rexmiami

I had the problem develop at 49,000 miles and my dealer replaced the lift cylinders under warranty (Up to 50,000 miles).

A freind of mine went to a retreat some 800 miles from home in his GS-300AWD Lexus with "Remoteless Keyless Entry." Since this was a high security area all parking was valet ant the cars were put in a fenced area with 24 hour monitoring. The keys were left on the front seat with one window slightly open in case the car was accidentally locked. After four days when my freind tried to start his car the battery was completely dead. After a jump start many of the accesories would not work. Within a few minutes accesories like the audio systems began working while accesories like his electric windows , with exception of the driver's window, would not function. The window left slightly open was non-operational. It seems that the key was in constant contact with the car and thus drained the battery. Many of the computer functions had no memory and thus would not come online until the software was rebooted by a Lexus dealer. Obviously if you are home and your car is locked safely in your garage, be sure your remote key is not in close proximity or you may have the same bad experience.

I took delivery of my 400h on 6/3/05 so I have driven it during all 4 seasons. My mileage also droped about 2-3 mpg when the temperature droped below 50 degrees. I have not heard any official explanation from Lexus, but I think that as the temperature drops below 50 the engine runs more to keep the internal temperature at the proper level. Also the passenger heating system runs more often which uses more energy. Maybe next winter I put on my longjohns and drive with the heat off to see if I can boost the mpg.

I have now had my 400h for 1 full year. 15,608 miles driven. 597.564 gallons of fuel used for an average of 26.12 mpg. $1,556.76 total fuel cost at an average of $2.61/gallon. I live in the Seattle area where the summers are not real hot and the winters not too cool. I have taken 1 trip to South Lake Tahoe, 1 trip to Vancouver BC, and numerous trips to Portland. The rest of my driving is about 85% freeway and 15% city, which are short trips (a real mileage killer). Some observations: The mpg drops when the temperature drops below 50 degrees fahrenheit as it does when the temperature goes over 80. In the warmer months I can exceed 30 mpg driving to Portland if I keep my speed at 65 or below. The drop off is significant as the speed is increased. Maximizing coasting increases mpg while hard acceleration dramatically decreases mpg. I tried a few tanks of premium fuel, but did not notice any measurable change in mpg. Likewise when I switched to synthetic oil. I have two friends that drive the RX330 and I consistently get about 5 mpg better that they do. That is not enough to pay for the increase in price, but I am using less foreign oil and I like the fact that I meet the California emission standards. I did get some savings with the IRS allowable deduction. I have not experienced any problems like those in other posts. I had one occasion where I needed an emergency stop and the brake system worked flawlessly. I love my 400h and would not hesitate in buying it again. :)

My Lexuw ES300 was a front wheel drive and was much better in the snow than rear wheel drives. My RX300 was AWD and was excellent in the snow; much better than FWD. The AWD is different on my RX400h. The on board computer will decide when the rear AWD will activate by using the rear electric motor. We haven't had any snow in my area so I can't comment if there are any differences from my Rx300 AWD.

