I've read elsewhere that it will only get around 17(US)mpg.

I doubt that, as the LS 460 gets fuel economy in the mid twenties city/highway. The hybrid should do better than the gas version...

That's what I thought. We shall have to wait and see.

430 HP -- In the movie "Smokie and the Bandit" Burt Reynolds only had 185 HP in his Trans AM and look at what that vehicle did. How much horse power does a car need??? It seems this technology is pushing more and more HP and only minimum gains if economy. I mean -- whats ya gona do wit 430 HP??? It's fun. It is neat. But 430 horsies - that's a lota get up and go!!

This car is infected with the same disease that most GM cars have.

Stop moaning hippies. Not everyone likes slow cars.

Good point - far too many hippies on this site! This won't be a high-volume car. Relax. People who are in the market for a 7-series or an S-class AREN'T going to be looking at a Prius or a Camry Hybrid. Isn't this LS600h still a better option than the afformentioned luxury cars?

You may call us hippies, but when gas hits 5$ a gallon, these things aren't exactly going to be in high demand.

Indeed. This is supposed to go head to head against 12-cylinder / supercharged 8-cylinder ultra luxury cars. Very few of these are going to be on the roads.

A lot of low end Sedans these days are faster these days than a Porsche 911 during the 70s. The concept of what constitutes power has totally changed. I guess the whole concept of power has a lot to do with how old you are. I just find it totally weird that you have to get up to over 400hp before you feel like you really have power. It that makes me an old hippy, then so be it.

Pure bragging rights and one-upmanship, all style, vanity and no substance. Alas, the relentless pursuit of power!...for those who are still in the rat races.

Basically this is a muscle hybrid. Its an electric supercharger that happens to shave off 1-2 mpg. If you want to save gas, buy a Prius, or at least just a V-6...

Love... Drool...

Where some see a negative I see a positve. More $ going into hybrid research, technology trickle down and still fuel savings. \

The target audience would have bought a AMG Mercedes that would use far more fuel and put out far more crap into the air. This car is not moving sales away from more efficient cars, only from LESS efficient ones.

PS - A tuner/hacker/mechanic/genius could make this thing double as a generator for half the neighborhood.

What a bunch of whiners. If you don't like the car, don't buy it. Not like most of you can afford something like this anyway.

"You may call us hippies, but when gas hits 5$ a gallon, these things aren't exactly going to be in high demand."

If you have the money to buy this car you can afford $5 a gallon. This car will be in very high demand especially if gas goes to $5 a gallon. Not everyone is willing to down grade to GS or ES simply because of gas prices.

The Prius will continue to be the testing ground for "extreme" hybridization and plug in. Technology won't trickle down, it will trickle up and sideways. Those in the forefront, the early adopters will be "drooling" over the Prius, not the Lexus. There are a helluva lot of people who can afford the Lexus but will buy the Prius because it will continue to be the cutting edge vehicle. Fortunately, the high end Lexus market is pretty much irrelevant and will contribute little, if anything, to the future of the automobile.

What I wish would change is the seeming synonymity of horsepower and luxury. Why is it now a requirement that a luxury sedan come with V8 or V12 power? Why can't we have an LS that trades the big engine for one that gets better fuel economy? Not everyone needs to get to 60 mph in 5.5 seconds. Some of us are pefectly content with getting there in 8 seconds.

Bravo, Toyota. Now cut V8 in half and put all this luxury into Matrix. M-m-m, electric AWD GDI hybrid with dynamic stability control…

Earth to hippies:
There is no correlation between peak HP and fuel consumption in normal driving. If you want to talk about weight thats a whole other matter.

Justin, I believe you are mistaken. As I understand it, in order to get high horsepower with a standard ICE, you add displacement (more cylinders and accompanying valvetrain, etc). Friction increases, weight increases, but most importantly, pumping losses increase as you run at partial load. Throttled engines don't run efficiently at part load, and the further peak horsepower departs from the everyday load (cruising), the less efficient the ICE is going to run. Variable valve trains and other tweaks are designed to overcome this effect to some extent, but the basic fact remains.

Nick
You are just plain wrong.

