Lexus GS 450h MPG-Real World Numbers
With the price of gas being what it is, your real world mileage is becoming more important than the estimates on the sticker. This is the place to talk about your real world on the road results!
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what the best mpg is that you can get?
20 or so, if you are driving it hard?
How do you do on a typical 70 mph highway commute?
How is it in your typical driving? (i.e. normal around town, mixed with commute- your "normal" conditions)
Also - sure the rear-wheel drive is no bargain in the northeast, esp. with extra power of the el">link titleectric motor(s).
We have a 400h too and it does a little better in the city but not as well on the highway.
I'm curious how it does on an 75 mph commute
as well as around town (seems like that is 21-24)
and how is it on a 65 mph commute?
The 450h was designed purely for performance purposes, not MPG. It is a 6 with the power of an 8 cylinder engine. It fits into the same category as the Hybrid Accord (except that the 450h is a luxury vehicle, where the Accord is a normal vehicle).
The vehicle was not intended to get good gas mileage. Good MPG takes a 4 cylinder engine tuned for the Atkinson cycle, which does not support high performance such as Lexus requires.
I'd be thrilled with 22 mpg around town, if I could get 35 on the freeway at 75 or so
especially at the luxury and driving level that the GS provides
Can I get 40 mpg at 65?
Can someone please provide thse numbers and burst my bubble so I can stop oining for a GSH?
:-)
If you're about to drop $60k on a GS450h, you must care about both luxury & performance as well as the environment & energy conservation. If you only cared about the former, you'd be buying a 430, and the latter, you'd be in a Prius.
I think the 450h is a terrific blend, and worth the extra several thousand for a great car that, if it catches on, may help move the industry in the direction of more innovative solutions like this one. Engineering should allow us to have our cake and eat it too.
I have solar (electric) panels on my roof
and a great hot tub
Yup, and the 450h will get better MPG than a similar class non-hybrid vehicle. But not in the same class as a Camry hybrid.
The same thing happened with the Highlander Hybrid and RX400h; people read the title "hybrid" and expected Prius-like MPG. It doesn't happen that way.
Thanks.
How did you end up with used one with 2,000 miles? Dissatisfied customer? I just got mine (have only just over 100 miles) and couldn't imagine giving it up...
I am reasonably pleased with my mileage and have also seen about a 5% improvement since the car was new (I now have 4,200 miles), but I am not seeing results like you are.
My typical tank average is about 25mpg. I've gotten as high as 28mpg, but only when on a long highway trip driving ~70mph. I use 93 octane fuel, drive more city than highway, up/down some large hills during a mostly local roads daily commute and mixed driving on weekends. 90% of the time I'm not exploiting the car's performance, but rather am driving for maximum economy by coasting to red lights, not accelerating hard from a stop and trying to run as long on the electric motor as possible.
cars like the 450H without a hybrid get, what?, maybe 16 mpg? The 450H ain't no Camry, if you get my point. To get this much performance and get 20 mpg is quite an achivement. Tons of people buy this much performance and get 15 mpg and are happy about that!!
The fuel savings by itself is not a reason for buying a Lexus hybrid. It's a performance car and an excellent one. It's different in the sense that one isn't driving but piloting. It's a "drive by wire" car analogous to piloting a jet fighter (" fly by wire" by necessity since the old mechanical linkages wiould be impossible). Your fuel savings may be lower but still significant the more you emulate being a jet fighter pilot.
Economy vs. performance is definitely the right way to measure this car, and on that account it's a winner. My 2001 530i got better highway mileage, but didn't come close in power/speed.
I think the 450H is a great car. I wish every BMW 7-series buyer would buy one of those. The planet would be better off, by a small margin, I admit.
I wish Toyota would make something nifty that got 30 mpg. I am being forced to buy a Camry Hybrid, which isn't as sporty as I would like. I'd love an IS hybrid. Or a Camry Solara hybrid. That would be sweet.
but it looks like a TCH for me. :-(
You should at least test drive the Honda Accord Hybrid. It really zips, but I have also seen people getting over 30 MPG in this car (when driven correctly).
I think the Accord is great, but I want something a bit nicer.
