**The Talking Cars Team Weighs in on Voice Controls**

This week, we're addressing a question from Robert, who expressed concern that the staff of talking cars often comment negatively upon the reduction in tactile controls in favor of touch screen controls. However, they often overlook voice controls, which are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and reliable.

**A More Naturalistic Approach to Voice Controls**

Kelly, one of the team members, comments on the growing trend of voice controls in cars, saying that while some people may still be skeptical about their usefulness, "they're getting better." The key factor is that voice controls are now using regular phrases that don't require learning, making them more naturalistic and user-friendly.

**The Reality of Voice Control Adoption**

Alex, also part of the usability team, explains that when evaluating voice controls, the team assesses whether they can perform common tasks, such as adjusting climate settings or media audio. The results are not surprising: people who use voice commands to adjust their climate control settings do so either every time or most of the time, with 31% responding positively to this feature.

**Voice Control Usage Variability**

Alex notes that the adoption rate for voice controls varies across different car models and features. While some tasks, like making phone calls, have relatively high usage rates (30%), others, such as setting destinations using navigation systems, receive lower scores (20). This highlights the importance of having a comprehensive evaluation process to understand how users interact with these new technologies.

**The Importance of Accessible Interfaces**

When voice controls do work well, they can be incredibly convenient. As Kelly points out, once voice controls become more intuitive and reliable, people will start using them more frequently. However, it's essential to remember that even when voice controls are effective, users should still have access to alternative methods, like touch screens or traditional controls, to ensure everyone has options.

**Evaluating Voice Control Success**

To ensure that voice control technology is used effectively and efficiently, the talking cars team uses a multi-faceted approach. In addition to their main evaluation process, which includes scoring controls and collecting feedback from users, they also conduct surveys and gather log book entries from drivers who use voice controls in their vehicles. This helps to identify areas where improvements are needed and ensures that the technology is meeting user expectations.

**Conclusion**

The talking cars team acknowledges the growing importance of voice controls in modern cars, but emphasizes the need for a balanced approach to their adoption. By combining regular evaluations with feedback from users, they aim to create interfaces that are both convenient and accessible to everyone, regardless of their individual preferences or needs.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign welcome to another episode I'm Mike Monticello I'm Alex and Isaac and I'm Kelly Funkhouser So today we're going to spend the majority of the episode talking about the redesigned 2023 Lexus RX which we rented from Lexus uh for our first impressions of this vehicle this is the fifth generation of the RX which is a midsize luxury SUV and you know over the years the RX has been an example of stress-free motoring uh due to you know just its comfortable seats comfortable ride it's quiet um and also it's incredibly reliable right so historically historically reliable people love this vehicle for all of those things but it's never been particularly engaging to drive okay right now and that may change just a hint we'll see what happens during this episode but because the one that we rented and I'm guessing this maybe wasn't our first choice but this is what this is what it gave us yeah is a 2023 RX 500 H F Sport performance all-wheel drive which is is a mouthful it's a big kind of a long line name but so maybe this you know is going to amp up the driving Dynamics a little bit so but before we get into this specific vehicle let's talk about the the 2023 RX as a whole Alex just walk us through what are the new things with this 2023 yeah so it migrates over to Toyota's latest platform so that's t g n a k they've got a couple different versions of these this is the K version platform so that's also underpinning things like the Camry the Lexus NX that we also tested um and I think it's a good opportunity to talk a little bit about these platforms as we hear this all the time but really think more about modules that are shared across cars it's not that the the body and white between the NX and the Camry are all the same with all the same panels and all these things right it's more like the steering column and the seat relationship are the same and maybe some of the engines and we'll talk about that are the same or shared across but then of course the interior and the exterior are completely different the sizes are different so some shared things there but um ultimately it is quite a bit uh different than those other vehicles um but like you said Monty the RX is pretty much Lex's like bread and butter vehicle I think I looked up some sales and last year it was over a third of total Lexus sales in the US was just the RX so it's beating out even the NX and all those other things so that's how important it is super important so this is a big um redesign for them but so just dimensionally it's pretty much the same actually length stays the same at 193 inches it's a little lighter wheelbase stretches a little bit but mostly it's the same size um but the big things are controls wise there's no more touch pad inside and then the other big things are the powertrain so before you were talking um V6 is just a naturally aspirated V6 was kind of the standard engine and then a hybrid V6 was the other option but now everything is four cylinder based yeah the V6 is gone it's gone completely so you have a turbo four um as kind of the base option and then you have a four-cylinder hybrid or the turbo four-cylinder hybrid that we rented and then there's going to be a plug-in hybrid coming later so those are the big changes and then of course price that goes up up a little bit start set or the existing one was kind of that 45 000 this is more like 48.49 right that's where it starts quick specifics on the RX 500h that we rented that we're going to be talking about today 366 horsepower 46 pound-feet of torque it's that turbo four-cylinder hybrid that you just talked about has uh driver adjustable adaptive suspension comes with that rear steering which they call again a mouthful vehicle Dynamics integrated management Dynamic rear steering wow I don't know if that's what's going to go I don't know if that's what's going to go on the window sticker yeah and um also six-speed automatic which is kind of interesting because you just you know we've talked about this on the podcast before but you just don't see many besides Mazda you don't see too many six-speed