Jim Clark

The braking in a hybrid is kind of weird. At first, you'll find it not to be "smooth" and sometimes irritating. It takes some adjustment and practice to get hybrids with regenerative braking to come smoothly to a stop and not be "jerky". How many miles on the car? How long has it been happening? You the original owner? When asking questions like this, it's best to provide as much detailed background info as possible. Your issue sounds a little different. When you say "cold", do you mean the outside air temp or the engine and/or brakes are still cold? Might want to have the dealer look into it, has to still be under warranty. Warped rotors would be most noticeable at higher speeds. Are you typically "hard" on brakes, tend to brake hard rather than slowing earlier and braking easier? Do you brake with your left foot and/or tend to "ride" the brakes? Just curious, what tires do you have? Some tires can tend to slightly "flat-spot" overnight. I have Continental ContiExtremes on my BMW, those tries have that tendency. For the first couple of miles driving they feel like they're slightly out of balance and it's most noticeable when braking. Once they warm up a bit, they're fine. Again, provide as much detail as possible.

Seen ours in the green plenty of times but I don't remember seeing it all the way up.

With a good AWD system, you should only need good all season tires to handle almost anything. Our Audi wagons with the excellent Quattro AWD system never needed snow tires. Snow tires should only be needed in areas of the great white north where they get LOTS of snow. The best A/S tires for snow are the Continental ContiExtremes. They're also good in regular dry and wet conditions.

I have heard of other people having problems in deep snow even on a flat road or trying to get through a moderate snow bank the plows left. The RX400h AWD system is a joke compared to "real" AWD. My Jeep Grand Cherokee (traded on a Prius in C4C) could go through anything. The Audi wagons we had could also handle nearly anything, especially the allroad with the height adjustable suspension.

Buk, Did you get the car? If not, you might want to consider waiting a bit and getting the color and options you want. Matador Red is, of course, the best color. The radar cruise might be neat if you do a lot of highway driving but it's expensive. I believe there are converters you can get to give you 120v from the 12v outlets. If you did get it, you'll enjoy it no matter what color it is or what options it has. We also plan on having ours for a very long time. We just traded our old '94 Jeep Grand Cherokee on a Prius in the cash for clunkers program (great deal). So we've got our '08 400h (25k miles), the new Prius (wife's commuter car that will see about 12k per year), and my BMW 330Ci rag top ('01 with 19k miles). The 400h and the BMW will probably only see about 5-6k miles per year each. We probably won't need a new car for 10 years.

Good info guys. Thanks. Ours came on at 25k and it was bugging me so I took it in for service. I guess it had the desired effect.....

I don't believe I've seen a single 450h yet. 350's outnumber 400h's by a wide margin but there are quite a few 400h's around here. With the hybrid, you get to use the HOV lanes during rush hour, that's the primary reason we bought ours. We added a second hybrid to the stable. We traded an old '94 Jeep Grand Cherokee in the cash for clunkers program on a new Prius. Got 55 mpg on the 2nd tank of gas in the Prius.

Our '08 just has the chrome, no blue. We bought it in Nov '07. Maybe they changed it later in the model year?

Without the seat height adjustment, it might have been no deal because the wife is only 5'2". And the tilt/telescopic steering wheel allows her to be in a comfortable position on the pedals and not have the wheel right in her face. The salesman at the dealer is one of their top guys and I can see why, he was quite pleasant to deal with. When I called him Wed, he said that was the last Prius they had available IF it had not been sold the night before. He required a credit card deposit to hold it until my wife could get there to test drive it. Maybe that was BS but I don't think so. It was also in our preferred colors. Apparently there were a lot of positive changes on the '10 model. It's a little bigger. Power was increased (1.5 liter to 1.8 liter gas engine) and there's a button on the the center console which increases power (albeit at the expense of some gas mileage). But when a car gets 50 mpg, a slight reduction in mpg (even if it's 20%) for additional power makes a lot of sense. There's also ECO (less power and more mpg) and EV (essentially electric only) modes. I'm impressed by the interior volume. This is not a "compact" car. Another added benefit is that this dealer offers what they call an "Auto-For-Life" program. They will cover the power-train for the life of the car as long as we own it. We just have to get regular maintenance done by them. It cost $0.