Of course, it didn't help to drive a car that had plastic wrap over all the seats, etc. I guess they need to keep them wrapped up nice in case they need to trade them to another dealer, but it does make for less of a driving experience.
I read a while back in a Wired magazine article that there's a wide range of performance/economy trade-offs that can be made and that the technology is not that complex. Toyota hardwires this today by making the Camry so much more efficient than the GS (ignoring for this argument the performance differences in the gas engine).
A previous poster commented that the GS doesn't fully exploit its battery power because it's designed to keep a large amount in reserve to respond to demands for fast acceleration. It would be logical to let the driver make this choice depending on one's driving style at any given moment.
Maybe Toyota's working on this for the next generation?
Finally let me make this statement: Don't buy a car you don't understand.
Finally let me make this statement: Don't buy a car you don't understand.
Actually, it appears that you didn't understand BMWconvert's suggestion. The GS "button" doesn't switch the car between a "performance - 25 mpg mode" and an "economy - 40 mpg mode" - that's what BMWconvert is looking for. It's a nice idea, though not sure if it's feasible.
It would be cool if the Camry Hybrid had a button you could push that would add performance/sportiness but compromise MPG (i.e. 30 mpg when you want to impress certain friends), and then normal mode would give you 40 mpg, but a bit pokier (to impress my granola-crunching buddies)
and if none of us could drive vehicles unless we understood them, I think 99% of us would be walking
But that is just the point - you can't ignore the engines. The Camry has an Atkinson cycle 2.4L engine, and that engine with the weight of the Camry could not easily go into a "Sport" mode; there simply isn't enough power in the battery to provide the extra thrust on a constant basis. You would run out of "juice", forcing the engine to run continuously, further dropping MPG. I suspect it might do about the same MPG as an I4 Camry (or worse).
The GS has a large engine, and you can't produce Camry-like MPG with the GS weight class and that many cylinders. I think it even uses the Otto cycle instead of Atkinson.
Hybrid technology has the capability of allowing a smaller motor to perform like a larger motor. So there is a design choice to be made - power or economy? The Honda Accord Hybrid, and the Toyota HH, RX400, and GS chose power at the expense of economy. The Camry, Prius, and Civic chose economy at the expense of more power.
The other problem to consider is - which setting would the EPA use to test fuel efficiency? My guess goes to the "fast" setting, to indicate worst case. All of the manufacturors are interested in upping their corporate MPG. So having "sport" modes on the engine (even if it were possible) would not be useful to the automakers.
For example, how about letting the electric motor run to 30mph instead of 20mph as it is now? A little tweak or two like that would probably add up. It would hardly take reengineering the whole thing. It's just a different setting in the control systems. I'd use the economy for commuting and switch to the performance when I want to enjoy the ride.
There's precedent for this with normal/sport suspension settings and the normal/sport switch on the automatic transmissions of many luxury and sports cars.
If it had been possible to allow the electric motor to run longer, Toyota would have done it. They were restricted as to the size of the battery. Consider that Toyota is interested in maximum MPG, just as much as you are.
Toyota optimizes the HSD for the vehicle implementation. The GS was designed for power and comfort, with slightly better MPG than an equivalent ICE only car.
exactly (although I had heard that the 450H compared to even more powerful sport sedans, but your numbers are more conservative, so better for any analytical discussion)
there is this mythology that the GS450H gets bad mpg, since it doesn't get 40 mpg
The GS is not comparable to any other car that gets over 25 mpg. It is comparable to cars that get 15 mpg, 20 at best
no, it is not going to save the world from OPEC
but if everyone that bought a 15 mpg gas burning performance sedan bought the GS450H instead, we'd have a 50% (at least) increase in fuel efficiency in that segment, and that ain't bad
I guess we could do better if we simply outlawed the entire segment. I have no interest in that sort of approach, however, nor do the great majority of American drivers, I would bet.
But, most important to me is that this car is really fun to drive and it is a green luxury!
1) Switch the engine from six to three cylinders when in "economy" mode,
2) Let the battery discharge more than is needed for performance when in "economy" mode. (Recharging of the battery would rely more on braking and less on the engine. Which, of course, leaves less battery reserves for the take off but should result in higher city MPG.)
3) Reduce the power of the electric motor by only engaging a portion of the motor coil. Less power = higher efficiency.
