03 ES

well i still get the jerky shifts between 20-40 sometimes, but its less than before the update...my car has never gone straight to redline before, so i dont know if it would help that...i dont drive very agressivly so i dont punch it much
i can say that it doesnt lag nearly as much and my shifts are smoother, but still i get the jerky shift sometimes
my consensus is that it helps a bit, but its not perfect.
Im going to call lexus this week and see what they say about the jerky shifting

stinkstink

I also do not drive aggressively which might be why I do not see the jerk as often but it is definitely there. Keep us updated on what Lexus says. Thanks

GSteg

iTrader: (15)

05 ES330...Experiencing the same darn problem!!

It's really annoying because it didn't seem as bad at first but every sitting in stop and go traffic made the hesitation VERY apparent

guhugsou

Looks like such a gem of a spot mate! I love the look of those big old trees running along the banks.
Great to see the bass are still in there growing big and fat!

tlamot01

I have noticed on occasion there is a bit of unresponsiveness from my wife's 05 ES330 during stop-and-go traffic. This normally occurs when going under 15mph, but she hasn't complained once.
Will I take it in for the update? Unlikely, or at least not until the wife starts complaining.
Ever since first reading about this thread, I've paid more attention to the way the 07 Carmy V6 transmission responds and it seems to have similar behavior to the Lexus.

Perhaps these problems have something to do with the drive-by-wire response time...

snakez31

I bought an '02 es300 with only 34k on it over a year ago. My original thoughts were that it would be a dependable car that would serve my family well for a long time. However the car was quite a disappointment for me; it had the worst operating transmission of any car I've ever owned. It was as if it could only shift smoothly in a small number of circumstances. In stop and go traffic as you all have noted as well, such as in traffic jams, or when accelerating after braking the transmission would slam into gear or shudder or attempt to accelerate longer than I wanted it to. When taken in for service at my local dealer, the service department couldn't find anything wrong with my car. Regardless of what Toyota/Lexus representatives may say about these vehicles or any of the newer models I am convinced they are poorly designed and these folks are not as ignorant to these issues as they act. All these cars look super nice, but when it comes to driveability they are on the bottom of my list. When looking for my es300's replacement I drove some newer Lexus models to see if they drove any better but was still disappointed with the same sluggish disconnected feeling to the drive. Fortunately I was able to recently dump mine at a CarMax lot before the truth about Toyota's reliability was made public with all their recent legal issues. I imagine the value of these vehicles will no longer be as inflated as it has been in the past. Good luck everyone.

wdlugitch

Have your read the front page of the Los Angeles Times for May 23, 2010?


Toyota took cost-cutting approach on lurching Lexus models, records show
The automaker struggled to diagnose performance problems with the 2002-06 ES models and limited the scope of repairs, company records show.

Five months before the new 2002 Lexus ES hit showroom floors, the company's U.S. engineers sent a test report to Toyota City in Japan: The luxury sedan shifted gears so roughly that it was "not acceptable for production."

The warning was sent to Toyota Executive Vice President Katsuaki Watanabe on May 16, 2001. Days later, another Japanese executive sent an e-mail to top managers saying that despite misgivings among U.S. officials, the 2002 Lexus was "marginally acceptable for production." The new ES went on sale across the nation on Oct. 1, 2001.

In years to come, thousands of Lexus buyers would discover firsthand that the vehicle's transmission problems, which caused it to hesitate when motorists hit the gas, or lurch forward unintentionally, were far from fixed.

The 2002-2006 ES models would become the target of lawsuits, federal safety investigations and hundreds of consumer complaints, including claims of 49 injuries.

Internal Toyota records reviewed by The Times provide an inside look at how the world's largest automaker struggled for years to identify the causes of nagging performance issues in one of its top-selling luxury vehicles. They also show that the automaker sought to cut costs by limiting the scope of repairs.

"The objective will be to limit the number of vehicles to be serviced to those owners who complain, and to limit the per-vehicle cost," a Toyota staff attorney wrote in an Aug. 15, 2005, memo explaining the automaker's legal defense strategy.

Toyota was fined a record $16.4 million last month for delays in notifying federal safety officials about defects that could lead to sudden acceleration. Though the 2002-2006 ES models were not included in Toyota's recall of nearly 10 million vehicles worldwide for unintended acceleration, the car's history has nonetheless caught the attention of congressional investigators.

A House committee has subpoenaed thousands of internal documents from Toyota, including nearly 250 dealing explicitly with that generation of the ES, which were collected or produced by the automaker to defend itself against a 2005 lawsuit.

In statements to The Times, Toyota Motor Corp. officials said they followed industry practice for notifying customers about repairs.

"Given the concerns raised by some customers about this drivability issue, we did not meet the very high customer satisfaction standards we set for ourselves," Toyota said. "However, we fully stand behind the engineering and production quality of the vehicle, as well as our after-sale customer service and technical support."