automatics but yeah we'll get into later on it really doesn't matter actually um you know that it's a six-speed because it's so I think it's kind of better for it yeah honestly um and then this one had a whole bunch of options and with the 1150 destination charge the estimated as driven price of this RX 500h that we rented is 70 620 I want to get into the driving Dynamics but you know we joke around sometimes around here but there's also on time so we really need to be serious and talk about things that affect people and in this case I think we need to really take a hard look at what the heck is up with this color on this vehicle can you explain to me um I can try to explain uh so I actually really enjoy when we rent cars and and it's kind of luck of the draw what the manufacturer sends to us like Alex was really something crazy it's usually something crazy that looks really good in photos and this one was particularly unique yeah it has kind of a shimmer to it that I think a few of us were joking it's the new Mary Kay type of yeah of a shimmer right on a car um and and Alex and I we both really love to joke about the name that they give to these pink colors they're almost absurd as a you know nail polish paint colors and so this time I decided to bring a prop uh this morning yeah I decided to go through my nail polish collection and see if I could color match it and I did very well so I went ahead and painted my nails to match the color and what do they call it versus what electricity so Lexus calls there's Copper Crest I don't know about that in the yeah exactly so so it's not necessarily true to life when you're in person so in the sun especially it really has this kind of a pink undertone That You Don't See online or on the screen the copper part I was kind of surprised when I saw that that was the name of it because I'm like more like Mary Kay pink is on yeah right right exactly and so so they call it copper crust I found a nail polish that is called um Inferno okay but it definitely has quite the pink undertone so so just know that if you're shopping for this car online right you might get a little surprised when you see it in person and not to make fun Alexis but they seem very proud of this color for one day when they called it out I know do you like it okay I think it was polarizing uh amongst people I'm down for like cool colors on cars like whites and stuff get super boring I don't know if I would choose copper crust white silver is so boring like I need some Copper Crest well you know as we always say beauty is in the eye of the beholder so we'll let you folks out there that are watching uh make your own judgments on it right as far as color recite Alex what is this thing like to drive let's just get into a little bit of driving Dynamics yeah so all right first of all it's completely tuned and set up to be comfortable and luxurious soft suspension that absorbs the bumps you know that type of thing and I know we're talking about kind of a new performance version which is a little um kind of goes against the whole mission of the RX in my opinion I mean I'm down with all the power it's great but in terms of trying to add some handling um you know extra supportiness if you will to the handling Dynamics doesn't really work out that well because it's still super soft yeah um but that's great I think that's if you're somebody that really wants a comfortable car and there seems to be less options these days for things that are truly comfortable and just stick to that you know really comfortable kind of um objective this does a really good job even in this 500h version so in a way don't be scared by the f-sport part because I don't think so no because that's supposed to mean a pretty sporty deal yeah and it comes with some more aggressive uh low profile tires and it has the Adaptive suspension and of course the more power the 366 horsepower that we're talking about but yeah I don't think it's really a sports SUV if that's something you're looking for maybe like a an X5 something in that realm is that's rear wheel drive based would be so you're not going to be wowed by the handling I don't think so you're going to be kind of dull you're gonna to be happy with the ride even with these 21 inch tires I was kind of impressive you know you didn't get a lot of like harshness coming through uh and I loved the powertrain it's great yeah no it's it's really nice the automatic shifts so smoothly you know and like I said just because the six-speed doesn't mean that it can't work well it works that was my takeaway was as much as I love having that power and it is responsive is that I would much rather have my hybrid with a six-speed automatic than a CVT which is what the Lesser powerful RX Hybrid comes with and Cali did you find something kind of similar with the ride and handling mix or balance yeah I I kind of liked how with a lot of hybrids you kind of feel that engine coming on and off at you know lower speeds this kind of felt more smooth and gradual it didn't feel like it was you know changing you know shifting all the time to higher gears so I found it to be quite smooth and pleasant especially you know driving around the city yeah yeah I did too and one thing I I was a little confused about though was on my eval Loop which includes a highway section according to the energy monitor on the infotainment screen the gas engine was on the entire time even on the slightly downhill sections where usually a hybrid would go into like a post motor yeah I noticed it as well and this one was on the whole time and I'm it's a performance type but so I get it to some extent but also because of that the powertrain was quite noisy but then I found out later on there's some kind of an active sound control yeah that I couldn't figure out how to turn off but you did and how do you do it uh it was buried a couple layers deep into some settings section of the center touch screen and I did it once I turned it off and then for comparison's sake wanted to go turn it back on and I couldn't find it again even though I did it once before it was really in there So eventually sitting in my driveway for a few minutes I found it but um I did notice that and it's pretty loud there's a couple different settings for it but um it is loud and I did notice that the engine was on quite a bit more often than um with just a kind of a more efficiency geared type of hybrid right but even with it off and the engine running all the time you do hear it um the active sound control off is what I mean and it yeah I don't know if it's charging the battery to some degree at times where you're not really on the power so it's just kind of running in the background I don't know but you do hear it and it took away a little bit from uh just that luxury feel that luxury hybrid right Serenity but I will say this is just for full disclosure and kind of an asterisk on the whole thing is that it's uh pre-production right so maybe that tuning will change when we buy one and experience and we won't buy one of these we're gonna buy a regular RX 350 and rx350h and this is