I have been driving my new toy for two weeks now. I love all exterior and interior of the car. I notice something about stopping distance. When I step on the brake pedal, the car is slowing down a little bit. Then, I can feel the gear shifts down, but the car makes a little speed up before slowing down again to stop. I find this make the stopping distance incredible long to me .

I wonder if this is common for all wheel drive (AWD) car (this is my first AWD car). I hope someone can help me answer this. Thank you very much.

 

Welcome to the forum Wut

If I am not mistaken, I think the behavior is normal and it has nothing to do with AWD. The jolt you felt right before a complete stop is from the torque converter. Before the car comes to a fully stop, the TC has to disengage, and therefore you felt the jitter.

Coming from a Volkswagen (my primary car), I had the same question when I first stepped into the RX350 that was purchased a year ago. I was annoyed by this particular behavior, but after a few weeks I just got used to it. From what I see, the VW Tiptronic transmission is more sophisticated, and I can feel the transition is like 'fluid' when TC is disengaged. With Lexus, or most Toyotas for that matter, the TC disengages very quickly and therefore associated with a jitter. Just think of this as Honda VTEC vs. BMW VANOS (step vs stepless).

Hope this helps. Enjoy the car and don't worry about it.


Tim

 

Tim, thank you for the explanation. It just disturb me a little since I drove several automatic cars, but I did not feel this behavior before. I think it may not be safe for emergency stopping situation.

Wut

 

Does this happen all the time or only when the car is cold? The reason I ask is that I've noticed on my '09 in the cold weather, until the car warms up, that the idle speed is high enough to cause the car to pick up speed. I think it has to do with warming up the catalytic converter to reduce emissions.

 

It happens all the time. I always warm the car 5-10 mins before going out. I am not sure if this can help.

Next week, I might ask the salesperson to try the other cars in his showroom to see if they are different.

 

I have an '09 and don't notice the issue you raise. However, your comment about idling for 5-10 minutes made me comment. That is a total waste of fuel and does you car no good. Just start it and drive, taking it easy until it's fully warm. I can imagin that you are doing this becuase of the cold in your area. We have the same thing here and we never let any of our cars idle for more than a minute. Just crank up the seat heaters and wear gloves! The car heats up very quickly and ALL the components get warm together (transmission, drive train, etc.), not just the engine. This will save fuel and the environment as well.

 

I don't recall my old 04 RX330 doing that during braking. In fact, I had no complaints about the brakes even with my heavy 20" rims on it. My complaint was the opposite. It was about the unpredictable acceleration.

 

I had a 2001 RX300 prior to buying my 350. And I can say there is big difference in the brakes.

After about a week of driving the 350 I took it back to the dealer. You have to put some effort into stopping the car. Where as on my 300 if I put 1/3 of the effort I do now. I would have been face first against the windshield.

The dealer said they changed to different material on the brake pads.