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New Lexus RX 400h Owners - Give Us Your Report
Congratulations on your new RX 400h! This is the place to give us your first impressions!
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Any way, I have not driven it yet and will not have much opportunity since it is my wife's car. I did drive the Dealer test model a few days earlier and it is impressive. I will borrow it at every opportunity, that is for sure. If anyone has questions, please feel free to fire away.
Hope your wife loves it and look forward to hearing more about her adventures!
What speed were you traveling at on the highway? did you fluctuate speeds (as Lexus recommends), or were you on cruise?
I found that higher speeds kill the mpg...
Headless
The more I drive, the more I realize that the hybrid really isn't that great...I'm thinking to myself 'big deal.'...what am I really getting? More power at a few mpg better...all for a lot more money...and, to maximize the benefits, I'm going to have to drive a 'certain' way...sure takes the fun out of driving...glad I kept my BMW as a sports ride!
I'm honestly questioning if the wait was worth it...not so sure...not a convinced or happy Lexus owner up to this point in time...
Headless
I find the braking a bit odd...it's what charges the batteries, so it's not your normal brake "feel". Bluetooth means I can keep my Motorola V551 in my purse and use the handsfree -- the navigation system is easy to learn (I am a computer idiot so that's saying something).
My salesperson spent two hours showing me every function on the car. I never put my name on a waiting list; went on to edmunds.com, sent emails to dealers, spoke on the phone and three days later got my car fully loaded without any markup, paying MSRP.
I am VERY happy with the mileage and handling of the car...have almost 500 miles on the odo and plan to keep this one a long time. I'd be happy to answer any questions now that I've plodded through my two inch thick owner's manual and all.....
My combined city/highway average has been 19+ mpg.
I will be getting my RX400h next month and am confident that I will meet the expected mpg.
Happy driving
Yesterday, I took it to Boston and back for a little shakedown cruise. I averaged about 24MPG indicated on the way up at 75-80mph which crept up to 25.3MPG in traffic at the end of the drive (26.5mpg calculated at fillup, but that was my first tank, and the factory may have put in a little fuel in addition to the dealer's full tank). That's fster than the "high speed" train I usually take. Going home, also at 75-80mph, I averaged about 26MPG indicated, creeping up to 27.2MPG at the end of the drive in traffic again. I am very pleased with those numbers, and I expect them to improve more. If I can find an empty road, and enough patience, I will take a drive at 55mph and see what she does. Should beat the EPA number with a stick, since I am basically there already at 75+mph on a new engine.
A few observations:
Cruise control seems important. The cars seems to use the engine more smoothly under cruise. I also carefully observed an interesting algorithm. With the cruise on, the car holds speed pretty accurately, but when you crest a hill and the engine turns off to coast, the cruise allows the car to coast down 5mph before restarting the engine and accelerating back to the set speed. Furthermore, while it is coasting down, it runs the electric motor only (warp stealth) to try to maintain speed as long as possible before restarting the engine. Smart. I had assumed that I could do better than any cruise system by anticipating hills and blending the speed, but this is not just a dumb setpoint only cruise control.
The kW power guage is great, all cars should have them, it tells you something really useful. It also lets you see regenerative braking. During break-in, I am keeping the needle below 50 kW, max 100kW, and it is still pretty quick, I can't wait to punch it. It should peg at 200kW, anyone done this?
In city driving, the battery will run down to two bars, which turn red (sort of magenta). I have not seen this in the limited, but careful Prius driving I have done. Perhaps the battery usage map is more aggressive?
The drivetrain power and braking takes a little getting used to. But I feel comfortable with it already.
All the regular Lexus stuff is great, auto headlights, auto wipers, really good navigation system, comfortable and quiet.
I assume, and hope, that the extreme of the negative end of the scale is the maximum regenerative braking possible under ideal conditions so I use the gauge to stay in regenerative braking, middle of the dark blue to be safe. Early gentle braking is the rule, and this gives you a measure to train yourself. You can also hear the regenerative braking (a combination of gear whine and electrical hum that sounds like the Mellenium Falcon).