this particular version is very Niche yes version so we don't want to judge too much on this right but the controls were probably going to be pretty similar across the board and Kelly you're kind of our controls and usability experts so let's get into a little bit what what is better about this new RX and maybe what isn't you know what is still annoying or distracting yeah uh so we were pleased to see that they have room removed the touch pad that's you know on the center console we've had a lot of issues with that you know there's kind of some backwards movements that you do and they call it you know the true touch and it's all you know kind of awkward to use and people don't really like it a lot of people are wanting to reach towards the touch screen and just use that instead so that is gone so now we have saved some some real estate it kind of cleans things up however the steering wheel now has capacitive touch and hard button combo which are kind of a little confusing to get used to um you mean because just because they're on completely unlabeled and you have no idea what any of these buttons do exactly they're just totally unlabeled and so when you you know Touch without pushing button you're just brushing right so it feels your finger on the button then you get a pop-up either in the driver display or in the heads up display that kind of shows you a map of what those buttons will do at any given time but they could change depending on what you're doing okay and there's buttons to switch like below these little four ways controllers there's little toggles to switch it virtually kind of flips the switch pack over and now you have four other controls right and that must be why they on they didn't label them right because they're trying to be them be Dual Purpose right so they couldn't really label them because then they'd be locked into those exactly and I did not like that especially when using like the adaptive cruise control right like you're you have to kind of hover over it and then you know sometimes you push it but you don't really know and I had an issue where I had turned off the heads up display because some people don't like them yeah exactly and then they the you know map of what the buttons do temporarily pops up in the instrument cluster in the darker display but it blocks everything else on the screen if you're trying to cycle through the little Pages the pages exactly I did that so it was like okay so I push you know side and I want to go side inside so I put my finger up and don't push it but touch it and then it's covering the entire display of what it is you want to go and change it then you have to wait for it to disappear see if that's the one nope okay do it again is that the one nope it was just kind of a bad design yeah two things on this though we saw it with the rented annexes that we borrowed maybe a year or so ago and then when we bought rnx kind of a lower less you know Decked Out trim level it didn't have that it had normal because it didn't have a high it seems to be tied to the hood head up displaying the heads up as well yeah right now I will say and there are some other issues like when you're turning the wheel and you accidentally brush against the thing and it's just popping up in the hood that was a little distracting but the one thing I did like about it is you can customize the controls if you dig into another crazy layer into the center you'll never find it again you'll never find it but I did once uh you can assign climate controls to one of the um the the buttons on the left side of the steering wheel so you can put temperature on there which you I had that in an old Buick of mine that I just absolutely love being so it's a Nostalgia thing it's not totally yeah okay I don't even know if I use it but I put them there enough you just want to know yeah okay there's a couple of other issues some people didn't like the electronic door release buttons and the electronic gear selector was a little wonky that you have to go up and and left to go to reverse uh but here's I you know what I enjoyed there is a physical trip meter button on the left side of the dash that you just push Nostalgia and you can yeah so many cars these days you can even find you have to dig meter um so but let's move on from that and Kelly I want to talk to you so more about active driving assistance systems Lexus has a new thing on this vehicle this is I believe this is the first vehicle with us called proactive driving assist am I correct about that that's what they call it and it's something that you can choose or not choose on the infotainment screen but tell us a little bit about what that is because it's a little it's not readily obvious what it is definitely not obvious what it is so in the menu screen you can toggle the feature on and off but that's the only information you have inside the vehicle about this system at all so there's no description or a little you know I text or something that you can push where it says this is what proactive driving assist is and no graphics and this isn't something you're just making up other automakers do this right they give you the option either when you click on it it immediately tells you what it does or there's this little icon you if you want that information you click on it it shows up on the screen nothing here right right it's just it's blue which is on or it's gray which is awesome with some ambiguous symbol probably to tell you exactly so I did play around with it um we did have kind of a hint from talking with Lexus about this vehicle so you know they kind of told us what to look for so I kind of knew I had the cheat code um but what it essentially is is an always-on kind of distance um indicator and assistance so if you're driving I was in Hartford driving around in traffic and it was always looking for a vehicle in front of me and when I was coming up closer to that vehicle you know I'm coasting and there's going to be a red light I felt uh what kind of felt like regenerative breaking right in an EV right come on and it was very gradual and subtle and kind of ramped up uh but as I got closer you could feel that breaking I really enjoyed it because it was quite subtle and again I'm like trying to figure out what this thing does and I'm like is that what it is okay that's it so it was subtle um and and I really you know felt that there's potential with this system to be you know a safety system because um you you get a little bit of that kinesthetic you know feel of the brakes which alerts you and you know puts your attention on the road um so you know you need to do some braking and things like that but it was very non-intrusive um and so I really kind of liked how it was how it worked did it come across as more of like a convenience or a safety thing I know they also said that it detects like pedestrians and uh cyclists and things like that or Corners Corners yeah buildings in fact yeah I'm assuming um I don't know if you experienced any of that but well she tried not to run into a building or a person there were probably other people that