My wife experienced a scary issue with the brakes on her NX300h F-Sport (2017). She was driving along the dual carriageway (A8 in Scotland) on Monday morning when the dashboard lit up like a Xmas tree. Multiple warning messages relating to ABS, pre-collision, etc. Tried to stop the car but had almost zero braking power. Pushing the brake pedal all the way to the floor (unusual in itself) resulted in only the slightest amount of braking power. Really scary situation given she was travelling at 60MPH in early morning rush hour traffic. She eventually managed to stop the car. Called Lexus Recovery (AA) who came out within the hour. They confirmed something very wrong with brakes. Again the brake pedal was going all the way to the floor and making a strange noise when pressed. AA declared the car undriveable and ordered up a recovery truck to take it to Lexus Edinburgh. (Note: The AA man checked brake fluid and pads/disks and said no issues. He actually reported the problem on his sheet as potential shattering of brake servo!)
Lexus Edinburgh put the diagnostic tool on the car which identified an error code for one of the rear ABS sensors. Apparently the way the sensor works (metal rotor spinning against a magnet) means that metal filings can break off and "clog" the sensor causing it to malfunction. So they took the sensor off, cleaned it out and then re-fitted it. Re-ran the diagnostics and no errors. And in their mind the problem was "probably" fixed and they would return the car. No assurances that it wouldn't happen again but if it did "they would take another look at it". So basically if the brakes fail at 70MPH on the motorway putting my wife in a very dangerous situation then they will do the decent thing and have another look. Unbelievable. They didn't bother to contact my wife to ask what had happened. Simply took the car off the recovery truck and ran their diagnostics and then followed the Lexus procedure which match the error code. Even when I rang them to explain what had actually happened they responded with "that couldn't possibly happen" and "a malfunctioning ABS sensor would not cause that to happen". So they were basically calling my wife and the AA man liars. I also pointed out to them that the (obvious) fact that the car had another three ABS sensors which had been on the car for exactly the same amount of miles (22,000) and as such there was a very high likelihood that they will have the exact same build-up of metal shavings, and therefore any one of them could be ready to fail. maybe in a day, a week or a month. And maybe the correct thing would have been to clean ALL of the sensors. But they weren't interested, Basically saying they wouldn't get reimbursed from Lexus for that work because those sensors were not showing as faulty. Again, unbelievable. And a complete lack of care towards the safety of one of your customers.
I have no idea whether the malfunctioning ABS sensor was the issue. If it was, and it did cause a massive reduction in braking performance, then how can Lexus not class this as a huge safety issue. Losing 90-95% of braking performance without warning cannot be acceptable. Surely a malfunctioning sensor should just disable ABS. Why should it reduce braking performance. Where's the sense in that? Even cleaning out the sensor is a temporary fix as it will most likely happen again. Especially with four sensors. But more worrying is (if I believe the Head of Service at Lexus when he says the ABS sensor cannot cause this to happen) the possibility that it isn't the ABS sensor and the root cause of the issue is still there.
End result. My wife will not drive the car. And I can't really blame her. She travels to work and back every day along the M8 motorway so maybe 90% of her everyday journey is at 70MPH. If the issue happens again its likely it will be at that speed. This time she was lucky in that she had literally just come off the M8 onto the sliproad so less traffic. She wants rid of the car. Immediately.
So, obvious question, has anyone ever experienced something like this themselves in their Lexus.