On the power side, it is like combining a tachometer, a throttle position sensor, and an engine power map to let you know at any time the power actually being sent to the wheels. This can help you to know when you are using high power levels, although that tends to be obvious from the acceleration, but it will also tell you how much power you have left at any condition. I am using it for the break in period to limit power, so I don't know yet what it tells me about high power conditions . I am sure that I will find other uses.
1kW=1.34hp so the 100kW on the gauge is 134hp, and 200 kW is 268hp, the max power rating of the car (engine is rated at 208hp, electric makes up the rest). When the engine is under computer control and augmented by batteries, they can arbitrarily limit the power output to 200kW.
It would seem to me that another benefit of being able to monitor the output of your engine is that if it is unable to reach its peak rated output, it is an indication of potential mechanical problems. This could come in very handy as a quick test of the health of the powertrain when buying a used one, for example if it can only muster 175 kW when matted rather than 200 kW.
Out of curiosity, are Lexus' claims of 200 kW maximum output accurate for those who own one? Is the meter accurate?
The phone: My RZR and my wife's V551 sync perfectly with the car. You can only input a number with the car stopped. Hit the info button and the keypad will appear. You may also for some odd reason access the keypad with the dest. key if you go to PAGE 2.
I am getting about 24 mph on short city drives.. This is my wife's car and it has not been on the road yet. We have 750 miles.
I like the fact the car is not that different than the 330 but have ordered custom plate hyybrd (all the other Virginia choices are taken).
I paid just under $50,000 at Flow Lexus in Greensboro, NC and have heated seats, wheel locks, cargo net and no dvd.
I do love the GPS and the rear TV as visibility is limited in the rear view.
I like the build quality (I drive a new E 320) and think it is as good or better than my Mercedes.
I am a little sorry the in town MPG is not higher on short trips and think the car should have come with mp3 player.
Look forward to more comments from other owners
It is NOT safe to put the Rx330 rims (chromed or not) onto the RX400h because of the higher loads the 400h will place on them. The 400h is heavier and delivers A LOT more toruqe.
The difference is that the 330 rims are smooth on the outside of the spokes, while the 400 are dimpled or recessed in appearance.
There is a letter from Corporate somewhere on this site that spells out the the dealerships that they are NOT to substitute the rims.
It is NOT safe to put the Rx330 rims (chromed or not) onto the RX400h because of the higher loads the 400h will place on them. The 400h is heavier and delivers A LOT more toruqe.
The difference is that the 330 rims are smooth on the outside of the spokes, while the 400 are dimpled or recessed in appearance.
There is a letter from Corporate somewhere on this site that spells out the the dealerships that they are NOT to substitute the rims."
I'll check them out, thanks for the heads up!
As far as sunroofs go, I wouldn't buy a car without one. I love the light it brings into the car and mine is almost always at least popped up. Whenever I park, living in California where it's hot in the summer, I always leave it popped open to keep it from getting too hot inside. Early mornings or evenings it's wonderful. My husband, though, won't get one in his cars because he is tall and they do impinge on headroom. But he does appreciate it in my car. I open mine all the way often, except when it's cooking hot out or on the freeway. Occasionally we'll even do that with all the windows down, too. The kids love that.
My results on a 212 mile interval, which included about 20 miles around town, were 28.9 mpg! I was very surprised with the relatively high figures after seeing so many 23-24 numbers. A few things I've noticed -- 1) laying your foot into it from a standing start costs a lot more than I would have guessed (ie - many miles to nurse the mpg's back!), 2) the passing acceleration is great!, and 3) running the A/C hard at highway speed seems to cost about 1-2 mpg.