The documents show that Toyota repeatedly tried to solve the lurching problem by modifying the car's computer software. But Toyota told The Times that the Lexus ES issues concerned "drivability" and were not related to the sudden-acceleration problems experienced in other vehicles.

Hattie Lesure, however, said the Lexus ES 300 she bought for $35,000 in August 2002 had an alarming tendency to jump forward without warning. "My fear was that it could surge into another car," the Moreno Valley retiree said.

After her Lexus dealer and Toyota's U.S. sales unit disputed Lesure's claim, she filed a lawsuit against the automaker, which was settled for about $3,000.

When Lesure bought the ES, Toyota was quietly rolling out a new version of the software used to control the car's drivetrain in an attempt to remedy the car's performance woes. But the automaker decided to fix only a fraction of the vehicles, the documents show.

The repair "should only be utilized for critical customer complaints," wrote Gary Heine, quality-assurance powertrain manager for Toyota's U.S. sales division, in an e-mail to customer service managers on Aug. 27, 2002, according to a chronology Toyota lawyers prepared for litigation in late 2005.

Other customers — presumably those who did not complain loudly enough — were not included in the software upgrade until late 2003, when Toyota instructed dealers on how to reprogram the onboard computer and advised more than 100,000 ES owners to bring their cars in for a "product enhancement."

But many customers complained that the fix didn't work, internal memos prepared for Toyota executives in Japan show, leading some officials to question the wisdom of sending notices in the first place.

In an Aug. 3, 2005, e-mail to a superior, then-Toyota staff attorney Dimitrios Biller described a meeting he had with the then-head of Lexus in the U.S., Bob Carter, on whether to notify ES owners about a new software update. Carter now heads the Toyota brand here.

"Bob is opposed to the idea of sending such a letter out to all owners of all 2002 to 2005 ES 300 and ES 330 vehicles because a substantial majority of these people are satisfied with their vehicles," Biller wrote. "Once they become sensitized to the hesitation and/or lurching, they will become 'dissatisfied' Lexus owners."

Two weeks later, Biller wrote a memo indicating that Toyota's "objective will be to limit the number of vehicles to be serviced to those owners who complain, and to limit the per-vehicle cost." (Biller has since left the automaker and is involved in several lawsuits with the company. Toyota has called Biller "a disgruntled former employee.")

Toyota sent the letter to the 3,000 customers "who have actually complained about the performance of the transmission" in their cars, the documents show.

In its statement, Toyota said that issuing a technical service bulletin "versus direct notification to customers" is "commonplace for addressing issues such as this" and is a practice used by other manufacturers. Toyota did not respond to a request to interview officials who wrote or received documents cited in this article.

Vexing problems

The ES had for many years been the top-selling model in the Lexus lineup, known for its smooth ride and graceful handling.

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A month after the 2002 ES went on sale, car critics panned what one called "jerky gears." In the coming months, Toyota officials noted growing numbers of complaints on Internet forums and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's website and, according to the legal chronology, were able to replicate the surge problem in a test vehicle.

In August 2002, J.D. Power & Associates reported to Toyota that complaints about the ES' transmission had quadrupled. That drove the vehicle's ranking in that category to 18th place, the chronology said.

In its statement, however, Toyota noted that the Lexus ES had consistently received high marks overall from J.D. Power.

Also in 2002, two ES owners prepared a lawsuit alleging defects and seeking class-action status. Before it was filed, Toyota settled, according to a letter sent by Toyota to its outside counsel in June 2005.

One of the plaintiffs, Micky Palach of Monroe Township, N.J., recalls receiving a $900 check.

"The car had a serious transmission problem," said Palach, who bought the Lexus as a Christmas present for his wife. He still owns the car, which he said continues to surge unexpectedly.

Toyota engineers had been trying to solve the performance problems on the ES since at least 1999, documents show. But by 2004, some at the company thought that no amount of software tinkering would remedy the problem.

In a July 21, 2004, internal report, Toyota's vehicle engineering division suggested that the performance woes were the result of the car using only three motor mounts to secure the engine, one fewer than in previous ES models.

In an interview with company lawyers in November 2005, two Toyota engineers indicated that "the performance characteristics of the vehicles are NOT related to the software, but to hardware issues," according to an e-mail sent by Biller.

But company officials ruled out solving the problem "due to the complications as well as costs associated with a change from three to four engine mounts," according to a memo written by Toyota's outside counsel regarding the same meeting.

The redesigned 2007 ES, released less than a year later, had four engine mounts.

Safety questions

Carol Mathews said she was parking her 2002 ES when it suddenly jumped forward, smashing into a tree. The repair bill came to $14,000.

"I always swore on a stack of Bibles that there was something wrong with that car," said Mathews, former director of healthcare for the Montgomery County, Md., public school district.