had to drive it out it's sort of like a an early forward Collision warning in a sense or automatic emergency braking but without startling the heck out of you right yes that's exactly exactly how I would describe it it's like an early system so you know the forward Collision warning and automatic emergency braking are really kind of there at the last possible second to help you avoid or mitigate um you know the speed and impact of a collision this kind of you know alerts you there was a a little icon of a car that popped up in the driver display to say hey I see a car and then you start to feel that braking um so it was kind of a visual warning without you know being intrusive and annoying you don't want to turn it off right um so yeah it's kind of an early warning system you know potentially it could have safety benefits right um interesting about that so we did talk you know we had this meeting with Lexus like we do with a lot of our the manufacturers when they come out with a new vehicle and I asked them about that and I said you know there's nothing no information right and they said well we're yes we realized that we're going to put it on our dealers that they're going to inform the customers that doesn't seem like a great plan does it I mean I don't even understand why yeah what the point it doesn't seem like a great plan but I don't understand why you even go down that route when you could easily Implement something in the in the center screen to even explain at least the basics they did say thank you for the for bringing that up in the meeting we've told our people right but as of now we have no plans to put any information in the screens um I want to talk about while we're on the subject uh direct driver monitoring this is something you have been you and Jake Fisher have been harping on for a couple years now right that that's what systems with vehicles with active driving assistance systems which is we we consider that the combination of adaptive cruise control and Lane Center and assistance uh they should always have a direct driver monitored system so that if you do if you let go of the wheel which you shouldn't folks but uh if you did it would notice if you weren't paying attention this this thing uh so there's an infrared camera right yep and it's monitoring you all the time even when you don't have ACC and LCA on correct that's right yeah we we asked Lexus uh when the camera's on can you turn it off and and we heard from them then that the camera is always on uh you know you can turn off these warnings and I have a follow-up where they wanted to just make sure they were clear in their answer the audio warning can be turned off but the visual cannot so you have this camera um and it's not linked to using the active driving assistance right it's different than what we've seen so far exactly uh that means that you know if you don't have to have this on because you're using those systems I don't know how many drivers are going to essentially you know want to have just a camera on them that could warn them that they're distracted or you know not paying attention I don't see much incentive for them to have it on um so that's definitely a concern right so you you can turn the camera off so you can turn off the warnings right so if you're like but the one in the instrument cluster will always come on if you so they according to Alexis they said the camera is always on right but you can turn off the warning so if I mean the people that are going to leave it on are probably the people that don't need it as much right if you're someone that's like I don't want this the car to beep at me and you know whatever when I'm looking at my phone or something you're probably gonna turn that off so so on the one hand this is a good thing right because you could be distracted anytime not just when you're using uh active driving assistance but but if it annoys you that's not a good thing right if it's warning you if it's giving you warnings when you kind of are paying attention right and I I found that yeah when I tried it out um it most of the time it worked well and it is responsive in terms of the time it takes for it to to react and warn you so if I was looking away for let's say five seconds that three to five seconds maybe it would give a little beep and a message but then it would also do that other times where I was just driving and not trying to trick it or do anything right just driving and it would just kind of false alarm type thing um so that that was a little annoying for me so that's more of a tuning issue but um just anecdotally is driving this car around um with my wife Ali and she I was explaining kind of how it worked and and what the system does and her immediate reaction without driving the car but just seeing it in action was that she would really want that in her car yeah um to just bring her attention back to the road if she gets distracted or anything like that so where it was annoying me she saw that and was like that that's great yeah and I actually have some numbers from a survey that we put out two years ago you know we love 2020 I I love numbers um there you know there's a fair amount of people almost 50 percent of drivers this is a nationally representative survey so it's not just our memories um that say they want in a new car some sort of a system that can alert them if they are drowsy or distracted and things like that so people do want this but I do feel that the manufacturer needs to put some sort of an incentive in there or benefit for using the system otherwise I think a lot of drivers are going to turn it off yeah or or at least just make sure that it's tuned really really well so that because those annoying moments if it were me that's what's going to make me shut it off and then I'm gonna lose all the benefit from it right yeah I do want to bring up one more important fact though um and we asked Lexus this when they were describing the system to us is about um privacy right anytime there's a camera in the car that's definitely a concern um and it wasn't very clear we didn't get a clear answer from Lexus IS to uh what happens to these recordings they are being recorded it's in you know the menu it says that and everything um they said that their answer was the drivers can always the owners can request the the recordings they can have access to that but when we asked well can you have access to that who else could have access to that where the recordings being saved we didn't get a clear answer on that and so that's something that we're going to follow up with um and and definitely keep our eye on and um thanks both of you that was great analysis of this vehicle we have a lot more up on consumerreports.org a full first drive on this RX 500h and some information about the regular RX in general we will be buying both the kind of more conventional RX 350. we're also buying the RX 350h the hybrid and we'll be getting them in more uh mainstream trims not this you know High Zoo probably mainstream colors too probably mainstream colors although you never know um so uh check that out