Gadgetory

over the past 10 years Lexus has been hard at work trying to shed the grandpa's car image trading in soft luxury for premium sport with a 2013 GS Lexus hits a new high a performance handling and cabin technology throw in a hybrid powertrain you have one of the best techie stands around this is the 2013 Lexus gs450h this big screen its twelve point three inch LCD most of the time the screen has a split it shows a map or whatever the main function is on the left side on the right side you get this small dogs iller II screen which shows you maybe the music that's playing right now or it's also got this energy monitor for your trip information and you control stuff on this screen with this little controller right here which I think it should have a more solid feel given that this is a pretty high-end car and also it's sometimes hard to hit the buttons on the screen and really hit the mark you want but another way to control this is a voice command and this car has excellent voice command so if I just hit the button on the steering wheel after the beep saying a shortcut menu command play artist Fleetwood Mac play artist Fleetwood Mac but we also have the Lexus enform system here and that that's very similar to the Twitter and tune system so what that is that's that's Lexuses app integration strategy the inform app is running on my iPhone and that's paired to the car a little work bluetooth paired it'll also work if it's cabled into the car so I've got my apps screen loss here I've got apps like Pandora Open Table Yelp and I've also got Bing search and the cool thing about being is that I also can do voice search with it I can't actually use the voice command button on the steering wheel I have to go to this little microphone icon on the screen hamburger and I've got a list of the results hit the hamburger result with the controller here and so I've got an in-and-out burger hit the result for that and I get an icon for the map so I can just program that right in as I'm going and also on this console we've got this dial here below the shifter that puts the car in a different drive modes we've got eco to the left this will be - in the gas pedal and just you know frustrate the heck out of you when you want to actually get going you can turn it to the right and you get in this sport mode this Tunes the transmission to keep the revs up higher and keep power up all the time then you can turn it once more to the right and you get the Sport Plus mode Sport Plus actually retains that transmission profile and also changes the suspension it actually dials in a more rigid suspension so with a hybrid system but they actually do is they start out with the 3.5 liter v6 it's got direct injection and porton injection which is a little weird the reason why they do that is port injection is quieter and so uses port injection when the engine is running at slower speeds because the direct injection which is a lot more efficient when it's running at higher speeds along with this engine they add this hybrid system and the system all combined produces 338 horsepower that's a bit more than the v6 a little less than the v8 but the real win here is you've got 30 miles per gallon on average that's what we've been getting I think EPA numbers are like 29 city 34 highway but 30 is great 30 is like 10 miles per gallon better than you'd get with the v6 and probably a couple more than you'd get with the v8 this is a great engine it's also got a lot of power that 330 horsepower will actually bring it to 60 miles per hour in 5.6 seconds according to Lexus so it's fast and it gets great fuel economy I mean what more could you want as a full hybrid the Lexus gs450h they'll turn off its engine when I'm stopped a bit lightly if I let my foot off the brake start creeping forward you'll move forward under electric power what I find with this car is it's it's really too heavy to stay in eb mode for a long time if you want to get out of people's away from behind you you really need to push that accelerator and which will kick the engine you know there's just really no getting around that but what I also find is that you know you can get moving and with the engine going then just as you're kind of a cruising speed lifts off the accelerator really quick it'll and usually the engine will cut off if you're at speeds like under 35 miles per hour and then you can get going now we're a little bit of rough road right now and I can feel the fairly rigid suspension and this is a changed Lexus is made from the old days of old sort of grandpa cars with soft suspensions they made this especially more rigid to help the handling and that leads to you know maybe a little more bumps but it handles it pretty confidently when you put it in Sport Plus plus mode it actually tightens up that suspension and makes it handle actually surprisingly well and the hybrid powertrain actually gives it a lot more power than the standard v6 car you get that zero to sixty and I think they say five point six seconds which is is not bad at all the Lexus gs450h goes for fifty eight thousand nine hundred and fifty dollars with this car we also have the blind spot monitor that's five hundred dollars I can get that we also have this luxury package which is five thousand two hundred and five dollars and includes all sorts little trim elements and nice stuff little gimmicks here and there you could get that or not nothing really essential there and the navigation system with that twelve point three inch screen goes for 1735 that's essential you'll want to get that the GS 450h it's a lot of high points in tech that hybrid system gets great power and great fuel economy the adaptive suspension gives it great handling and it's got app integration with all those other cabin tech features it's all around a great tech car and I have no problem giving it an editor's choice