For example.
Chevrolet Corvette: 400hp 6.0 litre V8, 3179 lbs.
18 city, 28 highway

BMW M3: 333hp 3.2 litre i6, 3415 lbs.
16 city, 24 highway.

There are plenty more examples where that came from but the conclusion is this: weight and aerodymics are far more relevant to fuel economy than simple displacement.

Justin--

What would Corvette mileage be with Honda Civic engine (non-hybrid) under the hood? Higher, no? I rest my case.

Nick
Who would buy a corvette with a Civic engine? You have no case.
And no the fuel economy wouldn't be any higher with a civic engine. The corvette weights 600lb more than the civic with much wider tires and more frontal area. It wouldn't get anywhere near the civics fuel economy. In all likelyhood it would much lower fuel economy due to the internal friction generated at the much higher RPM the civic engine would have to run at.

Cars are too complex for these simple rules that more hp is worse fuel economy. Take a typical small car with 100hp standard engine. Add a turbo to it and it will get better mpg yet have more hp.

No not every turbo improves mpg but they certainly can if designed right. I heard one guy put a turbo on a Honda Insight got about 10% more mpg.

Petrol already costs more than $5 a gallon in europe and rich people still buy cars like this.

As for the vette witha civic engine getting better mpg, bon't be silly. The honda engine does not make enough low rpm torque and the gearing would have to compensate, thus having a negative effect on mpg.

Re displacement vs fuel economy:

All things being equal, a smaller displacement throttled gasoline engine running closer to its maximum power will deliver better thermodynamic efficiency that a larger displacement engine of the same type delivering the same output while running at a fractional load. This is why cylinder deactivation improves fuel economy--you cut displacement in half, open up the throttle and run the engine closer to it's new (lower) maximum power. Yes there are a lot of other variables and complexities, and yes you can tweak engines in lots of ways to improve efficiency, but in an apples to apples comparison the above is true.

Thats quite a silly comparison. With cylinder deactivation the other half of the engine is used when it is needed, this would not be possible with just a smaller engine.

Nick
You really need to do more reseach on the subject before you make blanket statements like this. Most of what you are saying simply isn't true and you have already been proven wrong.

James:

"Thats quite a silly comparison. With cylinder deactivation the other half of the engine is used when it is needed, this would not be possible with just a smaller engine."

True, but beside the point. The point is that the engine uses less gas on 4 cylinders when running at partial load than it would if all 8 cylinders were firing. In effect, displacement has been halved and efficiency has gone up for *that constant load*, even though weight and internal friction have not changed. Matching engine displacement to load provides a more efficient powertrain. Loads on auto engines vary widely, of course (idling, cruising, acceleration, etc), so auto engines are typically oversized for their most common loads and run at partial load almost all the time.

This is a well-understood and non-controversial fact.

And with that, it's time to move on.

"True, but beside the point. The point is that the engine uses less gas on 4 cylinders when running at partial load than it would if all 8 cylinders were firing."

That statement is just plain incorrect. The only reason the engine is consuming less fuel is because it doesn't have to open and close the valves to those cyls. The pistons are still moving up and down and creating pumping loses every time they move.
There are plenty of examples where a smaller less powerful engine will be less efficient at moving the exact same load as a higher displacement engine. Your idea of a civic engine in a corvette is a perfect example of this. The civic engine will have to run a much higher RPM to do the same work as the 6.0 litre V8. This will push the engine outside its high efficiency load range and increase fuel consumption beyond that of the V8. Most car engines are already designed from the factory to function at their peak efficiency in normal operating conditions in the car they are installed.

hey let's talk about this car?
i think personally that it's great that this car will have super-charged electrics. this has a more advanced CVT, high-powered motors, and full-time 4-wheel drive (though I hope that you can turn that off? i don't see the point of having 4 wheels driving when you're coasting on a dry flat highway).
the cost of this car will be so high that people won't give a damn about how much gas costs. the good thing is that eventually this can become the "only" model, and overall fuel efficiency will go up in the market segment.
don't forget emissions too, people, come on! SULEV versus ULEV II? that's major.

The combined estimated fuel economy for the LS600hL is 22mpg, not 17, wherever that number came from.