and we'll have more on that very soon all right and now let's move on to our audience question of the week don't forget folks the best way to reach us is to send your questions comments 30 second video clips to talking cars at icloud.com so uh this week we're gonna we have a question from Robert and Robert says the staff of talking cars often comments negatively upon the reduction in tactile controls in favor of touch screen controls but you often Overlook voice controls which are becoming ubiquitous reliable and easier to use than moving my hand from the steering wheel I would love to hear the talking cars team comment on voice controls and the role they play in your reviews Kelly I'm going to start with you again controls and usability is a huge part of what you do here so what's your answer to Robert yeah so so he's spot on they are becoming more and more common in cars and they're getting better uh you know everyone loves to to you know harp on the bad voice controls it heard something completely you know Bonkers from what I said uh but they are getting better they're more naturalistic using you know regular phrases that you don't have to learn which is which is the big one right exactly so um it's Alex you're part of the usability team as well we do look at the the voice controls in the car so part of the assessment we do you know see what is available first of all can you change climate settings uh media audio type of stuff um all those types of things and so we we try them out uh but like he said they're becoming more common they're still not that common in cars um and so we actually have a survey don't tell me you have more numbers for us I love data and so we found uh by asking again nationally representative survey that uh how often they use the voice commands in their car to do certain tasks and so for adjusting the climate uh people who say they do it every time they drive or most of the time they drive comes out to 31 okay so bigger numbers than we had seen in the past right but and also just real quick to your point it will be impacted by the fact that not every car like adjusting climate with voice controls is kind of that's right a new feature of them or newer than something like changing radio station it's true that is a phone call right exactly so these are for people who who have the voice yes exactly to do these tasks in their car that's right so huge huge caveat there uh adjusting audio settings 26 is every time or most of the time uh making a phone call 30 uh setting a destination in their nav system 20 so still kind of lower numbers um what we find is that it's not necessarily the primary source of using the climate and the navigation system that's just how often some people might do it and so we still want to make sure that not using the voice control so using them with your fingers uh touch screen hard controls are the fundamentals still need to be in place and accessible for the other 70 or 80 in some cases that aren't going to use those um well and I think part of the problem is even though they're getting better it seems like more often than not on the rare occasions that I do use voice control it doesn't work right like I said I call this person and they either the thing says something says call someone like this other name or just is confused by what I asked for at all right and so I just usually ended up not using them and I have a feeling that's what a lot of people are doing yeah once it gets better and easier then yeah you press one button and you tell the car to do anything you want and it does it then that's when people walk up on board right you got it especially as things get buried more and more like if I could maybe say to that Lexus turn on and off the the active sound control which I didn't ask I should have asked maybe I will do that um I wouldn't have had to dig through to find that but um but they shouldn't be used as a crutch either so having a bad interface well you can use the voice controls that's not an excuse you should have good both ideally right so that people have options 100 and as part of our evaluation not only are we doing it in our controls kind of uh you know debrief if you will that we have where we kind of have our main group that scores controls but also collecting everybody's comments and log books everybody that drives the vehicles that might use the voice controls we we kind of collect all that as well right great good stuff Robert there's your answer uh that's going to do it for this episode if you want to learn more about the cars and the topics that we talked about you can click on the links in the show notes don't forget to send those questions comments 30 second video clips of talking cars at icloud.com this episode was produced by Dave Abrams and edited by anatolyshoomski thanks so much for watching and we'll see y'all next weekforeign welcome to another episode I'm Mike Monticello I'm Alex and Isaac and I'm Kelly Funkhouser So today we're going to spend the majority of the episode talking about the redesigned 2023 Lexus RX which we rented from Lexus uh for our first impressions of this vehicle this is the fifth generation of the RX which is a midsize luxury SUV and you know over the years the RX has been an example of stress-free motoring uh due to you know just its comfortable seats comfortable ride it's quiet um and also it's incredibly reliable right so historically historically reliable people love this vehicle for all of those things but it's never been particularly engaging to drive okay right now and that may change just a hint we'll see what happens during this episode but because the one that we rented and I'm guessing this maybe wasn't our first choice but this is what this is what it gave us yeah is a 2023 RX 500 H F Sport performance all-wheel drive which is is a mouthful it's a big kind of a long line name but so maybe this you know is going to amp up the driving Dynamics a little bit so but before we get into this specific vehicle let's talk about the the 2023 RX as a whole Alex just walk us through what are the new things with this 2023 yeah so it migrates over to Toyota's latest platform so that's t g n a k they've got a couple different versions of these this is the K version platform so that's also underpinning things like the Camry the Lexus NX that we also tested um and I think it's a good opportunity to talk a little bit about these platforms as we hear this all the time but really think more about modules that are shared across cars it's not that the the body and white between the NX and the Camry are all the same with all the same panels and all these things right it's more like the steering column and the seat relationship are the same and maybe some of the engines and we'll talk about that are the same or shared across but then of course the interior and the exterior are completely different the sizes are different so some shared things there but um ultimately it is quite a bit uh different than those other vehicles um but like you said Monty the RX is pretty much Lex's like bread and butter vehicle I think I