Tickedon

I wouldn’t worry, assuming you’re planning on keeping the car for quite some time. Just ensure you service it properly, and I don’t expect you’ll have any issues. It is quite normal for other manufacturers to have longer service intervals these days, I think Lexus has stuck with 10k for purely financial reasons (more services = more revenue!).

Oh, and the accounts show they do pay tax:

Yes. With luck we may all get it via a software update… and someone somewhere here said they had a new NX as a courtesy car and it definitely had wireless AA.

There is another thread somewhere here suggesting there is a shortage of the right run flat tyre at the moment here:

They aren’t paid by taxpayers though, they are paid by individuals in receipt of benefits choosing to purchase a service from them, the same as those individuals could choose to buy anything else with their benefits payment . Motability Operations is owned by four banks (Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC and NatWest Group) and has the contract with the Motability charity to run the leasing scheme. The government only provides funding for specialised or wheelchair vehicle adaption grants As I said, the fact they can take a relatively small weekly allowance - plus a voluntary up front fee depending on vehicle selected - and run this entire operation from it (without taxpayer cash supporting the leasing element) is a brilliant example and it’s a shame we can’t duplicate its success in other areas.

For Motability, recipients trade in getting a cash benefit for a private vehicle. It doesn’t cost the government or taxpayers more (unless you argue the favourable VAT treatment is a cost). Car companies negotiate with Motability to get their vehicles in the scheme - Motability are the UK’s largest fleet operator - and have to offer discounts effectively in exchange for volume. Recipients will pay a larger deposit to get more expensive vehicles (typically). There are elements to criticise - the huge reserves and some high executive pay - but personally I think the scheme is a great example of meeting a need without needing huge government subsidies.

Lexus have actually cut the RZ price. So I’d expect when the price went down at the start of July, the discounts also decreased… would have expected the final price to remain roughly the same, however!

They benefit from it with massive earnings potential over their career, which as consultants gets them into the top 5% of UK earners, and an NHS pension which is pretty much the most generous public sector pension scheme in the country. They can also - as has been pointed out - decide to run off to the USA or Australia, having had us pay for their training, and thus we don’t benefit. If Doctors want USA style pay, they should stump up and pay for their own training (as they would in the USA, $40-60k per year in costs).

Junior Doctors also benefit from £150-200k of training paid for by our taxes. I would be quite happy to pay Junior Doctors more, if they also take on the costs of their training. The current model is that pensioners on £12k per year are losing out on £200-300 to fund a huge inflation busting pay increase for those that already receive a huge amount of taxpayer funding.

Yes, to benefit from the 10 year / 100k warranty, you need dealer servicing following the 1 year / 10k mile schedule. Plenty of expensive examples on this forum where people haven’t, and now have a four figure bill, which the warranty would have covered.

Skipping the annual dealer service has unfortunately cost you dearly here. My gut says it will only release and open it once - and it’ll stay closed when shut again.

US prices are always quoted excluding sales tax (as it varies state to state), so even though the exchange rate is favourable, with VAT, you can usually simply replace the $ with a £ sign, and often then still need to add more on top! As indeed we would here, given the price of the Yaris GR and the rest of the LBX range…

Indeed - see thread here:

For the first six months of 2024... LBX = 2497 NX (inc PHEV) = 1985 UX (inc UXe) = 1432 RZ = 1033 RX (inc PHEV) = 612 ES = 418 RX (inc RXL) used to achieve 2-2.5k cars per year, so there has indeed been a big drop, but there's also been a big drop in ES sales as well. Given the RZ is a similar size, it may be some buyers have moved across to that?

I agree - particularly on the smaller and cheaper cars, there is much less differentiation between a Skoda / Seat / VW / Audi than there is between a Lexus and a Toyota in my view. There are bigger gaps when you move up into larger and more expensive VW group products - but even then, the latest Skoda Kodiaq and Superb are very competitive and certainly very acceptable and good interiors... Toyota and Lexus seem to be trying to make too big a distinction between the two brands, or, are just trying to save a bit too much money on Toyota interiors...

My partner and I have both purchased new cars recently (me a Lexus NX, them a Toyota Yaris) and so I've test driven and sat in lots of cars, including lots of Toyota and Lexus models. Short summary: The quality and feel of materials in a Lexus is consistently better than a Toyota. A Toyota Yaris (inc Cross) interior is hard plastic heaven. It's not awful, and the key parts you'll touch most often normally have a bit of padding, but, entirely different to the far better LBX interior. The C-HR interior looks great... but when I sat in it, it didn't feel anywhere near as good as it looked and I was quite disappointed (it possibly would have been an ideal car otherwise). The UX is better (and I recently had one for nearly an entire week), but, now being considerably older than newer Lexus and Toyota models, is not quite as luxurious. The old 250h engine was also quite unrefined in my view - hopefully the 300h is better... The clearest example to illustrate the difference, in my view, is the Lexus RZ and Toyota bz4x. The Lexus is plush and lovely, the bz4x is just a mass of dark hard plastic. As to whether the price difference is worth it will depend on what your priorities are. I've said elsewhere the LBX is awfully expensive for what it is, especially compared to the top-trim Yaris (Excel / Premier Edition) models (which is funnily enough what we purchased!). I haven't spent much time around the ES (was simply too long to be seriously considered) so can't really comment there, but having come from a reasonably plush Audi A4, I'm very very happy with the Lexus NX.

