Car Review: Lexus RX 350 Adds iDrive (But Easy to Use)

http://www.gearlog.com/2009/02/car_review_lexus_rx_350_adds_i.php

The 2010 Lexus RX 350 and Lexus RX 450h Hybrid now have a cockpit controller like BMW's iDrive--but the Lexus Remote Touch controller is drop-dead simple to use. Remote Touch is the technology highlight of the third generation of Lexus' midsize luxury SUV, along with an impressive Bluetooth system, iPod integration, improved navigation, and a hybrid version that will account for one in five RX sales.

Lexus' Remote Touch replaces the previous-generation touchscreen display and uses a force-feedback joystick rather than the control wheel employed by BMW (iDrive), Audi (MMI), Mercedes-Benz (Comand), as well as Honda/Acura, Hyundai, and Infiniti. Force feedback means that when the joystick pointer nears an object on the 8-inch onscreen LCD, the pointer snaps to the selection.

Remote Touch is idiot-proof. The controller has a big palmrest with a short, joystick-like control pad at the front. (It looks like you're pushing around a squarish, leather-capped mushroom more than a tall joystick stalk.) Push to slide the pointer where you want to go, press the Select button on the left or right side of the palm rest, then push/slide and click again to fine-tune your selection. Even as BMW's latest iDrive on the 3 Series and 7 Series has become comparatively simple to use, Remote Touch is simpler still for navigating the screen.

Lexus says it added about $2,000 in additional features and lowered the base price by $900, to $37,625 (including freight) for the front-drive, gasoline-only Lexus RX 350. Such a deal. The hybrid (Lexus RX 450h) price hasn't been set, but if it follows the form of the previous models, may be such that payback in fuel savings will be in the range of 6 to 10 years.

One Big Drawback to Remote Touch (Not Enought Buttons)

Remote Touch has a noticeable drawback: no fixed-function buttons other than Menu and Map, located at the very front of the controller (photo, right). With iDrive or MMI, you press a button to jump straight to the functions you do all the time: navigation, phone, CD/iPod, radio/satellite radio.

With Remote Touch, you have to navigate to the function you want by pressing Menu, scrolling to the selection, then pressing Select. It's only a couple seconds each time and Lexus may say fewer buttons equals less confusion for users. But anyone who's used an Audi or BMW will quickly conclude that Remote Touch 1.0 is needlessly slow.

Once you're past the first step, iDrive takes more skill to manipulate, but it's no longer the horror show you heard about five years ago. And once you've really learned iDrive, it's faster than Remote Touch, but a lot of people never learn iDrive. The clear advantage for the vast majority of American drivers lies with Remote Touch. There's even a Display button on the side so you can quickly adjust screen brightness without going multiple menu layers deep.

Even with the shortage of function buttons (photo, right), Remote Touch is the one cockpit controller that makes users feel comfortable the first time they sit in the car. I suspect two things will happen within 2-3 years to change how controllers are deployed in cars:

Other automakers will adopt beefy joystick controllers. And not the tiny wobble-stick joysticks employed on some small cars. A useful joystick is big and it's mounted on a horizontal, not vertical surface, where you can rest your hand. Audi, BMW, and Mercedes have spent almost a decade making control wheels sort-of-workable. The Hyundai Genesis controller is also fairly easy to use in its first iteration. Lexus made a joystick work well the first time. For most users, it's more intuitive to use a joystick to push a pointer around the screen than a control wheel that now typically has a joystick-like function (because it doesn't look like a joystick).

Lexus will likely add more dedicated function buttons: navigation, phone, iPod, radio, and back (faster than joystick-scrolling to a back arrow) along with the current menu and map keys. If nothing else, just swipe the BMW design (photo, right), which is nearly perfect as far as the number, placement, and shape of buttons goes. Right now, Lexus claims fewer fixed-function buttons are actually better because of less visual clutter. That was the tune BMW sang from 2002 to 2008 before bowing to the wisdom of the Audi MMI configuration of controller plus key fixed-function buttons.