Lexus specifically said fuel economy that beats best-in-class V8s, so that means low 20s combined rating, which is exactly where the estimated 22mpg combined rating comes from.

Consider for a moment that this is a large, long wheelbase sedan, with a mechanical AWD system. It is not an electric AWD system like that on a Highlander Hybrid or RX400h. Also consider the weight of the hybrid system. I think apart from handling and stability during cornering, a mechanical AWD was developed out of necessity, as the 5L dual fuel injection V8 combined with the hybrid system will be putting out an enormous amount of torque.

This is a big heavy vehicle, and as you can see, it's an all-out performance hybrid. But it still means that it will have best-in-class fuel economy and SULEV emissions.

You wrote:
The pistons are still moving up and down and creating pumping loses every time they move.
---------------

Thats not true. If you just cut off the fuel to the cylinder then that would happen but in these engines they close the valves in the turned off cyliders. The trapped air forms a spring and that has proven to be quite efficient. Sure there is still friction but that is not a large factor. Pumping losses on the other hand are a huge factor.

So where exactly do we disagree?

There are no pumping losses on these engines that turn off cylinders. Just minor friction looses.

There are pumping loses. When the deactivated piston moves down with the valves closed the pressure in the crank case on the bottom side of the piston is higher than the vacuum created inside the cylinder. Hence pumping loss. The energy to overcome this pumping loss has to come from the other 4 cyls that are working. When the deactivated cyl moves back up it can't recover all of the energy that was lost on the down stroke. The main benefit of cyl deactivation is switching off 8 out of 16 valves in these 2 valve/cyl engines. If you do the research you will also find that GM and Chrysler's pushrod operated 16 valves V8s are generally far more fuel efficient than almost all other smaller displacement 36 (4 valve/cyl) DOHC V8s of the same output. In these 36 valve engines a disproportionate amount of energy is lost in turning 4 cams and compressing 36 valve springs (as opposed to one cam and 16 valves in a small block chevy for example).

There are pumping loses. When the deactivated piston moves down with the valves closed the pressure in the crank case on the bottom side of the piston is higher than the vacuum created inside the cylinder. Hence pumping loss. The energy to overcome this pumping loss has to come from the other 4 cyls that are working. When the deactivated cyl moves back up it can't recover all of the energy that was lost on the down stroke. The main benefit of cyl deactivation is switching off 8 out of 16 valves in these 2 valve/cyl engines. If you do the research you will also find that GM and Chrysler's pushrod operated 16 valves V8s are generally far more fuel efficient than almost all other smaller displacement 36 (4 valve/cyl) DOHC V8s of the same output. In these 36 valve engines a disproportionate amount of energy is lost in turning 4 cams and compressing 36 valve springs (as opposed to one cam and 16 valves in a small block chevy for example).

Why do people keep saying 'electric supercharger'? It's just annoying.

Guess I'm a hippie who's trading in his Mercedes S-class for a Camry hybrid - would have been a Prius, but it's too small for my height. I'd rather be a hippie with a clue about the world we all live in vis-a-vis a corporate cronie (see Dick Cheney) wannabe pretending he's "made it"

430hp will take you that much quicker to that brick wall in your 4 car garage, never mind, that's only a facade..

Charlie, if you realy care about the environment that much, why are you buying a new car? Recycle an old diesel and convert it to run on veg oil. It's what I'm doing.

Luxury car,as an friend to nature.

I think it's stupid to call people on this site, hippies. Look at the name www.greencarcongress.com , what are you expecting? It would be like me going to a NASCAR site and calling people on the msg boards "red necks."

I own a Lexus 600h . Couldn't be happier with it. One item the car has that hasn't been mentioned is that it monitors the drivers pupils, swaying and bobbing of the head indicating sleepiness and prepares the car for a crash situation. If you are going to collide with a bridge abutment , car , it stops the car. That to me is invaluable. I have a problem with narcolepsy. I do know it is coming on but in case I don't this is a godsend. On the gas mileage end of it I would have been happy with the Prius, but my wife who does a lot of winter driving likes all wheel driving all the time. Asking her to put a truck into 4 wheel drive doesn't work.