Lexus Was Laughing At Dieselgate Before It Even Happened

They say hindsight is 20/20, but in a post-dieselgate world it seems that Lexus, even 20 years ago, saw the future as vividly as if the brand had been there already
Lexus Was Laughing At Dieselgate Before It Even Happened

Sometimes a car maker has so much foresight that we humble punters, and even the automotive media, simply don’t see it. Porsche’s decision to drop the Audi-sourced diesel engines from its ranges altogether was unexpected, at least so soon, but there’s one car maker which must be rolling its eyes pretty hard round about now: Lexus.

Lexus is and always was a brand built on refinement. In this context you could define refinement as excellence in the control of physics: ride quality, noise suppression and reliability are all day-one Lexus traits that have whispered their way down the decades. Yet the European automotive media has consistently shunned Lexus cars in favour of those from European brands. Lexus, they said, just didn’t get European buyers.

Lexus Was Laughing At Dieselgate Before It Even Happened

Well, that’s not how it’s turning out. Dieselgate is the European car industry’s nightmares all come true. New diesel sales are avalanching and everyone who sells oil-burners on this continent is desperately rushing to develop viable hybrids and electric cars. Lexus saw this coming, at least in a round-about fashion. It hasn’t sold a diesel car anywhere in almost seven years.

It was back in the 1990s when Toyota had what seems today like a miraculous vision of the future. It gave birth to the Prius, but more importantly it gave us a modular hybrid drivetrain that could be used and adapted in any number of self-charging and plug-in shapes, with petrol, diesel or even hydrogen fuel.

Lexus Was Laughing At Dieselgate Before It Even Happened

What that, in turn, provided was a powertrain as smooth as Michael Buble’s singing voice coated in liquid chocolate, and as quiet as a church mouse practising Buddhist meditation. As the generations progressed, the hybrid setup got better and better, especially in Lexus products. That evolution and extra measures to kill noise and vibration made the first hybrid Lexus, the 2007 LS 600h, a thing of ultimate serenity.

Diesels simply wouldn’t do for Lexus. It was with great reluctance (behind the scenes) that the company gave in to market/customer demand and borrowed a 175bhp Toyota 2.2-litre D-CAT diesel for Europe, starting in 2006 and installing it only in the Avensis-based IS. It was with the greatest pleasure that the firm eventually canned it again in 2012, when the cost and engineering stars had aligned to let the then-all-new IS use petrol-electric hybrid power instead.

Lexus Was Laughing At Dieselgate Before It Even Happened

Lexus knew diesel was/is a bad thing, even if it was sometimes necessary in order to sell cars in markets that biased towards it. It’s noisy, it produces too many vibrations and it had to become very complicated in order to work properly. In other words, it was never refined enough. Some six- and eight-cylinder diesels are wonderfully smooth, but still nowhere near as Lexus as a petrol-electric hybrid.

The Japanese comfort kings also knew that diesel wasn’t clean enough. They knew about the particulates issue, making a point of stressing the D-CAT diesel’s relative virtues in that department back in 2006. In 2014, 10 months before dieselgate even kicked off, Lexus stated confidently that hybrid’s time had come, and that diesel was on the way out. It’s like they had a crystal ball.

The first hybrid Lexus, the 2007 LS 600h
The first hybrid Lexus, the 2007 LS 600h

The truth is that Lexus has known the best way to power a car efficiently, quietly and with minimal fuss since the 1990s, but until very recently few people were willing to listen. While other brands clamour in 2018 and beyond to market themselves as the new standard-setters for environmentalism, let’s not forget who’s been quietly treading that path with peerless reliability for over 20 years.

Comments

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[DELETED]

02/24/2018 - 08:18 |
140 | 4

Well you see in the ‘90s the Prius was even more boring. It had an anemic 54hp I4 paired with a 20hp electric battery unit… Many say it looked even worse then the generations to come, but no matter what anyone thinks about the old Prius I think it’s better than any Prius gen after it… nah jk but yeah it kinda was a revolutionary car at the time…

02/24/2018 - 08:35 |
74 | 0

Have you driven one?
Yeah it actually sucks, but not as much as you would think. And doing 1800 km, mostly on highway and boring roads made me pay far less for gas than I would have with my volvo. It’s soulless but not shit

02/24/2018 - 08:43 |
42 | 0

The thing is, the people who have driven a Prius almost never hate it. It’s an excellent car for what it’s supposed to be - it gets from A to B without any effort and you save a lot of money in the process. Okay, the Mk.1 and the Mk.4 look absolutely hideous, but the Mk.3 doesn’t look all that bad.

02/24/2018 - 09:03 |
28 | 0

People hating on Prius (priuses, or whatever plural is for that) are not car guys if you ask me. You can’t just look at something revolutionary meant for cheap, and relatively clean transport from A to B and call it Satans toy for no reason than the fact it is a hybrid. I’ve been looking at recent Prius cars and they don’t look bad at all in today’s crop of samey same cars everywhere. They are not performance cars, clearly, but nobody advertised them as such. They are cars that have built a strong market for themselves while not being “trendy” at all. Launching the first one was a huge risk for Toyota, keeping them and improving them was an even larger finacnial burden. But it payed off for them. And now, after 10 years of downsizing EVERYTHING from econo boxes to the stupidly underpowered 1 litre “motro of the year” Ford Mondeo everyone is on the hybrid bandwagon. So what’s worse, a nice hybrid powertrain that the Prius did before the 918 and P1 or undesized, underpowerd, expensive tech and failure prone 1 litre motors?