It's the IV package and has leather and nav. We didn't think we wanted/needed the nav but I actually used it twice today when I was running a couple of errands, so it can be handy. Power seats with memory would be nice, but once we get the "clean fuel" plates and it becomes the wife's commuter car (she gets to use HOV), I'll rarely drive it. It seems like a nice car. The spoiler across the middle of he rear window is an annoyance but it'll just take a little adjustment. We wanted to unload the Jeep in the clunkers program so it definitely sweetened the deal and made it worth doing. Pleased with it so far. I'll report back later.

We traded our Jeep clunker on a new 2010 loaded Prius yesterday. :D Inventories are SO low everywhere that we were lucky to get it (they made me give a credit card deposit to hold it for a few hours until my wife could get there to check it out). They also wouldn't discount it a penny, no surprise. It was in the color combo we wanted (red/tan). She test drove it and thought it was fine. Visibility is sort of weird but should only require a short adjustment period. Thanks for all the helpful info. I'll report back after a little more time with it. I'm optimistic that it was a good choice.

That's for I-395, I-66 still qualifies and that's the one we need. BTW, you can't even transfer your Clean Fuel Plates for I-395 use anymore. You sell/trade the hybrid with the old plates, you're screwed.

Anyone own one or driven one? We want to take advantage of the cash for clunkers program and trade our '94 Jeep Grand Cherokee on a good hybrid commuter car for the wife. She currently drives our RX400h. I switch between my BMW rag-top and the Jeep (for sloppy weather). We figure it's the best deal we could get for the Jeep, NADA trade value is about $2000 and it would qualify for the $4500 cash for clunkers deal. We want to keep the RX for a long time because we really like it. A Camry or other non-expensive hybrid for the wife's commute would allow us to keep the miles low on the RX and still allow her to use the HOV lanes (single driver can use them in VA with a qualifying hybrid). The other reasonably priced hybrid options could be the Prius or Honda Insight. I think they're both too small (possibly dangerous) and the Prius is supposed to drive like crap. The Camry is allegedly the best selling car in the US for 8 of the last 9 years. I assume there's a reason for that. Any information or opinions are appreciated.

If he waits for the 2010's, he'll probably have to pay close to sticker. But, then again, in this economy, they may be offering reasonable discounts. Although the 2010 has higher horsepower, it's all used up by the extra weight of the vehicle. I believe it was Edmunds that got to test drive one a while back. They rated it as only marginally better than current 400h's.

We follow the 5k oil change intervals on our RX. I believe our dealer just uses plain old dino oil. That should be fine for 5k miles, especially since the ICE is not on all the time. In my BMW, I use Amsoil and do it every 10k. An Amsoil dealer I spoke to said I could go to 15k or more with no problem.

XM Sirius will likely be filing chapter 11 very soon. They have $175 million in debt payments coming due and they don't have the money.