Interesting artilcle in the February issue of "Wired" Magazine. Maybe GM can save themselves by reverse engineering. The Teardown Artists First, buy the hottestnew car on the lot. Then rip it to pieces. Inside GM's chop shop, they take (apart) the competition very seriously. By Carl Hoffman A silver Lexus RX 400h hybrid SUV is suspended on a lift in a room the size of a soccer field at the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. It was purchased off the lot just a few days ago for $49,000, loaded, which seems a waste, since it's already a carcass. Mechanic John Klucka has removed its tires and engine and doors and seats and dashboard and, well, just about everything but a few wires and the windshield. "This is a complicated vehicle," he says, unbolting the engine from its frame, "and I've got no manual, so I'm taking it apart blind." Within a few weeks, GM engineers will unravel the Lexus' every secret - down to the weight and production cost of each nut and bolt - just as they've done with every other Toyota hybrid model. The latest Prius lies in on a table in the corner, gutted, tagged, and spread out like a frog in a high school biology lab. Toyotas aren't the only cars being disemboweled here at GM's Vehicle Assessment and Benchmarking Activity center. A 2006 Mercedes ML350 waits to be carved up with a handheld power saw. A VW Touareg is spread helter-skelter. Chryslers and Hondas and BMWs and Fords lie dismantled, their parts reduced to labels and data points: Cap ASM F/Tank Fil, 1 @ .068 kg. Switch ASM HTR w/bezel, 1 @ .174 kg. It's all part of the biggest open secret in Detroit: Automakers reverse engineer their opponents' newest and hottest vehicles in what's called a competitive teardown. "You wouldn't think there'd be any mysteries anymore," says auto industry analyst Lindsay Brooke. "But what used to be a closed club is now a ruthless global business. Suddenly you've got the Koreans undercutting the Japanese, and the Chinese about to undercut everyone. As much as you think you know," he says, "nothing beats picking up the parts, feeling them, weighing them, and knowing the processes that made them. Teardowns are part of a big cat-and-mouse game, and they're more important than ever." Radios. Seat cushions. Welds. Drive trains. Bumpers. Headliners. Every company wants to know exactly how its competitors' cars are put together and how much they cost to make so it can learn how to save money on parts, shed weight, and improve its manufacturing methods. Even more important, teardowns help executives make long-term strategic decisions. A teardown of the 2004 Prius two years ago helped sour GM on hybrid technology. The company is slowly rolling out hybrid trucks and buses, but it's focusing its innovation efforts on fuel cells. A full teardown takes about six weeks. First, mechanics measure the vehicle with a device called a 3-D vector arm, taking all of the car's inner and outer dimensions, like the bumper height and the distance from the driver's eyes to the steering wheel. They create a digital blueprint, then they disassemble the car. Each part gets named, weighed, and labeled with a number. Cost estimators gauge the price of every one, not only to determine what competitors spend but also to pressure GM's own suppliers. "We know a certain kind of plastic costs x per kilo," explains staff project engineer Craig Duncan, a round man in standard GM dress of khakis and a polo shirt. "So we know the mass of the part, what the labor rate is, and what the shipping costs are, and we start adding up all the puzzle pieces. It's a scientific way of being much more aggressive with our suppliers to push the cost down." Finally, all the information is entered into a database for GM engineers puzzling out new car designs. Some insights are big and obvious. Toyota, for instance, installs many of the same parts, from seats to door handles, in models as diverse as the inexpensive Corolla and the luxury Lexus. But details, too, can be revealing. Most body frames have material to quiet vibrations: Chrysler uses glued pads; Ford, rows of a caulk-like substance. "Why did Ford do it that way?" Duncan asks. He points to what was recently a cherry Mustang and is now a bare-metal lower-body shell. "It looks primitive," Duncan says, pointing to the rows of caulk, "but it's not. A robot did it. That means one machine could be programmed for lots of different cars. No parts. No person babysitting the parts. No parts room. Huge savings." Duncan adds that the number and type of welds can show "how many robots they've got. Sometimes your competitors do things better than you; sometimes they don't. But you have to know." On top of about 40 complete teardowns per year, GM subjects up to 20 vehicles - like the Mercedes ML350 SUV - to a process known as a "full trim-saw cut": 100-mm-wide cross sections are taken from the doors and roof pillars and fenders. "If you want to be competitive in the midsize luxury category, you have to look at the Mercedes," Duncan says. Flatbed scanners turn these slivers into digital blueprints. The diagrams enable the company's engineers to analyze such arcane information as the design of the A-pillar - the slender structure at the side of the windshield - which not only supports the roof but also contains sound-dampening rubber seals, an airbag, and the electrical connections between overhead lamps and dash. A dissected hybrid lies on display in the back of the VABA, next to the remains of a Chevy Malibu. The Prius demystified comes down to this: It has 1,432 propulsion