looked up some sales and last year it was over a third of total Lexus sales in the US was just the RX so it's beating out even the NX and all those other things so that's how important it is super important so this is a big um redesign for them but so just dimensionally it's pretty much the same actually length stays the same at 193 inches it's a little lighter wheelbase stretches a little bit but mostly it's the same size um but the big things are controls wise there's no more touch pad inside and then the other big things are the powertrain so before you were talking um V6 is just a naturally aspirated V6 was kind of the standard engine and then a hybrid V6 was the other option but now everything is four cylinder based yeah the V6 is gone it's gone completely so you have a turbo four um as kind of the base option and then you have a four-cylinder hybrid or the turbo four-cylinder hybrid that we rented and then there's going to be a plug-in hybrid coming later so those are the big changes and then of course price that goes up up a little bit start set or the existing one was kind of that 45 000 this is more like 48.49 right that's where it starts quick specifics on the RX 500h that we rented that we're going to be talking about today 366 horsepower 46 pound-feet of torque it's that turbo four-cylinder hybrid that you just talked about has uh driver adjustable adaptive suspension comes with that rear steering which they call again a mouthful vehicle Dynamics integrated management Dynamic rear steering wow I don't know if that's what's going to go I don't know if that's what's going to go on the window sticker yeah and um also six-speed automatic which is kind of interesting because you just you know we've talked about this on the podcast before but you just don't see many besides Mazda you don't see too many six-speed automatics but yeah we'll get into later on it really doesn't matter actually um you know that it's a six-speed because it's so I think it's kind of better for it yeah honestly um and then this one had a whole bunch of options and with the 1150 destination charge the estimated as driven price of this RX 500h that we rented is 70 620 I want to get into the driving Dynamics but you know we joke around sometimes around here but there's also on time so we really need to be serious and talk about things that affect people and in this case I think we need to really take a hard look at what the heck is up with this color on this vehicle can you explain to me um I can try to explain uh so I actually really enjoy when we rent cars and and it's kind of luck of the draw what the manufacturer sends to us like Alex was really something crazy it's usually something crazy that looks really good in photos and this one was particularly unique yeah it has kind of a shimmer to it that I think a few of us were joking it's the new Mary Kay type of yeah of a shimmer right on a car um and and Alex and I we both really love to joke about the name that they give to these pink colors they're almost absurd as a you know nail polish paint colors and so this time I decided to bring a prop uh this morning yeah I decided to go through my nail polish collection and see if I could color match it and I did very well so I went ahead and painted my nails to match the color and what do they call it versus what electricity so Lexus calls there's Copper Crest I don't know about that in the yeah exactly so so it's not necessarily true to life when you're in person so in the sun especially it really has this kind of a pink undertone That You Don't See online or on the screen the copper part I was kind of surprised when I saw that that was the name of it because I'm like more like Mary Kay pink is on yeah right right exactly and so so they call it copper crust I found a nail polish that is called um Inferno okay but it definitely has quite the pink undertone so so just know that if you're shopping for this car online right you might get a little surprised when you see it in person and not to make fun Alexis but they seem very proud of this color for one day when they called it out I know do you like it okay I think it was polarizing uh amongst people I'm down for like cool colors on cars like whites and stuff get super boring I don't know if I would choose copper crust white silver is so boring like I need some Copper Crest well you know as we always say beauty is in the eye of the beholder so we'll let you folks out there that are watching uh make your own judgments on it right as far as color recite Alex what is this thing like to drive let's just get into a little bit of driving Dynamics yeah so all right first of all it's completely tuned and set up to be comfortable and luxurious soft suspension that absorbs the bumps you know that type of thing and I know we're talking about kind of a new performance version which is a little um kind of goes against the whole mission of the RX in my opinion I mean I'm down with all the power it's great but in terms of trying to add some handling um you know extra supportiness if you will to the handling Dynamics doesn't really work out that well because it's still super soft yeah um but that's great I think that's if you're somebody that really wants a comfortable car and there seems to be less options these days for things that are truly comfortable and just stick to that you know really comfortable kind of um objective this does a really good job even in this 500h version so in a way don't be scared by the f-sport part because I don't think so no because that's supposed to mean a pretty sporty deal yeah and it comes with some more aggressive uh low profile tires and it has the Adaptive suspension and of course the more power the 366 horsepower that we're talking about but yeah I don't think it's really a sports SUV if that's something you're looking for maybe like a an X5 something in that realm is that's rear wheel drive based would be so you're not going to be wowed by the handling I don't think so you're going to be kind of dull you're gonna to be happy with the ride even with these 21 inch tires I was kind of impressive you know you didn't get a lot of like harshness coming through uh and I loved the powertrain it's great yeah no it's it's really nice the automatic shifts so smoothly you know and like I said just because the six-speed doesn't mean that it can't work well it works that was my takeaway was as much as I love having that power and it is responsive is that I would much rather have my hybrid with a six-speed automatic than a CVT which is what the Lesser powerful RX Hybrid comes with and Cali did you find something kind of similar with the ride and handling mix or balance yeah I I kind of liked how with a lot of hybrids you kind of feel that engine coming on and off at you know lower speeds this kind of felt more smooth and gradual it didn't feel like it was you know changing you know shifting all the time to higher gears so I found it to be quite smooth and pleasant especially you know driving around the city yeah yeah I did too and one thing I I was a little confused about