DaveN

I have been looking for an LX 570 but I never see one with this cruise control. When I go to lexus.com and try to build one it doesn't appear in the option list. What gives? Is it really available?

LexusLX

It is available on my LX
And they call here Radar Cruise Control
BTW, I live in Riyadh Saudi Arabia.

ERC4

I've seen a few, but just a few out there on AutoTrader.com. None were the exact color, option, and price combo I was looking for so I wound up special ordering mine (due to arrive next month). But special ordering hurts your price negotiation leverage. If you want to see what's out there go to autrader.com, plug in year, LX 570 etc, and plug in pre-collision as a keyword. Right now it's returning zero with PCS in a nationwide search. The most I've ever seen is 1-2 at a time in the whole country. Pretty ridiculous considering it's an 85k vehicle.

05 Celsior

I just picked up my LX570 today. It has radar cruise control, cool box, etc. I tried the radar cruise control on my way home and it worked very well. MSRP was $87,450.

robert007

I have this and it works so well.
Black 2008.

black570

I would think of the radar cruise control more as a cool gadget to show off to your kids and friends every once in a while than a true tool to assist you in driving. If it’s an extra cost option, I wouldn’t pay for it. As it were, when I got my 2008 LX570, it was a standard feature. Here is why:

At highway speed: While it is buttery smooth and refined at breaking to match your speed with the car ahead of you, it revs up so absurdly fast and up shifts like a nut when the car ahead of you is out of range. When this happens, your passengers are surprised at your childish driving habits. This ruins the whole experience and you start engaging the cruise less often.

In town: It revs up and breaks smoothly, but every time your speed goes below 40KM or so, it disengages and now you have to deal with the situation manually. So you’re always waiting for when you need to intervene. The system from Mercedes on the other hand continues to assist down to a total stop, as in a traffic light, and resumes from a complete stop. Unless the Lexus system works down to a complete stop, it is worthless for driving in town.

One last issue related to radar cruise control. Lexus uses the radar for “passive safety”. If you step on the brake pedal and the computer determines, based on the radar measurements, that you are very close to the car ahead of you, it will “complement” your breaking with additional force and pretensions (pulls) the front seat belts (what about my kids in the back?). This sounds good, but in several situations it surprised me with a tremendous breaking force that wasn’t called for and almost caused the driver behind me to hit me from the back. The jerky seat pretensioning can also hurt. While the concept is good, the problem here is that metering/distance judgment does not appear to work properly.

I have a feeling all of these shortcomings are down to the software running the system and Lexus could bring about a software fix that could make the system more useable. But would they?