Rx330: Acceleration Lag Revisited

[scoobie]

Scenario: you're in line to make a left turn, by the time you're almost to the intersection, the light turns yellow, so you do what most drivers do, speed up to the middle of the intersection, slow down to make the turn, then accelerate to get out of the way.

With any other car, this scene plays out without a hitch, as this exact scenario occurs countless times in any given day. With an RX330, be prepared for an unpleasant surprise, when you need to accelerate during a sharp turn (as in the case here of trying to beat the yellow), the usual sub-second lag is stretched to about 2 seconds, so by the time the engine finally revs up, you've already finished the turn by coasting.

To sum it up, in a sharp turn, you have absolutely no power control during the last half of the maneuver, this must be how it feels to be caught with your pants down. From now on I would make a conscious effort to drive "soccor mom" style, I'd recommend others to do the same. This car has some safety issues when not driven 'by the book'.

[PizzaTurtle]

It is indeed annoying. Now by reading your post, it does remind me a few instances of the same scenario happened with my 05 330. I wasn't giving too much thought of those instances as I thought it might be just me not familiar with the car (we just got it for a couple months, and mostly driven by my wife).

A while back I used to own a Toyota Tercel and one of the things I was impressed was the smooth transmission, which was much smoother than any other good brands including Honda. Initially I found that the smoothness happened to 330 too during typical speed up and slow down. But when slowing down and suddenly speeding up again, the acceleration lagging happened quite obviously. I don't konw if it is because the AWD involvement that made up the hesitation.....

It might just be the answer why new 400h has the Electronically-controlled Continuously Variable Transmission (ECVT) now.....