SOMEONE ELSE'S GOT MY NAME

Our Garmin's ok for geocaching (its a game ... pretty fun), but those too, can be a major rip off. When it comes to upgrades? Our garmin ... can get an update that's 2 years newer than what you have, for HUNDREDS, only to find out your 5 year old community, with 10's of thousands of homes, are STILL not yet incorporated into the new edition. (shaking head)

Welcome Andy! Bulb? '08 ?? Don't worry about it! You're under warranty, unless youve managed to rack up some serious mileage. So when you take it in, you can ask how it's done, in case there's a next time.

Beta testing? Hybrids didn't give rise to this type of power steering. Electric steering has been around for years prior.

30K ?? Wow! That's probably a world record :P Consider youself lucky. Our '72 only made it to 13,500 miles ... right after the warranty died. They were the Yugo of GM ... makes some of their other cheezy stuff look light years better.

Yes But the Lockpic overrides the override :P

How many here have done equally stupid things as teenagers, yours truely included, yet somehow managed to survive the age of stupidity (even though some are equally stupid at 3X that age) with only miner injuries? Some think its dumb to put goveners on modern cars. I don't know the top speed or our RX400h, nor would I know the top speed of our Prius, but for the fact that Al Gores' son was doing about 100mph in one, while running from the cops. Lexus prides itself on being luxury AND power. Folks post about it here ... "The Power" ... and more often than not, I've read posts on lexusownersclub how in comparison to Lexus, their BMW (or other power car) is "no comparison, to it's power and handling". And that's important why? So you can hit the gravel or oil on a mountain hairpin turn, sending you over the cliff? Shrinks often say that people can only handle so much reality before they bury their heads in the sand. Here's proof. Here we are, on the verge of a paradigm shift ... the twilight of the oil age, where it continues to go up & up & up, a global economy based on the availability of cheep energy, never to be the same ... and the auto manufacturers still convince people via ads that you gotta be able to burn rubber, and pull 2 G's or more, through the turns. (shaking head) There you go.

I've seen the wood steering wheels on Ebay, but WOW ... they get a pretty penny for 'em. I can hear my wife, "YOU PAID WHAT?". I'll have to wait for the steering wheel fairie to drop one off :P

192 g CO2/Km Regardless of EU vs U.S. http://www.petrol-head.com/toyota/index.html

You are right, in that our 400h's aint much for running up the dunes at Glamis or Pismo. And not necessary for most L.A. county driving. But on iced over roads? That little extra bit of traction, coupled with a set of 4 studded tires (illegal in many states) can be the difference between making it up a steep driveway or not. You know what they say though. The difference between a 4x4 versus a 2x4 with a positraction rear end: The 4x4 will let you get stuck 50 yards farther away. :P El Gringo . . . nice pic's !! The Wood Trim wasn't available in '06 and no way do I want to have to replace the steering wheel ... air bag and all. Wish we had it though.

Hi Steve. Remember the DIFFERENCE between keeping the warranty valid, versus Lexus recomendations. Often the two are worlds apart :P That being said, nothing wrong with changing it at 60k, but the CVT AND its pricy fluid (I asked my service tech, even tho the manager refused to give me a streight answer ) IS designed to reach 100K !! I'm going the distance.

same

Fast power is important? Wellheck, rather than blow a mongo wad of cash on a fast car, I'd go the easy route. That way you still can have economy, luxury ride, etc ... but during that less than 1% interval when it's absolutely positively necessary to become a teenager, I did THIS (20 years ago ... when there was time & money to waste) for a whole lot less $$ : http://performanceparts.com/product_group....id=1&sgid=7 Basicly gave an instant 200% more power ... but you better have it dialed in, unless you don't mind rebuilding your top end, as I had to. Oh, and of course it's gona play heck on your HSD and U joints ... but I'm sure it'll be worth it to you :P

Why not just ask your service teck. Perhaps it's one of several settings that can be modified / changed with the tech's scantool. If you explain what you want ... or what you mean, he may have you go into a similar type car on the lot and you can demonstrate the dif. Or, if it's the same, well then you know.

Hey, now you're gona have to change your avatar! Nice work.

We keep ours up north, and it's not driven for over 4 months at a time. Our renter turns the trickle charger on just once a month, for a couple hours. It's worked every time for 2 years running. Now once the battery is maybe nearing 5 years old, then I might be concerned, but not until then.

Hi Rxrey, yes, AWD is an option, & most don't have it. You either look under the car at the rear axle to tell, or I think the VIN is coded so if you know the dif ~ the coding gives it away. The AWD get a couple mpg's less ... and, what was confusing for me was terminology. FWD meant front wheel drive but since that can sometimes mean four wheel drive to some folks, that would throw me for a loop. So you either get AWD or front wheel drive (FWD). Not to hyjack the thread, but as a side note, while in stealth mode the other day, for the 1st time I floored it in reverse. Man! Those 2 electric motors can really thrust you right along! As for the smoke mica, YES! lets have some pic's! I saw the metalic real dark ox blood yesterday, and that too, looks sweet.

