Gadgetory

the Lexus RX Hybrid is in a lot of ways a class definer it kind of stands alone as a luxury midsize hybrid crossover and there's not a lot that goes toe-to-toe with it delivering the same blend of performance and efficiency and luxury but it's been around for a while and it hasn't really changed much over the years so let's hop behind the wheel of the 2014 example and see if it still has what it takes now the interior does look a little dated this vehicle is almost half a decade old since it was launched especially here in this sort of asymmetrical swoopy area where you've got this very 1990s looking a CD slot and buttons for the controls for that but I'm willing to forgive that because the interior materials are very nice you've got this kind of nice metallic champagne and this bamboo it's just it feels really nice and it's very comfortable even if it doesn't seem very modern now up at the top of the dashboard we've got our standard color screen it's not a touchscreen because Lexus doesn't do that it's sunken really deep into the dashboard and instead you'll control it with Lexus's remote touch controller down here now we've seen this before it's sort of a combination mouse trackpad II thing that gives you absolute control of where the cursor on the screen goes now one place that the remote touch controller does kind of help you keep your eyes on the road is that there's haptic feedback so as I'm moving this controller around I'm getting resistance as I leave the destination icon and then it snaps to the info icon so I can very quickly go through a list of things just by feeling how many de tense I'm getting on this remote touch controller it is a little weird and it does take a lot of getting used to but there is a sort of gee-whiz cool factor that goes along with it that i think some drivers will like it's not my favorite way to interact I prefer either like a control knob or just to touch the screen in most cases the navigation system is quickly accessible by a button right here and you get two dimensional maps you don't get any sort of 3d buildings or even a slight sort of bird's isometric tilt like you will get with a lot of navigation systems top down is all you get here destination inputs pretty simple you do have voice command but the Lexus system is going to be one of those that's going to take you through ever every single step of the process say the city name say the street names say the street number the competitors are letting you get it all in one go and that's probably the best way to do it and if we pop back into the main menu will pop into our audio sources interestingly there are separate icons for radio and media even though more or less they take you to the same place if we had a Bluetooth phone paired we'd also have access to the Lexus enform suite of apps that's going to get you things like movietickets.com pandora radio playback and more we've also got Bluetooth audio streaming USB connectivity with iPod and an auxilary input now underneath the hood well somewhere underneath the hood like this is kind of covered everything up with black plastic that's kind of par for the course but it's a little bit weird they left this opening to show you another engine cover but underneath that cover you'll find a 3.5 liter Atkin cycle v6 it's gonna put out about 245 horsepower by itself but it's not alone it actually paired up via a planetary gear with a 116 kilowatt electric engine and those two together are going to give you a combined system output 295 horsepower now this particular example is an all wheel drive version but there's no drive shaft that runs from the engine to the rear wheels what Lexus does is they just put a second 50 kilowatt electric motor on the rear axle that just kind of comes alive and uses energy from the battery pack to give a little additional torque at the rear wheel that saves a little bit of weight but it also gives them an extra engine that converts into a generator when you're using regen braking that's gonna help charge that battery a little bit faster and help you recapture energy so it gives as good as it gets fuel economy is gonna be stated at 30 miles per gallon city 28 highway or 29 combined and those aren't really impressive numbers for the Hybrid badge but you gotta remember this is a big heavy vehicle with a v6 engine as its base and Lexus hybrid message is it necessarily we're gonna give you 40 miles per gallon but rather they wants you to feel like you're getting the power of a v8 engine in a luxury hybrid SUV but with the efficiency of a v6 one of those intangible and not immediately obvious benefit of going hybrid with the Lexus RX 450h is well just how quiet the powertrain is most of the time the gasoline engine isn't even running when you're stopped at a traffic light er pulling away from a stop sign or even if you're like I'm doing right now moving around at about 20 miles per hour that gasoline engine isn't even running and when you do get up to a speed where it needs to come on or you need a little bit more power to climb a hill it's very quiet even then and that's really sort of the point of this big luxury SUV is not really to give you the maximum fuel efficiency but to give you sort of an effortless driving experience that isn't really obtrusive the other thing that you don't have to think about is how to get the best possible fuel economy from this car because the hybrid powertrain systems pretty much working it all out by itself you just drive it around like a regular car and it does 30 miles per gallon there's no hypermiling necessary although you do notice that there is a little bit of lag between your inputs and the actual results or where the rubber meets the road so if you're looking for a more dynamic Drive this probably isn't the car but just take it easy give yourself a little room and enjoy the ride 2014 lexus RX 450h that's the hybrid right here is at the top of the RX food chain and it's gonna start at forty seven thousand eight hundred and ten bucks but we've got a lot of options it's gonna add quite a bit to that bottom line for example we've got the navigation and rear seat entertainment package it's going to substantially bump up the tech we've got a luxury package that's gonna add those nice leather seats and that nice bamboo interior as long as a whole lot of other amenities and we've also got about a thousand bucks into a Martin Levinson audio system all in including all of these small bells and whistles that I'm skipping over right now we're looking at about 62,000 $74.00 you can save about 2000 bucks off of that and get it right under sixty if you skip the rear seat entertainment package and go with an iPad I do you