Sunday, August 28, 2005
Lexus RX400h
IMAGINE a world where you really could have your cake and eat it... where you could enjoy all of the good things in life but didn’t have to put up with the associated downsides. car rental uk
It sounds like an impossible dream, and in most cases it still is. However, if you narrow down the parameters to cars, things start to look more promising. And if you want to drive a big, luxurious premium SUV, but don’t want to choke the planet with your noxious exhaust emissions, then the answer is staring you (literally) in the face. car rental uk
Lexus’ new RX400h is the ‘have your cake and eat it’ SUV. You get all of the traditional SUV attributes – high seating position, premium badge and ‘out of my way’ styling, yet you also get a petrol engine with an additonal electric motor. This means you get petrol performance with diesel economy. Perfect.
But the best thing is that this is alternative fuel technology which isn’t intimidating or time-consuming. car rental uk
Unlike a pure electric car, you haven’t got to recharge it at night and, unlike a dual-fuel car, you haven’t got to hunt around for a petrol station which has got an LPG tank.
Simply fill the Lexus with unleaded fuel and off you go. When you’re starting off or travelling slowly, only the electric motor is used, with the petrol engine chiming in as more power is required to boost acceleration. Brake or take your foot off the accelerator and the engine shuts down to save fuel. At the same time, generators use braking energy to recharge the batteries.
But the only way you notice you’re driving a hybrid is by looking at the various digital read-outs which monitor which power plant is turning the wheels and tell you how much energy you have regenerated. You just need to resist the temptation to keep looking at these readouts and focus on the road instead. car rental uk
Other than that, it’s just like driving the petrol RX300, which means you’re at the wheel of one of the best-handling SUVs, although the angular styling isn’t to everyone’s taste. Body roll is well contained and the RX turns in to corners very sharply for such a car. The ride can get a bit bouncy, but that’s the downside to having a car with such long suspension travel.
And bizarrely for a car with such environmentally-friendly pretensions, the RX400h is quicker than the RX300. With 208bhp, it has 7bhp more, but the headline figures don’t tell the whole story.
When you really stand on the RX400’s accelerator the 165bhp electric motor joins in, offering a surge of acceleration. It acts like a diesel engine, with the electric boost replacing diesel’s wall of torque.
It’s also diesel-like in its fuel consumption, returning a claimed average of 34.9mpg and CO2 emissions of just 192g/km (the same as a Vauxhall Astra 1.8 SRi). And that’s the beauty of this Lexus. It is a car of the future, available today, which requires no compromises. With the RX400h, you really can have your cake and eat it. car rental uk
It sounds like an impossible dream, and in most cases it still is. However, if you narrow down the parameters to cars, things start to look more promising. And if you want to drive a big, luxurious premium SUV, but don’t want to choke the planet with your noxious exhaust emissions, then the answer is staring you (literally) in the face. car rental uk
Lexus’ new RX400h is the ‘have your cake and eat it’ SUV. You get all of the traditional SUV attributes – high seating position, premium badge and ‘out of my way’ styling, yet you also get a petrol engine with an additonal electric motor. This means you get petrol performance with diesel economy. Perfect.
But the best thing is that this is alternative fuel technology which isn’t intimidating or time-consuming. car rental uk
Unlike a pure electric car, you haven’t got to recharge it at night and, unlike a dual-fuel car, you haven’t got to hunt around for a petrol station which has got an LPG tank.
Simply fill the Lexus with unleaded fuel and off you go. When you’re starting off or travelling slowly, only the electric motor is used, with the petrol engine chiming in as more power is required to boost acceleration. Brake or take your foot off the accelerator and the engine shuts down to save fuel. At the same time, generators use braking energy to recharge the batteries.
But the only way you notice you’re driving a hybrid is by looking at the various digital read-outs which monitor which power plant is turning the wheels and tell you how much energy you have regenerated. You just need to resist the temptation to keep looking at these readouts and focus on the road instead. car rental uk
Other than that, it’s just like driving the petrol RX300, which means you’re at the wheel of one of the best-handling SUVs, although the angular styling isn’t to everyone’s taste. Body roll is well contained and the RX turns in to corners very sharply for such a car. The ride can get a bit bouncy, but that’s the downside to having a car with such long suspension travel.
And bizarrely for a car with such environmentally-friendly pretensions, the RX400h is quicker than the RX300. With 208bhp, it has 7bhp more, but the headline figures don’t tell the whole story.
When you really stand on the RX400’s accelerator the 165bhp electric motor joins in, offering a surge of acceleration. It acts like a diesel engine, with the electric boost replacing diesel’s wall of torque.
It’s also diesel-like in its fuel consumption, returning a claimed average of 34.9mpg and CO2 emissions of just 192g/km (the same as a Vauxhall Astra 1.8 SRi). And that’s the beauty of this Lexus. It is a car of the future, available today, which requires no compromises. With the RX400h, you really can have your cake and eat it. car rental uk
# posted by Liz Laurie @ 4:12 AM 
