I am not the owner of this vehicle, I have an 24 ES350. My mom who lives in the Detroit area and has only ever owned American cars her whole life I talked into getting a Lexus. She got a 24 RX350. The dealership didn't have the color and features combo she wanted, so it was built for her. She ordered around the beginning of October and receive it the end of November. Since she's had it, she's unfortunately had problems with the car. It started with the dealership just generally being useless. I live in Atlanta and can confirm this isn't isolated to her dealership in Ann Arbor. 2 months after getting her car, she walked out to it for her lunch break like she does every day. Got it and suddenly couldn't get out. Doors wouldn't open, car wouldn't start. She had a minor panic attack and then she figured out how to open the door (I don't have this car, so no idea why pulling on the handle wouldn't unlock the door and there's no physical lock mechanism like most cars including my ES have). Car got towed to the dealership where it was worked on for 2 days and handed back to her and told she had a bad battery and it was replaced.

2 months later, she gets home from work and notices when she gets out a slight beeping sound in the garage. Her and dad look all around the garage trying to find where it is and then about 45 minutes later it stops. Next day, gets home and beeping is there again. This time they isolate it to the car. Further isolation and they find it coming from the engine compartment. Open the hood and the beep is very noticeable and seems to be from the left side of the bay. This time the beeping continues for 1.5 hours. Call the service department and they say there's nothing in the engine bay that should be beeping and to further isolate to ensure it's coming from the engine bay. Next day she gets home but doesn't pull into the garage. Beeping again, from engine bay and no beeping in the garage. Call the dealership and schedule a drop off. They do not give her a loaner but have the car for 4 days. 4th day they call and say they can't replicate the beep on demand, but they did get it to replicate once but couldn't figure out where the sound is coming from. Tell her if the beeping comes back, to let them know.

Next day, beeping is back, so she takes it to the dealership again. This time they give her a loaner and have had the car for 2 weeks now. They figured out how to get it to replicate on demand. If the car is driven for more than 20 minutes, the beeping happens. If not, it doesn't. The time the beeping lasts is between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours. They tell her Lexus isn't helping on this and they have no idea. The car has now been in the shop for going on 19 total days (Michigan lemon law kids in at 25 days and finalizes at 30 days). They can't figure out what this beeping is. While I don't expect anyone here to read this and be better at identifying what this is as opposed to Lexus' techs, I figured I can ask. I see another thread on the battery problem and that's not encouraging. She's never had an American car with this many problems and now I talk her into a Lexus and she's been without her car for almost an entire month and only owned it for 6 months and having to think about Lemon Law.

Thoughts?

 

Sounds like she has an issue that's not common. Our 24 RX has been bullet proof so far, just like our other Lexus cars have been.

 

That is crazy the dealer can’t get to the bottom of the issue. And Lexus corporate isn’t stepping up to the plate? Man, that is a raw deal. Sorry for her experience, I wish I had more to offer.

 

I'm in California, and I too can confirm that Lexus dealerships (unless you are lucky or know the specific service advisor or master technician) are absolutely worthless in terms of their approach to customers. One of the reasons that I'm giving up on extended warranty - is that I'll have to take the car to Lexus dealers anyway if there are problems.

One suggestion I can offer is to use one's phone and an app that measure sound levels to try to zero in to exact source of the beeping in the engine bay - if at all possible. That might help the technicians. Obviously there is beeper is coming from a source that is a speaker or such (i.e. designed to beep) - its very surprising the technicians don't know anything about it.

 

The first symptoms sound like a dead (Bad ) battery.
Not sure what could beep from engine compartment. All beeps are inside the car.

I would ask them to replace the battery.

And they have to provide a loaner when the car is in for these repairs. Call Lexus corporate.

I have to say that most issues with these are Battery related. Otherwise they are really reliable cars.

Now there are always some parts that could fail, but not common.

 

I have an update on this. They kept the car till Monday, the 29th. They think they figured it out that it was a bad seal on one of the reservoirs. This would make sense since the problem only shows up after driving for time (Temperature increase) and the time the sound lasted was various (Caused by various cool down times). They went out to the sales lot and got caps from another vehicle and replaced them and the sound stopped. My mom has had her car back now since Monday and so far has had no sounds since. At the moment, just waiting to see if the sound comes back.

 

Great to know.

Did they tell you whether the beep was coming from the engine bay (i.e. the reservoir where the leak was, which was it, etc) or from inside the cabin ?

 

It was from the engine bay. Just asked my dad and they said it was the coolant reservoir. So it wasn't a beeping like an electronic one, it was the pressure going through the seal which was cracked or had some other defect.

 

I would tell the Dealership that the "Lemon Law" still exists.

 

A week and a half later, the sound has come back. Either the cap they installed went bad, the top of the reservoir is bad, or it's something else. Does seem odd it went away for that long, but I know there was about 3 to 4 of those days the car wasn't driven as they were travelling. Told them to add up the days and if it's at 22 days It'll be in the shop when they get it back in, that they should reach out to a lemon law lawyer.