I have read on this forum that there are a lot of people that simply turn on their car and are driving within 30-50 seconds. No warm up or idle, and that that's how the experts recommend it?

Just wanted to confirm if that's how most owners do it.
I am in Canada, so our weather drops drastically in winter, would that still be the case? Also in winter I remember my old hybrid would almost instantly kick into engine use when it was a cold start, wouldn't you want to let it warm up before driving?

Also side question, if I you want to let the kids watch the DVDs while waiting for the wife to finish shopping, it is perfectly fine to keep the SUV idling? The nice thing with my Escalade is that even when you turn the car off the power stays in for a bit, wish Japanese vehicles did that.

Thanks in advance.

 

The "experts" recommend moving off right away because the engine simply warms up faster, wastes less gas, and supposedly less likely to let things get gummed up from excessive idling. I guess it would depend on your driving style though. If you're always heavy on the gas pedal then you would probably benefit from a bit of warm up time. If you can respect a cold engine, just using gentle power application for the first few minutes is the way to go. In the case of the RXh, it actually does this for you to some extent. After starting for the first minute or two, provided you are easy on the pedal, the engine will stay at high idle and the vehicle will drive mostly via electric drive. When I leave in the morning I can usually make it 2 or 3 blocks in my neighbourhood before the engine comes off idle (but I'm staying ~50kph during this time)

But to answer your question... I have in practice, except for clearing ice from a windshield, never purposefully warmed up a car that had electronic fuel injection (the bad old days of carbureted cars, well that's different, I've had a few in my day and they definitely required warm up time mainly because they would often stall if you gave it too much gas when it was still cold). But some people are about the interior comfort. One of my co-workers has an older ES330. I often see the car idling for a long time in the parking lot. He fires it up with his remote starter about 20 to 30 minutes before leaving work, and then dashes outside even if its like -20C without his coat on, just to get in a toasty warm car. I guess he hates driving with a coat on. To each his own I guess.

 

I don’t see the problem with idling. Especially since it’s a hybrid and the engine cuts off on it’s own and the engine idles itself to build up the battery reserves when low anyway.

 

I never warmed up my cars by idling them. I always warmed them up by driving them. An Iron block takes quite a while to warm up.

Winter. definitely Since I don't know what would happen to my wipers if left in auto mode I try to remember to shut this off. ( I've also found this mode doesn't work for me in the winter with the salt spray) I start my car up, sweep it off and hope that at least I won't have to chip ice off the windshield when I come back out.
If for some reason I didn't have this opportunity then Oh well I can clean off the glass or sit in the car waiting for the ice to begin to melt.

Then of course there's the remote starts just for this warm up thing.

My engine is constantly shutting off and restarting. This would have been questionable in the old days. From another thread it was mentioned you can override this by putting the shift into manual mode. Now the engine doesn't shut off - like coming into a grocery store parking lot with all the stops.

 

I would definitely drive very gently when the engine is cold, to allow it to warm up. Especially if it's very cold out. The internal combustion engine in the Lexus isn't any different to other conventional internal combustion engines - racing the engine from a stone cold start will lead to long term damage due to engine oil not reaching sufficient pressure to protect the internal moving parts, e.g. cylinder bores with piston rings, cams & lobes, etc. The colder the engine, the slower the oil takes to start moving around. Its just chemistry and physics.

But no need to idle for lengthy periods either. Driving off gently after a short idle period is the best way of warming up.

 

What if scenario question regarding your reply - when idling the 450h and the battery shows almost full, or full what exactly happened? In this case the gasoline engine is cut off right away, whether the battery keeps discharging when full, or almost full in this idling situation?

 

There are technical reasons and many may not be obvious.
Count on the engineers to have done the right job. The ICE will come on and turn off under the dictates of the computer and various conditions.

Technically the equivalent to idle is "Ready". On board computers decides when to kick in the ICE based on needs heating/cooling/traction_battery_state and it starts the ICE [and that is always [99.99%] under some load] and the ICE never idles. If someone wants to stretch the term and insist that with shifter in "P" the ICE is idling, that is their choice but I hope you get my point. The true idle equivalent is when the shifter is in "N": as then the charging of the high voltage battery is disabled. I tested this out and after 7-10mins the dash had a warning that the traction battery needs to be charged and to move the shifter out of the "N" [something like that].

Salim

There is a service mode too .. which would be I guess true idle for the ICE.