When I read Toyota Managing Officer Toshio Furutani’s comments in the Nikkei Business News last week that “in the medium to long term, Toyota was considering making the Lexus lineup hybrid-only”, it barely registered. Now, after seeing it reported over and over, I’ve come to release it might be an idea to post here — this is a Lexus news site, after all.

Honestly, I had always just assumed that eventually Lexus would stop selling conventional gas engines and replace them all with hybrid versions. In fact, with the hybrid version of the RX making up 86% of all European sales and the very technology being so important to the brand’s success there, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the next-gen RX to be only offered as a hybrid there.

With the exception of the IS-F, picturing a hybrid-only lineup isn’t very difficult at all — and then when you consider the rumor that the LF-A would also be offered as a hybrid, even the IS-F doesn’t seem implausible at all.

(And this doesn’t even take into account the potential brand benefit of being the first mass market car manufacturer to drop conventional engines!)

[Source: Reuters]

What begins as a headscratcher ends up being a very effective commercial for some exclusive Lexus technology:

My first time watching the commercial, I immediately though of one particularly weird commercial from a while back, but in actuality it was a very convincing application of the driver monitoring system.

[Via: Steadywinds]

Details are sparse, but there’s news today regarding the upcoming Lexus hybrids. Yes, that’s correct, there’s two hybrids in the works!

Of course, this has been rumored for some time, but now we have something more in the way of facts:

• Fact #1: The first Lexus dedicated hybrid will be based on the new Toyota Prius, though it’s expected to have slightly more CO2 emissions due to its emphasis on performance. (The new Prius will have CO2 emissions of 92g/km.)
• Fact #2: The second Lexus hybrid will be larger and entirely new, and will not be available for sale in Europe due to the C02 emssions.

The first thing that springs to mind when reading about the larger Lexus hybrid is the ES. After all, the ES isn’t available in Europe with its conventional engine, and even further, you can’t buy a Camry hybrid in Europe either. Pretty much spells it out for me…

[Source: Automotive News]

In a replay of last year, a Lexus RX 450h 400h advertisement has been banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority:

The press ad, for the Lexus RX 400h, made the claim: “perfect for today’s climate. (And tomorrow’s) … Driving the world’s first luxury hybrid SUV makes environmental, and economic, sense …”

Four complaints were made to the Advertising Standards Authority that the claims were misleading because “they implied that the car caused little or no harm to the environment and gave a misleading impression of the car’s CO2 emissions in comparison with other vehicles”.

Lexus said that the use of the word “climate” in the ad was meant to operate at “two levels”.

One was that in the current economic market the Lexus was offered with attractive financial packages, the other that hybrid cars were more environmentally friendly.

But the ASA said the ad implied that the vehicle’s emission rate was low in relation to all vehicles and that readers were likely to understand that “the car caused little or no harm to the environment”.

(The above advertisement is a modified version made by Lexus after the receiving complaints. The original ad didn’t have the word “economic” in the headline.)

To be honest, I see anything wrong with the ad at all, and not only that, isn’t it strange that Lexus isn’t allowed to promote their product’s strength over competitors?

[Source: The Guardian]

The Targa Newfoundland race concluded on Saturday, with Lexus GS 450h making a late push to finish 6th place. Here’s the summary written by Team Lexus’ driver, Mark Lachapelle:

Team Targa Lexus chose to make a very different entrance and arrival. Co-driver Alan Ockwell and I simply drove up in total silence, running on electric power only. For us, it was the best proof that you can run hard for six days (counting the three Prologue stages last Sunday), make it to the finish and still be as environmentally-friendly and quiet as possible, in a modern car. Not to mention competitively.

We finished sixth overall and became repeat winners in the Hybrid division, of course, but we also finished a virtual third in the Modern division with our two-ton-plus hybrid-powered sedan, bested only by a pair of rally-inspired, all-wheel drive compact sedans with about 350 horsepower each. Third place in Modern officially went to brothers Hugo and Maxime Vadeboncoeur in a Honda CRX, who also won the Baldhead trophy handed out to the best rookies.

(To clear up any confusion in that last paragraph, Marc refers to the fact that the GS was in the Hybrid category, and not Modern.)

Congratulations to entire Team Lexus, who significantly improved on their 2007 18th place finish. I really enjoyed following along on their progress, and I’m already looking forward to next year’s event.

It’s been an up and down couple days for the Targa GS 450h — after completing Day 1 with zero errors, Team Lexus fell back to 15th place on Day 2. And now, yesterday, they surged forward and ended the stage in 8th position. This is quite a feat, though driver Marc Lachapelle stays humble in his latest blog post:

Don’t worry; we are not letting this good result get to our collective heads. There are still two full days of hard, fast and sometimes treacherous rally stages to complete before getting to the finish line in St-John’s. Our goal has not changed. We want to bring our car there in perfect shape, with a happy crew.

I’m really enjoying the race blog, and still getting a kick of these short little video clips being posted on Youtube:

(Also, be sure to check out the Facebook page.)