We only have 1800 miles on the car so I guess this will be something of a shake down cruise too. We'll be driving from Reno, NV. to Seattle, WA. which is 12 hours non stop except for gas and quick meals. I'm really looking forward to seeing the gas mileage usage during this all freeway road trip.

For those of you that sorta watch the MPG usage, did you notice any increases in MPG as the engine got a few thousand miles on it? I've never noticed any difference in my Avalon.

 

What a great trip! I'm assuming you are going 395 to 44 to the 5, no? If so, I think that's a great test for the car. Let us know how it goes.

 

You are exactly right. We've never made this drive before. Considering we live in the desert we're really looking forward to all the greenery.

 

Congratulations on your new ES 350. Drive safe and Happy driving...

 

It's a really nice long distance drive. I planned to do the reverse coming from Vancouver BC down to Vegas in early August for 2 weeks, but had to cancel that this year. Maybe next year we'll do it again.

I did this trip last year in an almost loaded new 300C and its a great drive. Our route was Vancouver>Seattle>Boise>Salt Lake City>Vegas on the way down. Coming back was the same, except we went Boise>Portland>Seattle and back up to Vancouver. Don't even ask how much gas that 300C consumed.

I love Salt Lake City as those mountains just go up and up. I have to get down there to go skiing or something. Not much in Idaho. Driving to Portland along the border between OR and WA where it parallels the river is really nice and goes on for hours.

Have a great trip!

 

Just did Newport, RI to Boston, MA. It was a hot, humid day so the A/C was on the whole way and there were suitcases in the trunk. Keeping in mind that this was 100% highway driving, I got a very respectacle 29mpg.

Around town I have been getting about 21mpg.

Not too shabby given that my outgoing ES300 was only capable of about 23mpg highway and about 17mpg around town.

 

Really? My ES300 got 30 highway and averaged 25 over the life of the car. Man, you must have one heavy foot.

I'm also interested to see what my mileage on this car does as it gets broken in. I have just over 1000 miles now and have seen no increase in mph which has been right at 25.5 over the last three tanks. Although, that's what the computer says. My calculations say more like 24.5. Of course I'm happy with that given the 72 hp increase.

One time I filled up and immediately got up on the interstate to drive to work. The computer read 32 mpg when I got to the off ramp. Awesome!

 

Fourteen hours non stop driving each way and using 87 octane the computer indicated over 29 MPG at each fillup. I was hoping to see closer to the 31 MPG claimed on the window sticker but we were climbing a lot of mountains and we had the climate control on the entire trip.

The cruise control is great. It shifts smoothly and even downshifts while going downhill. At 65MPH you can put it in passing gear and very quickly you are over 90 MPH without needing a football field length to build up speed.

There was more road noise than I expected. The worst is concrete that is pitted by road salts or snow chains. It is for sure quieter than my 05 Avalon but for 41 grand it should be better.

While in Seattle my mom was in the market for a new car and she bought an ES350 also. The dealer tried to program her Homelink and could not get it to take either. Just our luck, mine took weeks before it would finally take the code. Service guys will look at it next week but there must be something wrong with at least some of the cars homelink.

Bluetooth while driving is wonderful but the mandatory split screen when in the guidance mode drives me nuts. The screen on the right that shows all the gas stations and resturant spots for the next three exits is too much. The voice command reminder prompt is annoying, my Avalon does not do that, it just gives you the tone and you speak.

All in all a good trip and the car was flawless and smooth. I did pickup a rock chip on the hood above the clear bra of course so maybe that wasn't such a good buy as I thought.

 

Just a quick note. You can control the split screen. Not sure you can have it show the full screen but you can also show a visual of the next manuever, POI and I believe a few other items. Not at my car so can not tell you exactly how to control it but there is an icon on the gudiance screen on the left side that will give you these options. I made a lesser road trip this weekend and traveled about 300 miles. My average was just under 31mpg. And agree the voice command reminder prompt is annoying. My BMW did not do that either.

 

You can turn off the voice prompt for commands when entering commands through the voice recognition system. At the moment my ES350 is in the body shop for the next week for some paint repairs....so I don't exactly remember which menus to use. Can someone else help?

Once i turned off the voice prompts...using voice recognition became a whole lot more pleasant and effecient!

 

Has anyone else found the work around to disable the voice reminder prompt ? Thanks for the info Rich.

 

For what it's worth, I remember accessing the option through the general configuration menu area when you can adjust the volume of the direction guidance for the nav portion. I won't get my car back for another week

 

I too am planning a road trip from El Centro, CA to San Francisco, CA. (590 mi. approx.) at the end of July. I want to see what the gas mileage is going to be also.

 

You live in El Centro? So do I. What a small world. Is your ES350 silver? That's the only one I have seen around town. I've seen it being driven down 8th St. and parked in front of the Behavioral Health building. Mine is black. I bought it at Kearney Mesa Lexus.

 

Yeah, that is my, oops correction, that's my wife's Lexus. She works for Behavioral Health. I saw you and your ES350 the other day headed North over the I-8 bridge. I did notice you purchased your ES at Kearny Mesa. Yeah, that's where we purchased ours. What a great experience we had with that dealership.