Testing the 2020 RX350 for MPG and Nav Response

[Les Lex 2018]

Shell gas just jumped up to 3.09 a gallon Saturday. So I decided to take a Sunday morning drive to Guntersville Lake on a full tank to test actual gas milage and check the nav system in the 2020.  Two alternate routes of identical time and distance showed up on Google maps.

 

Voice command to a Mac Donalds address was accepted immediately, following an announcement that it was going to the iCloud to get more accurate information.  But it was not the route I wanted to take going there due to traffic concerns.  As soon as I deviated from the route, the nav started chattering for 5 long miles trying to get me to turn around, when my old Garmin would have immediately re-planned for the alternate route, as it has in the past.  Now that’s a Lexus BUG to me.

 

Coming home, while 30 miles left to go, the nav indicated that I would arrive in 41 minutes. And I still had a thousand foot climb over Green Mountain to make.  Well, I got home at the exact same time it predicted.  That was amazing to  me.

 

Now for MPG:  At 84 miles and 30 miles remaining, the mpg finally hit 30 MPG. That’s after climbing over the thousand foot high Sand mountain on the trip over. Speeds on secondary roads did NOT reach over 60 MPH.  By the time I got to the top of Green Mountain, the 30 MPG average dropped to 28.4 average and did not recover driving thru Huntsville even though most of which was interstate. That’s about 4 gallons of gas burned on the trip -- Not too bad...

 

[Les Lex 2018]

2020 MPG computer test = Failed

Topped off the RX with 5.9 gallons after driving 140.4 miles on the trip meter.  MPG registered on the dash was 25.9 MPG. After doing the calculation, actual MPG was 23.7 MPG. That’s off by 10 percent.  So when it registered 30 MPG midway on the trip, it was actually 27.  Being a true combination of highway and city driving, the MPG should have Been 25 MPG, so we didn’t make the advertised government posted/tested MPG.  I don’t have a led foot either. I did this same test on a Camry Hybrid and the stated MPG was a heck of a lot closer to actual than this RX. Now, I can automatically read the MPG, move the decimal point to the left one place and subtract that from the displayed MPG. Your actual results will likely vary!

[Les Lex 2018]

Correction on line 4:  the MPG should be 23 MPG combined, and not 25 MPG.

Result: The 2020 did meet Government tested milage. Only the computer estimation was off.