After Toyota rejected her claims that the car was defective, Mathews filed a petition in 2004 with NHTSA. Acting on that complaint, NHTSA opened the first of three defect investigations into that generation of ES for unintended acceleration problems.

All three were dismissed, but a review of NHTSA's database shows that 49 injuries have been blamed on acceleration problems in that version of the ES. A September 2008 complaint alleged that a speed control problem in a 2006 ES led to a pedestrian's death.

In early 2005, Los Angeles attorney David Greenberg filed a class-action suit against Toyota in federal court, alleging that defects in the ES caused it to "hesitate," "lurch" and, in certain circumstances, suffer "dangerous, unanticipated acceleration."

In preparation for trial, Toyota approved a $1.6-million budget for its outside counsel, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. The judge dismissed the case in May 2006, saying it did not belong in federal court.

State court remained an option. Toyota, which had collected the nearly 250 documents in preparation for its defense in the case, notified its auditor that a state lawsuit could pose a material liability that would force it to notify shareholders.

But Greenberg, an employment and personal injury lawyer, decided not to pursue the case.

"I felt like we had a good case. It was just a bit premature," said Greenberg, who still owns the same Lexus. "If I had the case today, I can tell you we wouldn't have given up so easily."

ken.bensinger@latimes.com

ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com

JuLink

iTrader: (1)

I just sold my '93 GS that ran like a dream and bought an '04 ES and am experiencing this problem. It is truly maddening. I am definitely not an aggressive driver (I typically got 19-20mpg city in my GS) but I'm getting that horrible delay when accelerating at low speeds. I did notice it a bit when I test drove it (I did also test drive two others - one of the cars wasn't in good shape anyway and drove just horribly overall and the other seemed to be a lot better but still had occasional hesitation) but I thought it would be just a minor thing to get taken care of. Now I see that the car apparently is in mint condition and that's just the way it works.

In reading everything I can about it online, I'm thinking that my car might actually have the first software update but not the revised one. I read one person reporting that, after they got the first update, they started having a lot of problems with the transmission switching between gears 1-2 and 2-3 and that's exactly that it feels like mine is doing.

Also, has anybody tried driving the car by manually switching the gears? Does that alleviate the problem?

I've also noticed that people often reported that the car drove better in the time immediately after they got the first update, although they subsequently report that the situation then became worse after they gave it some time. Has anybody tried pulling the fuse on their ECU (is that the fuse to pull?) to see if the behavior resets or improves at all?

I bought this car after such positive experiences with our previous two Lexus' (a 93' GS and a '00 RX) and just can't believe that this glaring flaw could be present like this. It also boggles my mind that, despite doing some reading online about this before going out, I didn't stumble upon mention of this problem. All the reviews that I saw were very positive*. Now once I'm home with the car and I do a search I find that it's this huge issue. <grumble>

* Given that I'm suspecting that I may have had only the first update which apparently made the problem worse, I'm wondering if the reviews were based on vehicles without any updates or with the second update.

360LexusEs

Ok so I recently put a deposit down on a fully equipped 2005 es 330 but after reading the horror stories I'm considering not doing it. I took the car for a test drive and immediately it pulled to the left, and there was a slight jerkiness to the transmission, It wasn't horrific but noticeable and after I got the car up to 40 not noticeable at all. My question in the end is there a fix because from the pages I read it doesn't seem there is, and second how the hell does this car get a 5 star rating and tons of rave reviews with such a poorly designed transmission? Anyhow any info or insight would be much appreciated.

amf1932

OK, here's the deal.
I published all my frustrations with this tranny back in April 2003 on this site, so if you choose to review these 13 pages, I think it will help you out in making a decision.
The only thing I might add at this time is to see whether you can buy an ES350. I actually hated the tranny in my '03 ES300 with only 12,000 miles, and I finally decided to trade it in for my present car, an '07 ES350. This was the best thing I ever did. This eliminated all my tranny problems. Good luck.

Rokdigger

I have 2004 ES330 with the dreadful tranny thing.
It's time to give it up.
Are the new ES's 2010, 2011's rid of this???

Thanks,
Rokdigger

amf1932

Any ES350's from 2007 to the present do NOT have these problems!!
You can get more answers in this thread...(13 pages full), that I, and other members posted on this subject.

axiomkc

I don't think this is true. If you do a google search for "es 350 transmission flare" on the 07 or 08 ES350 and even newer models you will see the same thing on those models. People reporting problems shifting between various gears and surges, etc with the same reports of Lexus not fixing the issues.

amf1932

I was NOT talking about transmission flare......I was talking about the problems plaguing the '02 thru '06 models, ES300 thru ES330 that couldn't be corrected with flashing the ECC. This caused me to trade in my '03 ES300 after much trepidation.

mmatheny

So I'm guessing the title of this thread is a lie - there IS NO FIX!