parts (the Malibu has 822). It has two electric motors, plus lots of software and finely machined gears to transport power to the wheels. That makes the Prius very expensive to design and build. And for all the publicity, Toyota is likely to sell a mere 105,000 Priuses this year in a US market of 16 million vehicles. "Prius owners love it, but are the other 16 million-plus people beating down the doors of Toyota dealerships to buy a hybrid?" Lindsay Brooke asks. "Not yet, and Toyota will have to figure out how to drive the hybrid vehicle segment into the meat of the North American market." To do that, Toyota is introducing hybrid engines into cars like the luxury Lexus SUV. The 400h is remarkably similar to the nonhybrid Lexus RX 330 except for its braking system and a hybrid engine that produces 268 horsepower (as opposed to 230 from the regular SUV). It's marketed as a performance luxury car with a hybrid's typical fuel parsimony. Yet the 400h gets just three more miles per gallon on the highway than the RX 330 - and it costs nearly $10,000 more. GM engineers say that this price tag at last accurately reflects the real cost of hybrid tech. Which means that consumers who buy a Lexus hybrid are paying thousands for a technology that will never pay for itself in fuel savings. That's typical of Toyota, say critics. With the Prius, says electrical engineer Michael Cutajar, "Toyota took a Corolla and added huge amounts of cost and complexity. They don't make any money on it." Toyota scoffs at the idea. "We're making money on the Prius," says Nancy Hubbell, a spokesperson for the company, "especially with the economy of scale we're getting by introducing two new models this year and two next year. The additional cost of a system is more like $3,500 per auto." And in any event, Hubbell says, consumers buy hybrids not only for fuel savings but also for intangibles like lower emissions and cleaner air. The teardowns tell GM a different story. "They're all about validating our insights into what competitors are doing and extrapolating where we think they're going," says Clay Phillips, GM's director of intelligence, in charge of scoping out other automakers. Phillips, a former Navy intel officer, is tall and thin, with a gray mustache and a serious, almost scholarly demeanor. "We think the Prius was originally less about fuel economy and more about a technical and assembly experiment," he says. "In Japan, the hybrid drive was sold as a cool electronic feature. Fuel economy was hardly mentioned, and I have a hunch that fuel efficiency was a marketing strategy that they just stumbled onto." Tearing apart the Prius convinced GM that Toyota was using the car as a "tip of the spear" to change its image from a maker of good, utilitarian cars to a high tech company, Phillips says. "And that's how Toyota will market its vehicles in the future. The Lexus hybrid is performance without guilt. It's a premium product. Nine-tenths of the people who buy it will never do the math; it's one big high tech image statement." GM thinks it has a better idea. In the back of the teardown building, alongside the dissected Prius and Malibu, lie the parts of a GM demonstration vehicle powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Although the vehicle has more total parts than the Prius, almost none of them move, eliminating many of the finely machined gears and engine components of the traditional auto. The tables bearing the drive trains of the Prius and Malibu are laden with parts; those for the fuel cell car are nearly empty. The three teardowns tell the story of GM's plans: Go directly from gasoline to fuel cells with a mere nod to hybrid tech. At the Tokyo auto show in October, GM unveiled its fuel cell-powered Sequel. Larry Burns, GM's vice president for R&D and planning, announced that the company would be able to "design and validate a competitive fuel cell propulsion system by 2010." It seems like a brilliant move - a classic example of a carmaker using teardown-based research to leapfrog a competitor. But GM's critics aren't so sure, calling the company's fuel cell talk "defensive PR" because it's so far behind Toyota on hybrids. Auto industry consultant Maryann Keller points out that fuel cells are every bit as complicated as hybrids, if not more. "You're talking about a completely different propulsion system!" she says. "No one can even repair or drive one!" She argues that, instead, GM needs to follow intermediate steps. "What technology doesn't become cheaper and easier to build over time? The personal computer weighed 50 pounds in the early 1980s. Hybrids are complex and expensive, but you'll never figure out how to make them better and cheaper until you put the technology in real-world cars. I say, 'Why wait? What do you have to sell me today?'" Whether GM has made an inspired bet or will fall hopelessly behind Toyota depends, in part, on whether the price of oil stays relatively low over the next few years. If fuel costs spike, consumers will demand highly efficient vehicles, putting Toyota out front. Meanwhile at GM, a Mercedes is about to be sawed into pieces, and a couple of bays over, John Klucka has his arms deep inside a Lexus hybrid. Klucka, 58, has been working on cars his whole life. "They sure don't build 'em like they used to," he says, puzzling over the wiring harness. "Gas. Electric. Hydrogen," he mutters. "I'm sure glad I don't have to service them. Any of them." Contributing editor Carl Hoffman (carlhoffmn@earthlink.net) wrote about Soviet fighter jet collector Don Kirlin in issue 13.10.