Why am I bothered? I used to have an Audi with the smaller 40l tank, it meant I couldn't do my 500 mile round trip or my 440 mile journey to Scotland on a single tank, I'd always have to fill up somewhere. I bought the Lexus NX on the understanding it would have a 55l fuel tank, and thus between the battery and fuel I could stop having to think about fuel ups. I run my vehicles on premium fuel, and my preference is to save a small fortune by using Costco's premium fuel whenever I can - thus having a larger tank to fill up is incredibly helpful to keep my costs low. My journeys are also almost exclusively short local journeys (EV is perfect for this on my PHEV) or long trips around England and Scotland. A key technical specification (size of a fuel tank), as advertised by Lexus, doesn't seem to be available to me and plenty other drivers. It's also not like it's a small proportion - in my case, when the car tells me the tank is nearly empt, I can only get approx 32l into a 55l tank. That's only 58% of the capacity. If I kept it above a 1/4 tank as you do, that means I'm topping up every 240 miles or so... hardly great for a car like this! I've seen this referenced in a couple of places - do you have the technical source for it please?

Some of us have the same issue with the NX :

Many years ago, I used to live in zone 2 of London and occasionally cycled into the office in the city of London (40 minutes at a reasonable pace). Most of the route was a cycling path or one of the blue cycling “superhighways”. The most dangerous other road users…. were other cyclists. They’d ignore red lights and try to weave through an entire group who were correctly cycling through on a green. It was also very clear which cyclists were also drivers, and thus had some ability to anticipate what other road users might do, and those who were clearly lining themselves up for a Darwin Award….

There are two ways to open the doors. Pushing the button in, or, the manual override - where you pull the handle out in a more traditional movement (twice). There’s also a manual physical release in the exterior too. I agree, it does confuse new passengers, but most get the hang of it eventually….

I would encourage you to try the Lexus voice recognition & commands. Means you don’t need to look at or tap anything, if you’re in CarPlay with audio there, it’ll happily accept e.g. “play Times Radio on DAB radio” or “play Heart UK on DAB radio”.

Exiting CarPlay should only add two extra touches - menu and Lexus button.

I’m not quite as pessimistic about the medium-term EV market, but, if you think Ed “no more oil” Miliband is going to relax EV targets… I have a bridge to sell you!

I said this in the other thread in the price cuts… This is the ZEV effect. 22% of cars that manufacturers register and sell this year must be zero emission vehicles, or they get fined £15k per vehicle they are short. For the first couple of years of the zero emission mandate, manufacturers can get one credit for selling an EV (nice and simple) and also earn partial credits for lowering their average fleet co2 (very complex formula). PHEVs (plug-in hybrids) have much lower co2 emissions under the testing regime (a quarter or less of a hybrid car) and so are a great way for Lexus to earn partial credits by significantly lowering their fleet emissions, and not get fined £15k per car. Before these price cuts, Lexus had been offering much larger PCP deposits and lower interest rates on its EVs and PHEVs, compared to the offers on their normal hybrids. It meant their PHEVs worked out roughly the same (or less) to purchase new than a hybrid. At the start of July, Lexus only reduced the prices of their EVs and PHEVs (450h+ models) but didn’t reduce the standard 350h hybrids. They also still have better EV and PHEV PCP offers - so this is clearly about dissuading standard hybrid purchases. Earning a bit less money on sales is clearly preferable to paying ridiculously large fines!

This is the ZEV effect. 22% of cars that manufacturers register and sell this year must be zero emission vehicles, or they get fined £15k per vehicle they are short. For the first couple of years of the zero emission mandate, manufacturers can get one credit for selling an EV (nice and simple) and also earn partial credits for lowering their average fleet co2 (very complex formula). PHEVs (plug-in hybrids) have much lower co2 emissions under the testing regime (a quarter or less of a hybrid car) and so are a great way for Lexus to earn partial credits by significantly lowering their fleet emissions, and not get fined £15k per car. Before these price cuts, Lexus had been offering much larger PCP deposits and lower interest rates on its EVs and PHEVs, compared to the offers on their normal hybrids. It meant their PHEVs worked out roughly the same (or less) to purchase new than a hybrid. At the start of July, Lexus only reduced the prices of their EVs and PHEVs (450h+ models) but didn’t reduce the standard 350h hybrids. They also still have better EV and PHEV PCP offers - so this is clearly about dissuading standard hybrid purchases. Earning a bit less money on sales is clearly preferable to paying ridiculously large fines!