Steve300h

I took my first long road trip in our ES Hybrid. 8 Hours down to Georgia and 8 Hours back home.

Bottom line: Best road car I've ever driven.
Granted my other cars have been Accords, Minivan's and a Camry so they are not in the same class as Lexi, but damn it was a sweet trip.

Every car has what I call a resting speed, how fast it settles in at if you stop paying close attention on a long highway trip, for me it's typically between 60 & 70mph. In the Lexus it's 80mph smooth as silk and quiet as standing still (slight hyperbole but you get the idea) That could get me into trouble some day.

Adaptive Cruise Control: A game changer. Not having to touch the break or gas for a hundreds of miles allowed me to stretch out my legs and change my leg position. This alone probably doubled how far I could drive in comfort without feeling the need to stop and stretch. One quirk, normally when highway driving I close in on the car ahead of me, change lanes, make the pass, and move back into the right lane. With adaptive cruise you never really close in on the car in front you just match their speed smoothly. More than once I came up on a car doing 65'ish in a 70mph zone and followed them for a considerable length of time before realizing how fast I wasn't going.

Thigh Extender: Another game changer, combined with ADC, it made driving a pleasure. We only needed one 10min stop (gas and bathroom) on an eight hour drive.

Levinson Sound System: Oh my! I had no idea. It does fine for music while driving, but we had some wait time after arriving in Georgia so I pulled up the movie "Captain America" from my phone and played the audio on the sound system. Holy moly! That system rocks, like literately the car was shaking with bass. It was stunning how good the surround system sounded playing a movie via Bluetooth. Why can't my tunes sound like that?

Climate Control: This is the one issue I had. The system was set on "Auto" and 68 degrees. Outside temp was around 70 to 78 Fahrenheit. Every few hours, it would suddenly blast the cabin with extra cold air. I would have to move the temp up to 74'ish wait a bit and then set it back to 68. Not sure what that was all about. I'll mention it at our 5k checkup.

Autonomous breaking: It triggered the warning light/beep once when I was changing lanes just as the person in that lane hit their breaks. It definitely decreased my reaction time. I don't think I would have hit the car in front of me but it would have been much closer than I would like. Very happy to have this system.

Lane Keep Assist: A bit mixed on this one. It did not work well at all in the early morning while driving directly into the rising sun, I just turned it off for awhile. When it was working well it it gently, smoothly, pin-balled from side to side within the lane. It was almost hypnotic. Also it had a tendency to try and take me off a fair number of exits. Still is was nice to have it do some of the work. I'll keep trading off between using and and not till I figure out which way works better for me.

bc6152

Nice report. I have yet to try out some of the features on my ES 350 and haven't taken it on an ended trip to date. I turned the HUD off as it was a distraction to me. The lane departure is a bit annoying but I'll keep it on for now and maybe I'll adjust to it. I forgot about the thigh extender but will try it out today.

AnthonyMJ

How can you not mention BSM?

lesz

Out of all of the safety features that have become common on cars in recent years, there are two that I find to be especially valuable, and I won't ever buy another car without them.

On a day to day basis, I find the blind spot monitor to be especially useful, and, even though it should only have to engage vary rarely, the auto braking/collision avoidance systems are, for me, a must have. For me, I find that most of the rest of the safety features are more gimmicky, and they are certainly not features that I would feel confident about their ability to keep me out of an accident.

As always, the safety systems should be considered to be an added layer of protection against having an accident, and they should not be considered as a substitute for attentive driving. In the last couple of years, there have been a few posts on the CL boards from people who relied more than they should have on things like lane centering systems, 360 degree cameras, etc. and doing so resulted in the need to make a visit to the body shop and to have an undesired conversation with their insurance companies.

AnthonyMJ

The 360 degree camera has changed my world when it comes to parking. I have never been particularly adept at parking, especially parallel. And even with straight parking, I don't want ot be too close to either car on my side to avoid door dings. Now, I get perfectly lined up with no problem. I may even try backing into a parking space one day soon...

bc6152

I think that the blind spot monitor ranks right up there with power steering and air conditioning from over 50 years ago. Like Les I wouldn't consider buying a car without BSM. It amazes me how idiots walk behind your car in a parking lot while it's moving in reverse instead of waiting 15 seconds until you're out of the spot.

BSM was designed for those (walking behind the car) with I.Q.'s of 9 or less.

lesz

I'm sure that there is value to the 360 degree camera, but, like I said above, relying on it as a substitute alert driving/parking behaviors can get one into trouble as shown by the OP in this thread from a couple of weeks ago on the Generation 7 ES board.

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/es-...ttle-scar.html

Tootsall

Those are the ones that should be culled from the gene pool.

Steve300h

Interestingly, that was a "must have" feature for me but it really does not seem to make that much of difference out on the road.

Steve300h

I will note, it was my wife not me that scratched the car, but yes it was an important lesson.

1stTimeLex

I agree that the 360 degree camera is "one" of the best modern day features in new cars. My 2014 Infiniti had it, my 2019 F-sport ES doesn't. I never realized how much I'd miss the feature and am strongly considering trading to an UL model in a couple of years just to have it. I do a fair amount of parallel parking daily because of one of my assigned parking spaces in my condo garage and I still haven't mastered the 'park on the first attempt' exercise without the cameras. It's actually sad how spoiled and unskilled I've become... sigh

mikemu30

Grew up in NYC. Mastered parallel parking when I was 17.

lesz

What I said in my earlier post was not meant to indicate that I don't think that the 360 degree camera is a useful feature. Instead, the point of my post was that various safety/technology features should be thought of as an added level of safety protection against accidents (or convenience) and that they should not be thought of as a substitute for attentive driving and that, when people do use them as a substitute for attentive driving practices, that is when they are more likely to have accidents, do damage to their vehicles, etc.

bc6152

And me in Philly...

mikemu30

Our road tests back then required a clean parallel park on real streets. If you missed, you failed. My kids here in north jersey took their road tests in a parking lot.