Per your request, here is the update: Long story short, I've decided to keep my '08 RX400h for another year or two and sell it dirt cheap to my in-law (I think they wanted this vehicle but their nest egg got beaten badly so they hold off on purchasing a new car). Here is the story: I went to the dealer to get the appraisal, and they offered me $35,500 with 15K on it. I knew dealer trade-ins are usually a rip off, but this is about $2K below the trade-in value given by KBB. I walked away and checked out on auto-trader, unfortunately in my area only 2006 RX400h were sold, not a single '08 was sold by individual seller. So I call them back and ask for a trade-in of $38,500 (average between KBB trade in of $37,300 and private party of $39,500). They agreed to give me a price of $37.700 (which I think it's reasonable consider they have another '08 RX400h in stock with 9,000 miles on it and put it up for $40,900). A week later I came back for a test drive of the LS, and they retracted the offer, staying that Lexus is currently giving more cash incentive rebates for '08 models, and they reduced the offer to $35,650. After endless conversations, I walked away embracing my 400h knowing that I will have her for another year or two and not have to take a $10K hit on depreciation. By the way, anyone knows anybody or have they recently purchased a new or used 400h? How much did you pay for? I saw on the RX350 board, and some of them got deals as great as $36,000 for '09 RX350 with Nav. I guess the currently RX models got hit pretty hard knowing that the redesigned will coming out in a month. I didn't see this steep drop in the LS or the ES line up. Just the RX. IIRC, the dealer was offering you a huge discount on the new LS, well below dealer invoice. And you want them to also give you top dollar for the RX? No wonder they let you walk. I doubt they were making any money on the LS, they just wanted it off the lot. They have to make some profit somewhere if they want to stay in business. Their profit on the repair/maintenance shop is probably well below most other manufacturers, Toyotas/Lexuses typically only require routine maintenance, they just don't break as much as German and American cars. Enjoy the 400h for a while and then sell it to your in-laws for a fair price, it's a great vehicle. It will take a little hit in value when the 2010 450h comes out but I don't think it will be that big, the 450h is only marginally better than the 400h. We plan to keep our 2008 400h for a long time.

The increase in power is eaten up by the added weight, 4800 lbs for the AWD! If 2" of added wheelbase width carries all the way through to the side mirrors, it would barely fit in my garages, it's pretty tight now. Bottom line on the review is that's it's a little better than our 400h's, not by much.

We're averaging 27+. It's the wife's car and she has a light foot.

Not worth the cost. Go aftermarket.

You need to get local recommendations.

I think that Carmax has changed its model over the years. I have heard of Carmax giving almost private party money for cars, and then I have heard of them doing like you say and low-balling like crazy. The guy who gave me the super low-ball quote said it was a car they wouldn't sell off their lot, they would send it to auction. Again, this was a near perfect 2001 Audi S6 Avant with very reasonable miles. Carmax offered me $12.5k (original sticker in 2001 was $64k). The dealer from CO offered $21k and they would have to pay for shipping from VA. When we were looking at 400h's, I originally looked at used ones, Carmax had a nice one on their lot for a much better price than the local Lexus dealers were asking. I think the problem with the S6 was that almost nobody knows what they are (except Audi enthusiasts). But the CO Audi dealer who bought it knew what it was and wanted it for a reasonable price. They are basically a 340hp race car disguised as a soccer-mom transport.

HUH? That is not the Carmax business model, at least not the one near us. I took our 2001 Audi S6 to them for an estimate. The car was nearly perfect and had very reasonable miles. They offered me $9k below what Lexus dealer gave me as a trade-in. The Lexus dealer used car guy called some of his friends at Audi dealerships in Colorado and he got me a reasonable offer. The S6 is a rare car but they're reasonably well known and appreciated in CO. Carmax often has some of the best prices on good used cars. The reason? Because they paid so little for them.

49k is pretty good life for brakes. Approximately $650 for pads and rotors all around doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

In VA, we have to pay tax on the full purchase price. Check with the DMV in your state on that. You might take more of a depreciation hit on the LS than the RX. Although they are discounting that 2008 leftover significantly which will help. I don't think the RX redesign will be THAT dramatic. It's hard to improve THAT much on a vehicle that is already so good. Figure out how much cash you want to lay out to move into the LS and go from there. Was the $50k for the LS a straight purchase with no trade or does it assume you'll trade the RX? According to KBB, the LS price is well below dealer invoice, they obviously want it off the lot quick. So I wouldn't expect them to be too generous on the trade, maybe $35k assuming it's really clean. Most used 2008 RX400h's on Autotrader are at dealers. Asking prices are $40-45k. CPO cars are usually about $2k more than non-CPO. A couple of private sellers are asking over $40k. You mentioned the MN winters and the LS is a RWD car.