My wife turned right after a stop last week. The car fishtailed left and right with the rear wheels screeching/squealing and control inputs felt on the steering wheel. It lasted for a few seconds as the car quickly straightened out and no cars were hit. Wife returned to inspect the roadway where it happened and did not note any oil or gravel. Weather was dry, sunny, 70s. She drove the car straight home and we took it to the dealer first thing next morning. After they inspected the car and ran diagnostics they said they could find nothing and no trouble codes were posted. They claimed this was the first instance of this behavior. Their road test to the exact same spot was unremarkable. Tires new and in excellent condition.

Our 2025 NX-450h+ PHEV has 7k miles and this was the only time this has happened, but it scared my wife enough that she has not driven the Lexus until today when I returned from a trip. Today's short drive was uneventful. Anyone had a similar experience and/or advice?

 

Maybe she was pressing the E Brake button by accident?

 

No she did not press the button and from what happened this would not explain it but thanks.

 

I have noticed on my NX450H+ when Accelerating from a stop off of a driveway, the rear tires will spinout if I press too hard on the accelerator. I attributed it to the immediate low end torque that the electric motors have.

 

While I have never tried it, simply because the e brake is an electrical switch that in turn activates the rear parking brakes, I would almost guarantee 100% the programming simply will not allow the car to activate the parking brakes when it is in drive, full stop. As Spock would say that is simply illogical. Yes I know there is a brake hold stop feature that once the car comes to a complete stop it engages the parking brake, but as soon as you touch the gas it disengages.

 

That might be it. Did you ever fishtail and did the rear tires squeal?

As I understand it the rears run solely off an electric motor with a lot of instant torque. My wife is light on the accelerator but may have depressed too hard that one time. We are still learning how this car works. Thanks for responding

 

Coming to a stop then doing a turn either left or right will inevitably unload the rear wheel on the side of the turn simply due to physics. Turn left and left rear tire will be unloaded slightly as weight moves towards the front right. Turn right and right rear is unloaded and left front is loaded with weight. Just like you body will be thrown about from force of car turning so does the car and its weight pushing down on all four tires. The unloaded tire will tend to lose traction too as the weight on it is reduced. Was it very cold out? possibly black ice? Did the car flash up any warning like low traction maybe on screen?

 

Appreciate your response. I am an Aero engineer so can follow your train of thought. However, at the very slow speed my wife was driving any differential kinetic loading on the wheels would have been minimal. The AWD system and sensors response should have not led to fishtailing and squealing.This should not have stressed the Lexus driving support system.system.

Temps were in the high 70s and sunny. No oil or gravel on the road. If the car cannot handle such benign conditions that is worrisome.

 

Understood. Only thing to explore is have dealer look through all data collected in ECM maybe some data was collected for the loss of traction, otherwise they would have to recreate it. It seems from your initial post this has been explored. Possibly a rear wheel rotation sensor had a hiccup. There's typically one used for the abs system and maybe it's also used to confirm rotation is occurring and if not it applies more torque to drive motor. Don't know if this is an encased system so no debris can get in.

 

Based on your descriptions, it almost sounds like the great motor sent more torque to rear wheels then required causing handling issues.


I would try to duplicate while someone else records a video of this to show Lexus.

 

Well all motors are great. Yes the motor generator receives a voltage determined by the ECU to be sufficient based on gas pedal and steering wheel inputs among other things. To say it's a complicated algorithm would be an understatement. This is why the dealer would need to look into that relevant data that's used to drive the traction motor