Lexus Emissions

-Chris-

I'm just looking at the Lexus range at the moment and realised that, other than the RX Hybrid, not one of them gets in the A, B or C VRT or Motor Tax brackets.

Isn't it incredible that the company that make the only mass-market hybrid (Toyota Prius) leave themselves so challenged on the CO2 front with their luxury brand?
Merc, Audi & BMW are walking all over them from a CO2 point-of-view.

Why do you think they haven't taken this more seriously?

ninty9er

Quite frankly I think it is because the main market for Lexus is the US wehre it doesn't matter to the same extent.

This coupled to the fact that Lexus is now really the only big name brand that is still niche. BMW, Audi and Merc are now just mainstream brands that used to be niche.

Anyone looking for a niche car is after the brand and anything beyond that is just something they'll have to get on with.

As well as that I suppose they're selling a whole lot of hybrid and little else, so it doesn't matter on a double weighting.

mickdw

But they do get the GS 450h with 3.5L petrol and a large electric motor into the €600 tax bracket. The hybrids across the range are good. I think your point says more about them having a poor range of diesels than anything else although Im sure the IS 220d will soon take a big drop in co2.

JHMEG

As said, how many diesels in the range... not many (1).

It's unfortunate that CO2 is the metric on which the greens chose to base the motor tax/VRT system, as CO2 does not contribute to air pollution, and therefore does not tell anything much about a car's environmental performance.

In the UK there is a pollution levy on diesel company cars which negates and financial benefit to having low CO2 numbers.

-Chris-

I realise that CO2 is a crude measure of how environmentally efficient a car is from a wholelife perspective, and that it's skewed in favour of diesel cars but:


a) Why aren't their diesels cleaner? Why are they off the pace with those?

b) If their strategy is truely hybrid rather than diesel (which is fine with me btw, before I get flamed...), why not introduce it in the biggest selling/most accessible car in the range, the IS?

c) Europe is a big market, and there's a push for car manufacturers to reduce the average CO2 emissions across their range. If Lexus count themselves as a seperate manufacturer from Toyota, they'll never hit that target with the current range.


A large proportion of the Lexus(es) sold in Ireland and the UK will be company vehicles, but the BIK legislation is (in the UK) and will be (in ROI) based on CO2. The UK is a large market, why isn't there a push for better CO2 emissions in order to increase market share there (although I don't understand UK BIK and I'm unsure of the effect of the diesel loading JHMEG alluded to).

I'm not meaning to be negative about Lexus, but I was talking to someone about their fleet policy the today and they were very frustrated they couldn't opt for an IS over the A4 & 3-Series offered due to their company's "band ABC" policy...

JHMEG

a) What do you mean by "cleaner"? Lower CO2 is not cleaner, lower NOx and particulates is cleaner, but the EU has relatively high limits to these from diesel cars. The US and Japan do not, where unlike here, the same emissions standards are applied to diesel and petrol cars.

Hence European manufacturers are really into diesels as they can sell them here legally. Otoh a lot of them (Euro IV iirc) would be illegal in most of the US and Japan.

Enter the petrol-hybrid. Why invest in something (ie diesel) that will have massive regulatory issues in two of the biggest markets in the world, when a petrol-hybrid can sell anywhere?

b) Toyota are "hybridising" a lot of cars. I'm not sure of the details tho.

c) US and Japan are bigger (for Lexus) and emerging markets like Thailand is where the investment from the likes of Honda is going.

On a similar note, I read recently about a guy in the US who replaced the 1.0L petrol engine in a Honda Insight Mk1 with a 1.2L VW diesel engine, which is an interesting project, granted (and successful). But the mad thing is he had to get a licence from the EPA to import the diesel engine, as it's considered a biohazard!

R.O.R

I was talking to my Lexus supplier earlier in the year regarding the IS220d falling outside of the 155g/km limit that will bring the cars in to the lowest VRT category.

He was telling me at that point that Lexus were working on the engine, weight of the car and aerodynamics, to bring the car in below the threshold. The UK has the same CO2 limit for BIk purposes here as we do (costs more over 155g) so Lexus have been losing out massivley on what would be the major market for that car.

PADRAIC.M

you know what they say about lexus- if you have to ask how much it is, then you can't afford it! (think that excludes the IS MODEL as thats the "affordable" one :-)

mickdw

PADRAIC.M wrote: »

you know what they say about lexus- if you have to ask how much it is, then you can't afford it! (think that excludes the IS MODEL as thats the "affordable" one :-)

I think that applies to Rolls royce or maybe bugatti more than lexus tbh.