02/27/2018 - 09:13 |
4 | 0
Anonymous

Wut. Diesel is not a bad thing at all!?! What kind of a biased BS is this? Written by Lexus? It is the lies about diesel emmisions that are bad. Diesel was for a long time the most efficient means to and end. Thanks to diesel we have now direct injection and bi-turbo. Petrol needed to catch up. Toyota or Lexus hybrid has never been able to compete: sour grapes

02/24/2018 - 09:55 |
4 | 78
Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Lexus has 0.29% market share in Europe!

02/24/2018 - 10:00 |
2 | 14
Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Toyota Pruis sales have dwindled to 30% of the 2009-2010 success era.

02/24/2018 - 10:04 |
2 | 12
Jakob

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Burning Diesel inevitably results in a higher carbon monoxide, nitric oxide emission and fine particles pollution compared to burning petrol. If all you care about is the fuel consumption, then Diesel is more efficient, but carbon monoxide and said fine particles are considerably more dangerous than carbon dioxide. You don’t need to be sponsored by Lexus to see that, you just have to open an organic chemistry book.
And it wasn’t Lexus who declared Diesel emissions as carcinogenic - it was the World Health Organisation.

02/24/2018 - 10:07 |
16 | 2
Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Thanks to mercedes benz we have direct injection and thanks to racing we have twin turbocharging dumbass, and hybrid has better emissions and fuel economy, pull your head out of your ass and get your facts straight

02/24/2018 - 20:03 |
0 | 0
David 27

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

jesus christ I’ve never seen someone this stupid and I’ve browsed through the meetthectzens hashtag

02/25/2018 - 00:37 |
4 | 0
Tomislav Celić

Makes me love Lexus. Sorry but diesel is a no from me. It doesn’t give you the satisfaction of a petrol or the efficiency of a hybrid/EV.

02/24/2018 - 10:25 |
36 | 4

True, but my family always had to buy a diesel car because otherwise we couldn’t use our caravan. Luckily many manufacturers and lease companies are renting diesel cars especially for the vacation, so people can drive EVs for the rest of the year.

02/24/2018 - 11:00 |
8 | 0

Same! Say no to diesel, lol. It has is necessary applications, but commuter cars imo is not one of them.

02/24/2018 - 20:21 |
2 | 0
Aaron 15

If you think diesels are mental in today’s world, you should really check out how objectively bad they were in the 70s and 80s.
My dad’s friend owned a W123 300TD estate - which is a very tune-friendly engine amongst enthusiasts and can last hundreds of thousands of miles. From an objective perspective at the time, it was a great motor. However, compared to my 230 petrol, MY LORD is it slow, loud and under-powered! I know this is somewhat unrelated to this article, but considering how far diesel engines have come in terms of performance, refinement and efficiency, the government doesn’t seem to appreciate how much better they can be in the future.

I mean congrats to Lexus for spotting the mistake early, but I can’t help but sympathise to makers like Mercedes who have spent years perfecting their coal runners.

02/24/2018 - 11:30 |
4 | 2
Anonymous

I agree. It always seemed to me that Toyota didn’t care about European customers and their demands which made me absolutely furious.
Now after all the problems with diesel engines it shows Toyota knew all along, that you can’t build a diesel engine on a budget without cheating like VW.

Either way there’s one tiny mistake in the article: the IS is not based on the Avensis.

02/24/2018 - 13:16 |
6 | 0
Basildesigns

Thank you for this article. Giving credit where credit is due.

02/24/2018 - 13:23 |
2 | 0
Radu Gabriel

I knew I was right about liking Lexus. Although I am a big TDI fan I have to say that diesels in smaller cars like hatchbacks and these stupid city SUVs will have to disappear in the next 2-3 years at most. However, untill everyone uses a hybrid drivetrain that actually uses less fuel than an equivalent diesel, we will still see Passats and E-Classes with diesel engines.

02/24/2018 - 13:32 |
2 | 2
Anonymous

Avensis-based Lexus IS … have u lost ur mind, get ur facts right next time

02/24/2018 - 15:29 |
0 | 0
DJ N

Lexus, quietly working behind the scenes and giving wise information to a noisy crowd who didn’t listen. And now here they are, getting the recognition they deserve. Good stuff

02/24/2018 - 18:24 |
0 | 0
Jia the Supra Fanboy

I can personally attest to the amazing device that is Lexus Hybrid Drive. It’s so smooth, but also picks up quickly when you want it to in power mode. The mini-EV mode is wonderful for parking garages and the like, and engine start/stop is actually meaningful in these hybrids. Would honestly buy another one.

02/24/2018 - 20:25 |
0 | 0

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