Jim1977

I agree Paul. For a 2 car household I think the best route is a nice EV like the Lexus UX as the daily driver. Then a hybrid for those times you need to go out of range from home charging. The best of both worlds. I can’t imagine going back to an engine day to day, after 6 plus years of EV driving it’s just a more pleasant experience. Short range EV’s are getting pretty cheap (relatively) now. But for a one car household that need to do long trips it would have to be a PHEV I think, or an EV and hire a car as you say 👍 A Genesis Gv60 / Kia EV6 / Hyundai Ioniq 5, with their 800v charging, would make long trips ok, or the Tesla route with the supercharging network, but as we need two cars the EV and hybrid route works best.

What efficiency are you seeing in miles per kWh? If you multiply your recent average by the useable capacity of your battery you will know your true range. 152 sounds low, but if your battery is 64kWh useable, that would suggest 2.4 miles per kWh efficiency. That is quite believable at this time of year depending on driving style and use of heating. Driving style makes a big difference with an EV as it does a hybrid. My wife likes to just drive our Ux300e, and tends to get about 2.8 miles per kWh (lighter car). When I drive it I can get well into the 3’s and have even seen over 4 on a few trips. We are seeing a real 135-145 miles range from a useable 45kWh battery at the minute. It seems Kia / Hyundai / Genesis / Tesla have EV efficiency other brands can only dream of. Our last EV was a Kia and over 4 years the average efficiency was 4.7 miles per kWh.

Yes at this time of year I would say 100-140 range and summer probably 160-200. If you’d like more info on the Reflex process, Jonathan Porterfield on YouTube did a video recently about the buying of my car, you’ll see the grey UX with me standing with it on the video thumbnail. He ran the company for years as EcoCars.net, but has retired and now acts as the consultant and social media side for Reflex Orkney. Feel free to ask any questions about the process if it pans out to be an option for them.

Does it have to be the hybrid or would they consider the UX300e electric version? You mention their budget of sub £20,000. I bought a 2021 UX300e Takumi, sub 10,000 miles, immaculate, in October for £19,500. The long and short is that the 300e has a Chademo rapid charger, rather than CCS, and that is like having a Betamax video player vs a VHS. This appears to have hammered the used prices. This would have been a £54,000 car new. If their useage case means they would never, or rarely, need to use the rapid charger (like me) it is otherwise fantastic and can be had cheaper than an equivalent hybrid. Actually all 3 of our EV’s were Chademo and there are still loads of them around, the Nissan Leaf also still comes with Chademo. The original Kia Soul EV and Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV also have it. So with so many cars on the road Chademo support will be around for years. But the market has still decided on the used prices. I used the Reflex Orkney / Ecocars buy to order at auction scheme, have bought my last 2 EV’s from them. I’m in Leicestershire but they deliver from the auction house to you.

Our UX looked like the leather had never been cleaned by the previous owner in 2 years! There were a few black scuffs too which I thought would be permanent, but the Dr Leather stuff has got the seats looking like new. All marks gone, nice and matt. The water was dirty when I washed the new micro fibre cloths I had used, a lot of grime had been removed!

Good idea, I wonder if this is just a London centric issue, or national.

Hi all We have a Takami UX300e, with ash white interior. I have just cleaned the seats and everything else white with Dr Leather cleaner and then stain block. But the tops of the door cards, some dash areas and the console side pads are black. Are these areas black faux leather, like the seats (to be cleaned with said leather cleaner), or are they just soft touch plastic and should be cleaned with a regular interior trim cleaner, eg diluted Surfex HD from Bilt Hamber? Thanks

If they need to get into the wheel arch lining, I wonder if parking on left lock impairs their efforts at all? If you look at the mud flap fitting instructions you will see how the plastic wheel arch cladding are attached to the lining and body underneath, I also wonder if there is any facility to replace the plastic plugs with security head screws. Anything to deter them from bothering…..

Hi all Considering a used NX300h, 2018- facelift. We like the Ash White seats in our recently bought used UX300e, but looking at used stock can only see cream, red or black leather for the NX. Does anyone know if a whiter leather was ever offered in later years? I can see the Sport model could be had with white dash inserts and bolsters. Am I missing any other trim levels with white please? Listing photos can be misleading and make cream look white, so it’s hard to tell without the original MY brochures. Thanks for any advice

No problem Don, that’s understandable. Are they now rims only, you mentioned about swapping out your all season tyres? I was intending to replace the stock tyres for cross climates in due course. The tyres have decent tread on them but surprised how cracked they are for being only 2 years old.