Toyota created an amazing machine and I am not criticizing the car at all. It would just be fun to have the switch that others have suggested. And there are ways to do it that would work. Think outside of the box that Toyota built.
Thank you, flid. I consider that very high praise.
Congrats on your new car. You've made almost a 100% improvement in your fuel economy. That's a pretty nice statement.
I am not one of those environmentalists that criticizes anyone who doesn't drive a 50 mpg vehicle (or anyone who drives anything), and I am pretty hard core in my environmental beliefs. If we could get every car owner to make SOME positive adjustment (like yours), we could have a real impact on our country's energy independence, and have a positive impact on our local and global environment.
Now how can we get you to turn off the air conditioning in your 5,000 square foot house, once in a while? ;-)
"I have heard about a performance vs. economy switch. An executive from Toyota was talking about it several months ago. Then, I gave a call to an engineer at Toyota who tossed aside those comments as marketing hype, saying that it's not nearly so easy. The entire system needs to be built to support a certain level of performance/efficiency, and you can't simply switch from one to another, with adding a ton more complexity and cost. That's all I know."
In line with prior comments. I thought it would good in theory, but real world engineering issues are another story.
YMMV. Driving style has much more influence on a Hybrid than an conventional car. Does the average GS owner wish to "baby" the vehicle to get maximum MPG?
Is that really true?
My primary ride is not a hybrid. Depending on how I drive it, I can get 21 on the highway or 24.5 on the highway. That's a pretty significant difference. And I'm not talking about driving 80 versus driving 55. I'm talking about the difference between rapid acceleration and gentle acceleration (and operating at 70 versus 80) The difference in my commute time is probably 1 minute, and I get there less stressfully. It's been eye opening for me. I should have started this practice ten years ago.
The average GS owner likely has at least some desire to get good mpg, or he would have bought a different car. He could get the same performance but much worse mpg had he bought something else. But he chose to buy the H, for some reason. Not saying he is gonna baby it at every turn, but he might baby it on occasion (as I am with my non-hybrid)
I'm not yet at 3000 miles but the average mpg over the car's lifetime has moved up to 28 mpg. It's not unexpected because the tank average mpg consistently stays above 28 mpg.
I mentioned in a prior post the S mode that is on the gearshift. The S mode lets the transmission mimic a six speed. I have never used it. If one has a stick shift, one knows to keep the car in the highest gear to improve fuel efficiency. It might be possible with the S mode to do something similar to increase mpg.
From what I've learned, the reason they do this is because NiMH batteries lose efficiency when they are fully charged and discharged over time - so it works great to start with, but the batteries gradually lose charge-recharge ability and therefore massively decrease the life of the battery and fairly quickly reduce performance.
Li-ion on the other hand, take full recharge/discharge cycles without any real problems, but they have a fixed number of cycles before the die completely - think of a 2-3 year old cellphone or laptop, the battery suddenly stops holding as much charge and you have to replace it.
For the plug-in Prius, this apparently means you get a couple of years of extreme economy, and then need to replace the battery pack.
According to an interview with Toyota engineers I read, this is why they haven't pursued plug-ins - the battery technology is not there to support it for the 8-10 year life they need to get on the batteries. At least not yet, there's a lot of research going on into batteries, so the problem should resolve over time.
What I've wondered about is leaving the NiMH batteries in place, and supplementing with Li-Ion that plugs in with a suitable micro-controller to feed from the Li-Ion batterines into the NiMH pack - which would allow you to use the battery for longer on full electric before the combined battery drops below the 30% mark that apparently triggers the engine to come on.
Of course, that would probably mean you'd lose most of the rest of the trunk space...
Don't have a product for the GS450h yet, but do for the Prius and Escape - if you're interested, I suggest you e-mail them at info@hymotion.com to let them know there is a market for it. Cost is about $10K and will significantly increase MPG - you won't pay for the cost in gas savings, but the impact on the environment, particularly reduced greenhouse gas emissions would be significant.
Watch the kW dial and the tank average display (you have to put it on display) as you accelerate and notice what it's costing you. That will help you discern the situations where you may be wasting gas. Also are you using premium gasoline as specified? Still, I believe you're doing substantially better than an equivalent V8 powered model.