Cars / Lifeexclusive journey that has made this the best-selling luxury
hybrid SUV of all time.
At one point, the RX accounted for 40 per cent of Lexus
sales. Even after inspiring countless competitors from rival
marques, it remains the top-selling Lexus hybrid, with global
sales of over 335,000 units through March 2016, out of one
million Lexus hybrids delivered since 2005.
It’s not hard to appreciate why. Slip behind the thick, meaty
steering wheel that is generously wrapped in premium leather
and run your fi ngers across every surface: you won’t fi nd a
coarse edge or a bit of substandard material anywhere—
yes, even in the places you can’t immediately see. Press the
start-stop button and watch the Lexus quietly rouse from
slumber without uttering a single decibel. As you glide your
foot off the brake pedal, the RX crawls forward so silently
it feels almost surreal. A slight dab of the throttle summons
the combustion engine into this technological orchestra as
seamlessly as a conductor calls upon a new instrument to join
in the piece.
The whole process is so fl uid and masterful that it requires
a hybrid indicator display with animation to tell you what’s
going on. Even then, there’s still no way to fully appreciate
the sorcery that is going on under
the hood. It all happens in unison.
In a blink of an eye, power is being
harvested, stored, and replenished
during a high-speed ballet between
hardware and software. Imagine
driving your smartphone and
you’ll get pretty close to the
feeling brought on by sitting
behind the wheel of the RX 450h.
Even the all-wheel drive system
is completely electric. I was half
expecting a ringtone when I hit
the horn. Because if there’s an area where they could save
gas, weight, or emissions, they found an app for that. I know
I keep using the music analogy because of how everything
works in symphony; but if this car were a movie, it would be
titled Fifty Shades of Green.
In a perfect world, we would all be driving hydrogen
cars—then again, in a perfect world, Mother Teresa
would have more Instagram followers than the
Kardashians, but we all know how that turned out.
While we’re on our way, hybrid technology is the most
reliable and affordable road towards that goal. I’m
talking about the hydrogen, of course, not the Instagram
followers. Even when we perfect hydrogen and get it to
an affordable level, hybrid technology will still play a
role, and nobody has been able to play that part better
than Toyota and Lexus.
There’s still some room for improvement—I’d like to
see lithium batteries instead of Nickel-Metal Hydride
in the next model—but with global warming becoming
more and more tangible than many thought it would in
our lifetime, this is the way of the future. With the RX
450h, that future is now.NEED FOR SPEED
The greenest hybrid SUV car is also
quite fast at 200 km/h; (inset) Happy
with hybrid; (opposite) No coarse
edgeora hintof substandard
materialanywherephilippine tatler. august 2019 77