Nice!!! Going to dealer today and I'll post up the diagnosis once I hear back.



Energy monitor screen is blank when under way. Battery level will go up/down as normal. Braking system is jittery at low speeds and gas engine is on continuously...

Faulty battery pack. The dealer has one on order and it should be in tomorrow. They hope to have the GS back to me by Wednesday morning some time. It THANKFULLY will be covered under the 100k Hybrid warranty. Otherwise, I'd be out over $7500.

Wow almost 8 grand! You were just 5500 miles away from a nightmare! Whew!

Just talked to them when I picked up my loaner. Battery is cheaper than they first thought... Only $4800 + install and tax, putting at about $6200-ish for relacement cost.

From what they have been told, this is quite possibly the first non-collision GS traction battery failure in the US...

Are they sure that's the fault cause the same thing came up for me and I was told it was a faulty ecu that there was a recall on it, and it's been working fine.

They had two techs perform the diagnostic, then Lexus had the recheck again before authorizing the new traction battery. I'm at 95k, so I'll take a new batt with a new 100k warranty (per Lexus) first!

That is still pretty steep if you are out of warranty! When I was reading your message and saw the mileage, I wondered how often this happened. Interesting if you are the first at so close to 100K.


If it is the ECU, he should find out pretty quick. Unless the repair for the battery replacement requires a reprogramming of the ECU. He may have just lucked up and got a new battery pack! Either way, sounds like he is good to go!

Wow that is a Lexus first, so does this mean when we hit 95-100k we should be prepared to dish out some money.

My service writer said Lexus is very good about wanting to take care of their hybrid clientele. They want the old parts to reverse engineer and perform full failure analysis. Only way to do that is to cover them under warranty...

Thanks for sharing!

Lexus historically has been very good with helping customers out with battery issues after the 100k warranty....but it also depends on if you service it at the dealer with records to prove it.

Glad to see them stand by their product with no questions asked!

If you have to pay out of your pocket I recently read some where that your state may give you a tax credit/break as a write off. May be worth looking into for the H owners.

what mike said, thx for sharing. i'm pretty sure this is a very isolated and extremely rare incident that most (if not all) of hybrid owners need not worry about. but it's good to know that lexus will take care of us if we are out of warranty.

Lexus didn't have a battery pack in Jacksonville for the GS so they flew one in next day from Cali. Installed and everything is perfect. When the svc writer was closing things out, she ran the vin to double check that the battery swap was showing up in the system properly and noticed that the valve spring Special Service Campaign had never been done on my car. She called Lexus and got approval to get it covered too.

Awesome! I get it back tomorrow and cannot wait to give them this '11 ES350 back and get behind the wheel of my GS!

The GS runs great! I swear the engine is smoother than when I took it in! :grins: