Lexus Hybrid

At the beginning of the year, I blogged about the trouble that I was having with the BMW X5 and even worse, the very poor service that I got from the BMW dealer in Portugal.
I have now returned the said X5 to the UK and being a green planet tree hugging person that I am, I was persuaded to buy a Lexus Hybrid 4x4.
I had read and spoken to a few people, one of whom told me that he had once gotten 54 mpg from his own Lexus of the same type. That'll do for me I thought, we'll have some of that.

I have now had the car a couple of months and not only am I getting nowhere near that, I am lucky to get the dam thing started and when I do, I am having to buy petrol, (as the hybrid doesn't work with diesel), which is about 20cents a litre more than diesel in Portugal, at the very best I am only getting around 30 mpg.

To make matters worse, I am having the same problems with the battery going flat as I did with the X5. No I am not leaving the radio on, the interior light on or anything else for that matter.
The other day I went to the car in the morning and the battery was totally flat, I jump started it and drove 60 kilometres not using the toll road, on a journey which took just over an hour.
When I got there, we did a bit of shopping and came back to the car around 30 minutes later, I started the car, drove a couple of kilometres to my next stop, did some shopping, had lunch, went back to the car about 90 minutes later, battery totally flat.
Fortunately, I still had the jump leads in the car and stopped a fellow Brit who kindly gave me a jump, if you see what I mean.

The following day, I rang Lexus in the UK who were very helpful and admitted to having a similar problem with the Lexus 300 GS model and that she would get someone out within the hour. Yeah right, does he not reaize that it's Christmas.
However, as promised and about 60 minutes later, a breakdown truck was at my door. He was probably in his early 20's, spoke perfect English and I explained the problem. He said that he had be told to take the car away to the local dealership. Unfortunately, the "local" Lexus dealership is in Faro, some 100 kilometres away. I asked if he was going down the toll road, he said that he was not as he was boycotting the motorway.



The good news is, as a by-product of the breakdown, I have found a way of getting a better fuel consumption from the Lexus, ..............................................................put in on the back of a truck.