though was on my eval Loop which includes a highway section according to the energy monitor on the infotainment screen the gas engine was on the entire time even on the slightly downhill sections where usually a hybrid would go into like a post motor yeah I noticed it as well and this one was on the whole time and I'm it's a performance type but so I get it to some extent but also because of that the powertrain was quite noisy but then I found out later on there's some kind of an active sound control yeah that I couldn't figure out how to turn off but you did and how do you do it uh it was buried a couple layers deep into some settings section of the center touch screen and I did it once I turned it off and then for comparison's sake wanted to go turn it back on and I couldn't find it again even though I did it once before it was really in there So eventually sitting in my driveway for a few minutes I found it but um I did notice that and it's pretty loud there's a couple different settings for it but um it is loud and I did notice that the engine was on quite a bit more often than um with just a kind of a more efficiency geared type of hybrid right but even with it off and the engine running all the time you do hear it um the active sound control off is what I mean and it yeah I don't know if it's charging the battery to some degree at times where you're not really on the power so it's just kind of running in the background I don't know but you do hear it and it took away a little bit from uh just that luxury feel that luxury hybrid right Serenity but I will say this is just for full disclosure and kind of an asterisk on the whole thing is that it's uh pre-production right so maybe that tuning will change when we buy one and experience and we won't buy one of these we're gonna buy a regular RX 350 and rx350h and this is this particular version is very Niche yes version so we don't want to judge too much on this right but the controls were probably going to be pretty similar across the board and Kelly you're kind of our controls and usability experts so let's get into a little bit what what is better about this new RX and maybe what isn't you know what is still annoying or distracting yeah uh so we were pleased to see that they have room removed the touch pad that's you know on the center console we've had a lot of issues with that you know there's kind of some backwards movements that you do and they call it you know the true touch and it's all you know kind of awkward to use and people don't really like it a lot of people are wanting to reach towards the touch screen and just use that instead so that is gone so now we have saved some some real estate it kind of cleans things up however the steering wheel now has capacitive touch and hard button combo which are kind of a little confusing to get used to um you mean because just because they're on completely unlabeled and you have no idea what any of these buttons do exactly they're just totally unlabeled and so when you you know Touch without pushing button you're just brushing right so it feels your finger on the button then you get a pop-up either in the driver display or in the heads up display that kind of shows you a map of what those buttons will do at any given time but they could change depending on what you're doing okay and there's buttons to switch like below these little four ways controllers there's little toggles to switch it virtually kind of flips the switch pack over and now you have four other controls right and that must be why they on they didn't label them right because they're trying to be them be Dual Purpose right so they couldn't really label them because then they'd be locked into those exactly and I did not like that especially when using like the adaptive cruise control right like you're you have to kind of hover over it and then you know sometimes you push it but you don't really know and I had an issue where I had turned off the heads up display because some people don't like them yeah exactly and then they the you know map of what the buttons do temporarily pops up in the instrument cluster in the darker display but it blocks everything else on the screen if you're trying to cycle through the little Pages the pages exactly I did that so it was like okay so I push you know side and I want to go side inside so I put my finger up and don't push it but touch it and then it's covering the entire display of what it is you want to go and change it then you have to wait for it to disappear see if that's the one nope okay do it again is that the one nope it was just kind of a bad design yeah two things on this though we saw it with the rented annexes that we borrowed maybe a year or so ago and then when we bought rnx kind of a lower less you know Decked Out trim level it didn't have that it had normal because it didn't have a high it seems to be tied to the hood head up displaying the heads up as well yeah right now I will say and there are some other issues like when you're turning the wheel and you accidentally brush against the thing and it's just popping up in the hood that was a little distracting but the one thing I did like about it is you can customize the controls if you dig into another crazy layer into the center you'll never find it again you'll never find it but I did once uh you can assign climate controls to one of the um the the buttons on the left side of the steering wheel so you can put temperature on there which you I had that in an old Buick of mine that I just absolutely love being so it's a Nostalgia thing it's not totally yeah okay I don't even know if I use it but I put them there enough you just want to know yeah okay there's a couple of other issues some people didn't like the electronic door release buttons and the electronic gear selector was a little wonky that you have to go up and and left to go to reverse uh but here's I you know what I enjoyed there is a physical trip meter button on the left side of the dash that you just push Nostalgia and you can yeah so many cars these days you can even find you have to dig meter um so but let's move on from that and Kelly I want to talk to you so more about active driving assistance systems Lexus has a new thing on this vehicle this is I believe this is the first vehicle with us called proactive driving assist am I correct about that that's what they call it and it's something that you can choose or not choose on the infotainment screen but tell us a little bit about what that is because it's a little it's not readily obvious what it is definitely not obvious what it is so in the menu screen you can toggle the feature on and off but that's the only information you have inside the vehicle about this system at all so there's no description or a little you know I text or something that you can push where it says this is what proactive driving assist is and no graphics and this isn't something you're just making up other automakers do this right they give you the option either when you click on it it immediately tells you what it does or there's this little icon you if