Driving Impressions
I drove several Lexus RX 350 and RX 450 Hybrid models at a recent press launch. Both models are luxurious, quiet, and comfortable to drive in and ride in. The styling is a known quantity and utterly inoffensive. Front seat comfort is excellent. Short and tall passengers will like that there's an optional that allows the seat cushion to adjust for length. Back seat passengers will find passable legroom and wish the seat cushions were an inch or two higher, and that's the same problem as on most mid-to-large SUVs. This being the smallest of the Lexus SUV lines (RX, GX, LX), there's no third row.
Little touches make the 2010 RX models better. The 8-inch LCD display (no longer touchscren) or 7-inch monochrome display on non-navigation cars is now at the top of the center stack and deeply recessed. The rear suspension is a double-wishbone design, something associated with ultimate sports cars rather than soft-riding Lexuses, but it's more compact, intrudes less into the cargo area, and improves rear luggage capacity (which remains compromised by the raked rear roofline). The automatic transmission is now six not five speeds with top gear effectively overdrive compared to the old transmission. Power steering is electric not hydraulic and saves 3% on gas mileage, Lexus says, and if there's less road feel transmitted to the steering wheel, that's not a big issue to a Lexus buyer. Headlamps are auto-dimming; steerable xenon headlamps are available. A hill-start assist control (HAC) feature keeps the car from slipping back on startup. A big cutout under the console, open on both sides, is the perfect place to stash a purse, and helps explain why women flock to the Lexus RX: 60% of the buyers are women, a figure Lexus hopes to equalize; it also wants to get the average buyer age down from the current 58.
The already dazzling main gauges in the instrument panel are lit by OLEDs (organic LEDs, photo above). Rear brake and license plate lights are LED (oddly, tail lamps and turn signals still use traditional tungsten bulbs). The airbag count is up to 10 with the addition of second row side airbags. The rear entertainment system now uses two headrest-mount LCDs rather than a single overhead drop-down. The rear spoiler is now standard, so the rear wiper mounts there, where it can't be molested by car wash brushes. The two water bottle cutouts in the center console don't interfere with passenger operation of Remote Touch, something Mercedes-Benz couldn't master with its latest iteration of the Comand controller in the C-Class sedan (admittedly a smaller vehicle).

A BMW X5 or Acura MDX is more fun to drive, slightly bigger, and in BMW's case about $10,000 more costly, but Lexus outsells its closest competitor, BMW, by more than 2-1, which suggests Lexus better understands the American mindset. More people want a smooth ride and friendly dealers than an SUV that can confidently lap the Nurburgring racetrack. At least Lexus now offers an RX 350 sport package for those who want a less pillowy ride.

Lexus RX 450h Hybrid
The Lexus RX 450h is a fine car to drive and makes a lot of sense for the environment and for fuel economy if most of your driving is around town. The hybrid components have all been made smaller, lighter, or more efficient. It's rated an impressive 30 mpg city, 27 mpg highway, and 28 mpg overall, which are big improvements over the all-wheel-drive RX 350's 18 city, 24 highway, 19 overall. City mileage is twice that of gas-engine Acura, BMW, Lincoln, and Mercedes-Benz competitors. The RX 450h uses an Atkinson cycle engine, a gasoline engine optimized for efficiency. The old Lexus hybrid used a more traditional gasoline (Otto) engine.

Hybrid pricing hasn't been set. The outgoing Lexus RX 400h listed at $42,080, about $4,000 over the gasoline equivalent. The Lexus RX 450h will follow the RX 350 gasoline model by about three months, meaning first deliveries in early summer. You'll have to do your own calculations to see if the RX 450h hybrid, no matter how desirable, makes dollars and sense with no federal tax credits for Lexus hybrids any more. It may be you'll need to buy on faith that you're doing something for the globabl environment, not necessarily for your personal cost of ownership.

If there's a $3,000 price premium for the hybrid, you'd need about seven years to get your money back assuming you drive 12,000 miles a year and premium fuel costs $2.50 a gallon. The hybrid's fuel savings would be $471 a year. But if you own a Lexus RX 450h and are lucky enough to see premium gasoline cost $3.50 a gallon, then you'd save $600 a year and get the premium back in five years. If the price premium is $4,000, you'd need 9.3 years ($2.50 a gallon) or 6.7 years ($3.50 a gallon).

Lexus RX 350, RX 450h Features
Here are some features new or impressed on the Lexus RXs, of interest for those who appreciate technology, particularly technology that isn't just for technology's sake:

Active cruise control (ACC). Lexus calls it a Pre-Collision System (PCS) with Dynamic Radar Cruise Control ($1,500). In heavy traffic, this cruise control paces the car ahead at one of three pre-set distances. It also warns you to brake in the event of an impending collision. Some costlier ACC systems are stop-and-go; this one cuts out below 20 mph because the radar can't track at close following distances. While Lexus offers forward (ACC) and rear (parking sonar) force fields for safety, the RX models don't offer blind sport detection or lane departure warning, which are relatively cheap to implement.

Head-up display (HUD). This secondary display ($1,200) places the most crucial information in a small monochromatic window that appears to float just over the front edge of the hood. You get your current speed, a navigation arrow as you approach a turn, and some basic audio information.