This is the model I just installed, read post above....took 30 minutes to install. How did you know how to remove the panel and where the harness was located? Thanks

I contacted Vais Technology at info@vaistech.com. They said the "SoundLinQ (Model SLI) will work in my RX400h. Their cost is $299.99, but unfortunately they do not have any installers in the Seattle area.

Your dealer should have programed in 5000 miles into your navigation oil change screen. You can change it to alert you when you are close to 5000 miles. Take your current mileage and subtract it from 5000 and enter that number under oil change on your maintenance screen.

From a standing start on a level surface with the ice warmed up, I have been able to reach speeds of 30-35 mph on battery. On a down hill slope I have exceeded 40 mph on battery. This requires a very soft foot on the gas. Because the acceleration is very slow this method is not recommended when there is traffic behind you.

If you place your mirror adustment switch in the left or right (not Center), your outside mirrors will tilt down when you shift into reverse allowing you to see the lines on both sides of your car when backing into this type of parking space. This along with the camera will allow you to center your 400h and park within 1 inch of a wall if one is there. Your back up camera is an additional tool to help you back up, but not the only thing you should be lookint at.

Welcome aboard. A few things to remember. 1. The EPA mileage estimates are not accurate due to a lot of reasons including the way they test automobiles. 2. Your mpg will be better than any other SUV that weighs over 4000 lbs. 3. Short trips are a mileage killer. 4. Very high or very low temperatures will result in lower mpg. 5. The manner in which you drive, such as maxamizing coasting will increase mpg. Review previous posts to see how. I previously have owned 2 RX-300s and they were great automobiles, but they did not compare my RX400h. It is an engineering marvel and a fun car to drive. Enjoy

I wonder if other insurance companies will follow Travelers lead? Insurer takes bet on hybrid owners Travelers, 4th largest US property and casualty insurer, gives 10 percent discount to hybrid owners. January 5, 2006: 4:52 PM EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Are tree-hugging, middle-age owners of hybrid vehicles a better risk than drivers of ordinary autos? St. Paul Travelers Companies Inc. is betting they are. Travelers (Research), the fourth largest property and casualty insurer in the United States, is giving a 10 percent discount on auto insurance to hybrid owners beginning in February. It is the first auto insurer to implement such a discount nationwide. "Call it 'The Gas Station Revelation,"' said Greg Toczydlowski, the Travelers executive launching the program. The idea came to him after he watched a hybrid zip in and out of a station while he was pumping gas into his SUV. Hybrids have been popular among the environmentally conscious and those attracted to new technologies. While data is still sparse on how hybrid owners compare to other drivers, Travelers' research indicates they fall into a low-risk category historically rewarded with cheaper premiums. Toczydlowski said he had found that drivers tend to use hybrids to commute between home and work and generally stay within speed limits, thereby reducing some of the risk associated with driving a motor vehicle. According to Travelers, hybrid owners it insures are typically married, aged 41 to 60, with both genders represented equally. A hybrid runs on both electricity and gas, depending upon driving conditions. Hybrid sales have doubled every year since the first such car was offered in the United States in 1999, making it a growing submarket for insurers, with as many as 30 models planned or in production, Toczydlowski said. Hurricane Katrina, which sent gas prices spiraling, has contributed to this trend. "Industry experts predict that hybrids could make up nearly 15 percent of total registered vehicles within the next decade," Toczydlowski said. As of August there were 328,157 registered hybrids, with most in California. Los Angeles topped the list for most hybrids by city, followed by San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York.

If you are using 87 octane gas it is possible that you need to go up a grade. I have been using 87 octane in Seattle and have not experienced any knocking.

Did you notice a significant drop in your mpg at those temperatures?