If I had to guess, I think my mileage would drop to ~24-25mpg if I start using the car's power and drive like I would in my other cars. Overall, I'm really happy so far. The only thing I've found a bit odd is that the electric-assist steering is a little heavy at highway speed, even compared to German cars. And....there's no excuse for not having the ability to either play mp3 cd's or connect an iPod. Other than that, perfect score so far...
SUVs -- you've come a long way baby!
I do have a question for you. I have about 200 miles on my car so far and averaging 24 mpg with mixed driving, mostly city. Is there a break in period after which I might see an mpg improvement? 24 mpg is certainly respectable for this type of vehicle, but I expected something closer to 26+ mpg.
Thanks again!
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/fe_test_schedules.shtml
I was rather surprised by some aspects of the profiles especially the "highway" profile. I have always equated "highway" with "freeway." I had read that the EPA highway test was for a speed of 60 MPH wihch seemed reasonable given most freeways being somewhere between 55 and 65 MPH speed limit now. It turns out that the actual profile is more for something like what I would drive on a non-freeway country highway. It just touches a 60 MPH peak speed a couple of times and the average speed is surprisingly low: 48 MPH - much slower than one will usually be going on an uncongested freeway.
The city profile is less surprising, but it doesn't represent the driving I'm usually doing when not on a highway/freeway. It looks like pretty urban city driving rather than the typical California more suburban city driving. For some reason they have two pulses of high speed (56 MPH) - the first one I think is just to get the engine warmed up because it is a fairly short test, not sure why the second one is there. Then most of the test goes between stopped and 25-35 MPH. 40 -45 MPH would be more typical for the main surface streets around where I live. With 23 stops (about one every half mile), the average speed is 20 MPH.
The tests don't seem to represent typical driving. My freeway driving is typically much faster than the "highway" test. Non-freeway driving around here is generally somewhere between the city and highway tests - stops a bit less frequent than the city test and average speeds considerably higher.
Given the way the tests are done, it isn't surpising when our actual fuel mileage is different from the EPA numbers. Actually, when I look at the EPA test profiles it surprising to me that I get as close to the EPA numbers as I do. Freeway (~65 mph) I'm generally seeing around 27 MPG (or 26 when the AC is having to blast). Suburban surface streets, MPG varies more than on the freeway. Depending on AC load, traffic, speed, lights and hills plus how aggressively I'm driving, I see anything between 24 and 32 MPG. When conditions are just right, I've even seen high 30's. I've been getting 26 to 27 MPG over a tank which has included a fair amount of AC.
Other factors:
short trips. There is a mileage penalty for running with a cold engine in all cars, but the mileage meter makes it obvious. When I do a lot of short (<10 minutes of driving) errands, mileage gets pulled down - 24 MPG wouldn't be unusual.
AC. In my driving seems to cost between 1 and 2 MPG when it has to run hard. In heavy traffic it could cost even more (not going many miles but the AC still runs).
Of the two dealers we visited none had any 400h available for immediate delivery but felt depending on color choice we could have a car sometime in the next one to six weeks. None would discuss discounting, but one suggested as soon as they had more than a 30 day supply in stock, which could happen soon, we could expect limited discounting.
Again I would appreciate names of which dealers you visited. If you have name of salesperson who has stock and is discounting that would be even better.
I then went out and drove on a number of flat local roads, and I'm convinced the alignment is OK. In a parking lot,for example, I can release the wheel and the car will go dead straight without any noticeable pull.
My conclusion is that the 400h steering system is "different". It feels like the electric boost or "centering power" is unsufficient at highway speed, or stated another way, that the front end is overly-sensitive to camber in the road. I noticed that letting go of the wheel on a slightly pitched road, even at very low speed, results in a fairly rapid turn -- more so than any of my other cars.
The effect does feel like misalignment to me, but it occurs in both directions depending on road camber.
In the end, I've decided it's a bit annoying, but certainly not a driveability or safety issue. I just feel like I notice small differences in road camber much more. When driving on windy roads, I notice nothing at all. On cambered straight roads, I feel the effect almost constantly...