Consider how many years the highlander & RX (virtually same steering / chassis / engine) have been made and it's not such a far off magnitude as you'd think. Heck, over the last year alone, Toyota manufactured more Prius' than Ford manufactured Explorers. And in it's short existence, the Prius all by itself now numbers over a million. However point taken that the hybrid steering DOES have a different power source, than the belt driven PS. So with that in mind ... yes the hybrid numbers drop by 1/10. Even so, there have been over 100K Toyota / Lexus hybrids sold in Europe. Thus, the fact that this may (or may not) have happened, it's still about on thousandth of one per cent of hybrid production there. Perhaps this IS the same TSB issue ... as PS assist failure might be interpreted by a hysterical person as the steering fighting in the opposite direction. Those of us who look at the OP with a raised eyebrow (to put it mildly) are not alone. If you go the the German Lexus owners forum using translation software (for those who don't speek german) you'll see that this report received the same high degree of skepticism ... they're making comments like 'impossible' and 'that makes no sense' to pick the milder ones. You post your 1st thread saying you have a (possible) design fault and you don't base it against the number of instances it occures to the hundreds of thousands of similar cars, then go tell it to folks that love the car, and you get adversarial point for point ... go figure. You read enough boards, you DO see this scenero fits trollish behavior ... granted, it may not be, but like the German board, eyebrows are raised ... as you'd expect.

I wrote lexus.de a while ago ... still waiting ... surprise surprise, no response. Now let's see, what is there, maybe a million or more RX's on the road? If this WAS a real steering issue? What did "Frau Blucher" figure we'd all be thinking ... maybe something like "That does it, I'm putting my 400h up sale in the auto trader" (shaking head). "Thank goodness an engineer was driving when the steering went ka put" Hugh? What does that mean? My wife has had a high speed front flat in a truck, that had NO power steering ... now try THAT on for size if you want an 'E' ticket ride. She didn't say, 'oh my god sell it quick'. Similarly, there have been hundreds of folks driving when a power steering unit looses a belt. "HURRY, SELL the CAR !!" Who know that apparently some will do that. I guess we won't be hearing regularly then, from Frau Blucker any more. Oh well ... don't let the door hit you in the rear on the way out.

Never one to miss an opportunity to bash MBZ, eh? I grow more convinced by the day that you're a Lexus employee. If you read many consumer mag’s (like consumer reports), you see over the years, that M/B quality really went into the toilet. These magazine sources are not Lexus dealers. We had an M/B 300 series for many years, and right after the warranty expired, we spent a ton keeping it up. I rant about that, but we're not a Lexus dealer. You don’t have to be a Lexus Dealer to know MB’s history. The only cars worse for us personally was our brand new '72 Chevy Vega. It wasn't even worth repairinig. You get a bum car, you tend to rant ... what can ya say. But back to the OP. Note that this is the OP's first post. NO one but me smells Troll? Maybe not, but most folks ask other members something like, "hey, anyone else had a similar experience?" ... but not here in this case ... just BOOM. Lots of folks have funky things happen to their cars. But writing the car off? Wow. Heck, our Range Rover spent plenty of time in the shop, and they didn't always have another RR to give us as a loaner (once was even a Chevy Pick up) but that's the nature of cars ... they sometimes break down. This person must be the exception to the rule. I wish I'd never before had a bad car experience

I 2nd that yes. I subscribe to the Rav4ev email list where the few hundred individual owners talk about their records and averages. Here's their signup page where they'll gladly detail their data for you upon bringing it up: http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/rav4-ev They obviously don't know about data from the business owned rav4ev's (such as the 100 or so owned by Edison electric) but it's the best source going since Toyota doesn't care to document their info. I'd suspect fleet owned rav4ev's do worse, based on how poorly maintained fleet vehicles can be. I work for Disney and our Chevy EV pick ups were literally beat to death ... no proactive maintenance, just reactive.

True. Even so, it's nice to know that results so far show that kind of durability. Same with the little Toyota RAV4-EV's. Owners are doing 10 years on their batteires now, with most still retaining +90% of their original chargability ... turning how well the batteries have been treated. The great thing is that with new advancements, battery chemestries keep getting better & better.

I don't know battery physices, but battery designers / manufacturers say battery life is based not on time, rather the ratio between the rated life, the depth of discharge for which rated cycle life was determined and the cycle life at rated depths of discharge and discharge current. http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:j2w1D...;cd=1&gl=us

Certainly the batteries may "live" for that long, but they will be operating at far less than their original rated capacity. That's just a fact of all lithium-based batteries. Hugh? There are canadian cab companies (rememer how harsh THOSE winters are) that are racking up over 300K miles on their hybrids, while showing very little battery pack degridation. Sure, like any car part, there'll be exceptions ... but so far, those hybrids that are passing 200K and above are doing way better than expected.

Maybe in San Diego you can get that sort of mileage year-round, but anywhere that it actually gets cold you'll see the RX fuel economy plummet in the winter when it has to run the ICE to generate heat. Even up here, just a few hunded miles north of you, I see a significant drop in fuel economy in the winter. If you factor year-round average fuel economy for an RX in "average" weather conditions, the RX doesn't handily beat either one, in fact my wife's E350 gets better fuel economy than my RX right now. Hugh? Average winter in the Flathead Valley is in the low 30's ... with maybe 2 to 10 sub zeros every other year. You can STILL get in the 30's mpg simply by driving purposfully, combining short trips, blocking your grill and adding a block heater. Sure, if you don't do that, take tons of short trips, then you'll sufffer the mpg consequences ... but it's simply up the the driver.

Hmmm. Never noticed that. Example, I like to back into the garage. I painted a yellow line on the floor of the garage so that when I see the yellow line where it lookl like it's aligned with the bumper, then I know I canclose the garage door. So even tho there's only a 60 watt bulb in the garage door opener, the garage is pretty dark ... especially at the rear of the 400h. True, the brake lights are much brighter, but the back up light brightness never seemed to be an issue to us. I guess you could always wire in an extra lamp, if you don't mind the look.