite significantly more power and performance. But it still costs more than 5x as much to fuel as my Tesla will (and my leaf currently does).

Nemesis - compared to a conventional automatic on a turbo engine I agree that lag isn't significant. However, compared to the immediacy of an EV drivetrain, it's still there. By "rubber-banding" I mean that there is still a change of torque at the wheels for a constant throttle - ie if you go from very light throttle to 1/2 throttle, the car will begin to accelerate immediately, but once the revs have built (within 1/2 second or so) the acceleration has increased. It feels like the car is catching up to the throttle. It contrasts again to the EV throttle response where the torque alters instaneously with the pedal position and as soon as you stop moving the pedal there is no further change to the torque, but again it's nothing that conventional automatics don't do. I'm not saying it's worse than conventional autos in these respects - it isn't.

Indeed - I've been using that to track the ships carrying Teslas to europe - my model 3 should be here in July. Seems like the thread has moved on, but what you described is the characteristic of the hybrid drivetrain. It puts the engine into the most thermally efficient place it can for any given demand. You must let go some of what you "know" about cars - for example, the hybrids idle fast (1000rpm minimum idle on our GS). At 1000rpm a lot more of the fuel is converted to motion than at 600rpm, and the battery provides a place to store that energy to actually make use of, instead of being wasted like a regular car at idle. At speed, the thermal efficiency depends on load; this graph (for a 2010 prius, but the principle is the same) explains the behaviour: Overall I find that the eCVT driving characteristics are very good - not the best (Pure EV fixed reduction gear is better - no lag, rubber-banding or noise at all, but very good. First_Lexus and I are in agreement regarding VAG DSG gearboxes as woeful (they're great if you're driving the car hard and using the paddles - very smooth and quick. They're hopeless for driving around as an actual Automatic, because they are slow to do a double-downshift and can not provide any slip to mitigate off-boost (eg pulling out of a t-junction) because it would roast the clutch in short order). The eCVT is mechanically simple, gives linear pull as the vehicle accelerates (much more like an EV) and allows for long gearing (our GS will drop to 1500rpm at any motorway cruise speed - according to a youtube autobahn video, this holds true to 100mph or more). As for noise... Yes, acceleration does give you a period of a few seconds of constant noise, rather than the variable noise of an ICE with a regular gearbox. It's not like it sits there at 6000rpm the whole way down the motorway or anything, and I don't find the noise behaviour to be more objectionable than eg a 4 cylinder diesel automatic (which as observed elsewhere in this thread will produce plenty of noise when it (eventually) kicks down. I will take issue with one comment earlier in the thread - that this is the "transmission of the future". It's not. It was... 15 years ago in the Prius. Now it's a mature technology that is going to decline along with the sales of ICE vehicles. Single-speed reduction transmissions will become the default, and eventually maybe direct-drive will be the thing. Those are the "transmissions" of the future.

Fair enough. Have a play with A Better Route Planner: https://abetterrouteplanner.com Putting that journey in (watford-southport-watford), for both LR and SR+ it suggests stopping at Keele superchargers in both directions for both cars. The difference is that the LR would need a total of approx 30 minutes at the superchargers (10 min going, 23 returning), compared to total 60 (26 going, 33 returning) minutes for the SR+ (SR+ has slower peak charging rates than the LR - 102kW on supercharger v2, vs 145kW for the LR. LR uses about 20Wh per mile more (267 vs 247) than SR+ (weight and AWD))

Sorry, you misunderstood - I was referring to Dapprman's post that I quoted. I ordered a Tesla 3 on 4th May, not a Lexus ES.

I'm oop norf, so will almost certainly be collecting from Manchester south. Even though I've only ordered an SR+, range anxiety won't be a thing - I'm coming from a 24kWh Leaf, so will have 3x the range and far more (and faster) charging options. For many longer journeys we'll use the GS450h by choice for quieter, comfier suspension, etc.

Ordered 4th May, Delivery June/July.

Missed this post before, but I've posted about it in the meets section - we're thinking to go with our GS and (if it arrives before then) Tesla. Would be great to see an LC there!

Are you sure that the Mazda is real leather - I'm not saying it's not (and I've always quite liked the 6), I'm just saying be 100% - it is absolutely remarkable to me what they are allowed to describe as "Leather" these days. A synthetic product that contains some tiny %age of animal skin sourced fibres is allowed to be described as "genuine leather". My mum's Toyota Landcruiser (120 series Invincible) and my Nissan Leaf both have something that vaugely approximates leather and is described as "leather" but leaves me unconvinced. Given the current leather backlash then I agree that a greater variety of high-quality, high-end non-leather options should be made available. In Japan, wool cloth seats seem to be regarded as the utmost luxury, and our Queen's state limousine is upholstered in Lambswool sateen cloth. It would seem that that would be an option that could be made available? Another that I'd love to see would be Linen - very hard-wearing and a lovely material. Breathable and warm. Plus, very high on the sustainability scale! I'll see how I get on with the plastic seats in the Tesla. I'm not planning on changing that car for a long time (nor our GS - after a mad flurry of buying cars over the past 18 months that should be us done for 10 years!), so if they really bother me then I might spend a chunk on having the seats re-upholstered. There's a place in Manchester that does good work.

This is becoming commonplace. It's similar for Audi, BMW and Merc cars at similar pricepoints. I've just ordered a Tesla at similar price to the ES300h, and it too is synthetic "vegan" leather (except that Tesla admit that the steering wheel is real leather - apparently the synthetic isn't hard-wearing enough for that).

Event on 21st July 2019: https://www.sportscarsinthepark.co.uk/index.php Looks like a nice event - we're thinking about going. If it arrives in time then we'll take both cars (Tesla 3 and Lexus GS450h), otherwise maybe just in the Lexus. Anyone else going? Seen some nice machines here (not just lexus), so could be a fun and relaxed place to show them off.

Europeans tend to be very dismissive of American performance cars, without really appreciating that although the engineering approach is different it is still very valid and also appropriate for the market - for example, while a mini cooper or Fiat 500 Abarth or something is a hoot on european back roads, american roads aren't so small and tight, and those cars just feel lost there. The engine bay pic is fascinating - how far back is that engine?! This is a mid-engined car! The weight distribution must be superb, and done properly (not by hanging heavy bits out the back end to try to balance the front... I'm looking at you BMW). Suspension engineering of american cars is also very sophisticated, but done in a different way. The european response to the Corvette is typically "hur-hur-hur.... leaf springs... hur-hur-hur" - without comprehending that the composite transverse leaf spring is a brilliant technical solution that replaces 2 coil springs and the anti-roll bar with a single component that weighs less than just the anti-roll bar alone. Volvo used a similar setup in their 900 series cars, and it made a return recently in the SPA platform (current 60 and 90 series). What is the Viper suspension setup? Love to see some pics of that. If I recall the design brief for the later generation viper engines was 500/500/500 - 500ci, 500hp, 500lbft. You touched on the V8 origins of the engine, but not the resultant cylinder bank angle - the ideal V6 or V12 are 60 degree, the ideal V8 is 90. The ideal V10 is 72 degrees (Lexus LFA), but this is 90, like a V8 (and BMW's V10). Love to see more.