It's useful but other HUDs, particularly BMW's, provides more information with a multi-color (but not full color) HUD. Here's one example where the Lexus HUD falls short on usefulness: The audio system passes along and the HUD displays the track number your iPod is playing but not the name of the track. With satellite radio, it passes along the channel number but not the channel name or song name.

Lexus by-the-way calls it a heads-up display, which should elicit snarky notes from pilots who point out that it's head-up display, singular. So there.

iPod adapter. It's all but standard, offered on the most basic of the RX 350's options packages. (That said, it should be universally standard, as Bluetooth is.) A USB jack in the center console (along with a line-in jack and two 12-volt outlets) allows virtually any music containing device to be controlled from the Remote Touch controller. I found some audio menus confusing and poorly thought out, but the overall experience is still better than using a line-in jack and controlling the iPod by hand. XM satellite radio now comes standard and you can order several levels of premium audio including a Mark Levinson-branded system.
Bluetooth. It comes standard and works well. There's both Bluetooth for your phone and Bluetooth for streaming music. I'm not sure I get the audio Bluetooth since it won't allow you to control your device or recharge it, but what the heck.

Navigation package. Lexus offers it with a backup camera, hard drive, a CD changer, 12-speaker upgraded audio, improved voice input, and XM NavTraffic and XM NavWeather, for $2,550. (Or in even costlier options packages.) This Denso navigation system is better and more responsive; in recent years, Denso systems went from technology leader to laggard to leader again. Now, my only complaints are the lack of useful split screen modes (say, audio in one half, navigation in another), the failure of the navigation display to pop up over another screen (say, audio) when a critical turn approaches, and Lexus' please-don't-sue-us nervousness that makes them lock out some navigation features while moving even if there's a passenger aboard. (The voice input does let you enter a destination while moving, at least.) For display flexibility, Infiniti's Xanavi system remains the gold standard.

Because there's so much technology here, it's hard to get a sense of whether the overall price is reasonable when the best Garmin portable systems are less than $1,000 and competent portable navigation devices are $500. Also, if you opt for all three XM services, it's $24 a month and the $5 a month imputed to traffic info is shaky (I believe), since even the best traffic info seems to be wrong about half the time. That's creeping up from the $10 a month you initially paid for standalone satellite radio.
Wide view side monitor. A down-facing camera in the right side mirror projects a length-of-the-car view as you're easing into or out of a parking space. Infiniti's three-camera Around View system is cooler and costlier but this is almost as useful.

Smart key. Keyless entry and start are standard. On some cars, that's a $500-$1,000 option.

Lexus continues the tradition of big options packages, meaning you may have to take options you don't want to get ones you do. There's a Navigation Package with Additional Options that bundles, for $6,818, the navigation/camera component with the first level of premium audio, a smog sensor (it turns on climate control recirculation), 19-inch alloy wheels, heated and ventilated seats, and a towing prep package. Do you see a common thread among the options? Me neither. Also: The Lexus website shows some standalone options that aren't available when you actually go to configure a car. It could be the site is still sorting itself out, or I'm not smart enough to use the site. Or that you may need to go see a Lexus dealer to configure the RX 350 you want.
Bottom Line: Lexus RX as the SUV to Beat
The Lexus RX 350 is not the vehicle for driving twisty back roads. It is a superb choice, for those who can afford a vehicle selling for $45,000-$50,000, for safe, luxurious, comfortable, and entertaining short and long-distance travel. Two adults and two children who pack light can go anywhere in an RX 350 or RX 450 Hybrid. (The rear cargo area, remember, is not that big, and the back seat is okay not luxurious for grown-ups because of the low seat height.) The Remote Touch joystick means anyone can now work a navigation system, not just those who spend hours poring over the manual and memorizing turn-press-slide-press patterns before inserting the ignition key. You'd be hard-pressed to go wrong with the new Lexus. For the third time, the Lexus RX is the midsize luxury SUV benchmark for others to match.

Lexus RX 350, Lexus RX450h
Price: $37,625 front-drive, $$39,025 all-wheel-drive (includes $825 freight). Lexus RX 450h TBA (spring/summer 2009).
EPA economy: RX 350, 18 mpg city, 24 highway, 20 combined (premium). RX 450h 30 city, 27 highway, and 28 combined.

Pros: Best-yet way to control an LCD display (Remote Touch joystick). Useful new technologies. Standard Bluetooth, nearly standard iPod adapter.

Cons: Lack of fixed-function buttons to speed up initial access to Remote Touch features. Some onscreen menus confusing. Website pretty but build-your-own needs work.

Bottom line: Lexus hits another home run with the third generation RX. Remote Touch is the most effective cockpit controller yet (but not perfect). Price delta of hybrid RX 450h over RX 350, if similar to the old RXs, may not make pure economic sense for the first owner.