The original’s on the Takumi look like this. Both pics above would be the news ones before and after fitting

Looks good Don. Are you selling on the original 5 spokes? Our used Takumi car came with both fronts a little kerbed by the previous owner. Could live with them, but have been checking on eBay for clean replacements to see if it’s economical to swap vs refurb (or just live with). Thanks Jim

I plug it into the centre console under the arm rest. I leave a short USB lead permanently plugged into the USB socket in there, so the phone gets plugged into that rather than the one built into the car (on the basis it’s easier to replace the lead than a worn out port in the car). All tucked out the way in there. Everything on my phone is Apple Lossless ripped from my CD collection. It may be that you can now download in lossless format too, but not looked into that. Originally I had all my music on an IPod Classic 160GB, but when the hard drive failed I stuck the music on the phone instead, and was surprised how much better everything sounded. The DAC in the phone must be better, that’s all I can think.

Hi Paul I’ve been using IPhone with lossless files to wired CarPlay. Have you tried adjusting the balance of the speakers. I read it sounds better when you move the “dot” to be central in the car, but just behind the front seats. I tried that and it did sound better. I also tweaked the sliders for treble bass etc.

Thanks Charles, that’s very kind of you, we’re in east Leicestershire, towards Oakham, so not that far. I’m garaging the car at the minute, while it’s cold, so will probably hang fire until after Christmas. As a first time Lexus owner, and newbie to this forum, have to say what a great group on here, really helpful and much appreciated 👍

Thanks Don, and thanks also to your neighbour, much appreciated both 👍

Gary, I think the Disklok is meant to be a bit harder to get off, but it may just be semantics between the two types. As you say, if they really want the car, and probably intend to strip it for parts, they are not going to care about cutting the wheel. It’s just that visual deterrent to hopefully stop the opportunist or steer the pro thief to a quicker softer target.

That would be brilliant, thank you

As above, has any tried to fit a Disklok to their UX? Looking at the clearances between the regen paddles and indicator stalks, I’m not 100% one would fit. Any experience please before I purchase one? Thanks

Thank you, we bought new pouches when the car arrived a few weeks ago. The old ones still worked but have read they can fail over time with wear. Standing next to the car, with the key in the pouch and my hand on the door handle, nothing happens as you’d hope. I only had to open the flap on the pouch and the car opened. Useful info about the double locking 👍

Wow, I guess if they really want it there is no stopping them. Diskloc advice gratefully received 👍

Think I’m going to get a steering wheel lock, 1990’s style! Keys already live in a faraday pouch, in a metal tin, in the hope this prevents a relay attack. Does double locking the car rather than just pressing the door handle once make any difference to defence against these attacks? As for attacks which target the ECU, short of disconnecting the 12v battery I can’t think how you could defend against that. A steering lock is the best I can think of, as a visual deterrent that there are easier pickings elsewhere. Disk lock or bar lock? thoughts? Also, if your car gets nicked, would you be able to see where it is via the Lexus Link+ app journey history?

We’re getting 2.7 at the minute, so about 120 miles true range. This is the same range we got from our Soul EV with its 30kWh battery, so the Lexus drinks about 15kWh more to cover the same distance. Given the cost of overnight leccy it is nothing to worry about, £1 charge more, for a lovely car. In summer when the lack of heat pump doesn’t come into play, I expect the Lexus will well exceed the possible range of the Kia, which topped out at about 145 miles. The lifetime trip of the Kia over 4 years was 4.7 miles per kWh. Hoping to get an average of around 3.5 from the UX…

Thanks Ed, think I have seen you on Speak EV too. It’s daft that the GOM doesn’t learn. As you say, the Leaf did and our Soul did too. Not a massive deal as miles per kWh tells you what you need to know really. Surely Lexus hybrid cars GOM learns from previous tanks, so why the EV would be different who knows? Would be an easy software update I guess, wonder how you make suggestions to them! I can’t see that in the Lexus Link+ app, have you got the original Lexus Link? Maybe they removed the feature on the new app… Thanks

Thanks Paul, yes there is the rolling trip efficiency on the display, which is your cumulative efficiency. I like to keep this trip going to see efficiency over a full year. What I’m interested in seeing is the trip efficiency of every journey. In our Kia Soul I could scroll back through every journey and see the efficiency. Your question about miles per kWh has been well covered below, it is the EV equivalent of mpg and is the one figure you need to know to predict your range. Eg, if you have a 45kWh battery and your efficiency is 3 miles per kWh, multiply 3 by 45 and you get your true range.