you want that information you click on it it shows up on the screen nothing here right right it's just it's blue which is on or it's gray which is awesome with some ambiguous symbol probably to tell you exactly so I did play around with it um we did have kind of a hint from talking with Lexus about this vehicle so you know they kind of told us what to look for so I kind of knew I had the cheat code um but what it essentially is is an always-on kind of distance um indicator and assistance so if you're driving I was in Hartford driving around in traffic and it was always looking for a vehicle in front of me and when I was coming up closer to that vehicle you know I'm coasting and there's going to be a red light I felt uh what kind of felt like regenerative breaking right in an EV right come on and it was very gradual and subtle and kind of ramped up uh but as I got closer you could feel that breaking I really enjoyed it because it was quite subtle and again I'm like trying to figure out what this thing does and I'm like is that what it is okay that's it so it was subtle um and and I really you know felt that there's potential with this system to be you know a safety system because um you you get a little bit of that kinesthetic you know feel of the brakes which alerts you and you know puts your attention on the road um so you know you need to do some braking and things like that but it was very non-intrusive um and so I really kind of liked how it was how it worked did it come across as more of like a convenience or a safety thing I know they also said that it detects like pedestrians and uh cyclists and things like that or Corners Corners yeah buildings in fact yeah I'm assuming um I don't know if you experienced any of that but well she tried not to run into a building or a person there were probably other people that had to drive it out it's sort of like a an early forward Collision warning in a sense or automatic emergency braking but without startling the heck out of you right yes that's exactly exactly how I would describe it it's like an early system so you know the forward Collision warning and automatic emergency braking are really kind of there at the last possible second to help you avoid or mitigate um you know the speed and impact of a collision this kind of you know alerts you there was a a little icon of a car that popped up in the driver display to say hey I see a car and then you start to feel that braking um so it was kind of a visual warning without you know being intrusive and annoying you don't want to turn it off right um so yeah it's kind of an early warning system you know potentially it could have safety benefits right um interesting about that so we did talk you know we had this meeting with Lexus like we do with a lot of our the manufacturers when they come out with a new vehicle and I asked them about that and I said you know there's nothing no information right and they said well we're yes we realized that we're going to put it on our dealers that they're going to inform the customers that doesn't seem like a great plan does it I mean I don't even understand why yeah what the point it doesn't seem like a great plan but I don't understand why you even go down that route when you could easily Implement something in the in the center screen to even explain at least the basics they did say thank you for the for bringing that up in the meeting we've told our people right but as of now we have no plans to put any information in the screens um I want to talk about while we're on the subject uh direct driver monitoring this is something you have been you and Jake Fisher have been harping on for a couple years now right that that's what systems with vehicles with active driving assistance systems which is we we consider that the combination of adaptive cruise control and Lane Center and assistance uh they should always have a direct driver monitored system so that if you do if you let go of the wheel which you shouldn't folks but uh if you did it would notice if you weren't paying attention this this thing uh so there's an infrared camera right yep and it's monitoring you all the time even when you don't have ACC and LCA on correct that's right yeah we we asked Lexus uh when the camera's on can you turn it off and and we heard from them then that the camera is always on uh you know you can turn off these warnings and I have a follow-up where they wanted to just make sure they were clear in their answer the audio warning can be turned off but the visual cannot so you have this camera um and it's not linked to using the active driving assistance right it's different than what we've seen so far exactly uh that means that you know if you don't have to have this on because you're using those systems I don't know how many drivers are going to essentially you know want to have just a camera on them that could warn them that they're distracted or you know not paying attention I don't see much incentive for them to have it on um so that's definitely a concern right so you you can turn the camera off so you can turn off the warnings right so if you're like but the one in the instrument cluster will always come on if you so they according to Alexis they said the camera is always on right but you can turn off the warning so if I mean the people that are going to leave it on are probably the people that don't need it as much right if you're someone that's like I don't want this the car to beep at me and you know whatever when I'm looking at my phone or something you're probably gonna turn that off so so on the one hand this is a good thing right because you could be distracted anytime not just when you're using uh active driving assistance but but if it annoys you that's not a good thing right if it's warning you if it's giving you warnings when you kind of are paying attention right and I I found that yeah when I tried it out um it most of the time it worked well and it is responsive in terms of the time it takes for it to to react and warn you so if I was looking away for let's say five seconds that three to five seconds maybe it would give a little beep and a message but then it would also do that other times where I was just driving and not trying to trick it or do anything right just driving and it would just kind of false alarm type thing um so that that was a little annoying for me so that's more of a tuning issue but um just anecdotally is driving this car around um with my wife Ali and she I was explaining kind of how it worked and and what the system does and her immediate reaction without driving the car but just seeing it in action was that she would really want that in her car yeah um to just bring her attention back to the road if she gets distracted or anything like that so where it was annoying me she saw that and was like that that's great yeah and I actually have some numbers from a survey that we put out two years ago you know we love 2020 I I love numbers um there you know there's a fair amount of people almost 50 percent of drivers this is a nationally representative survey so it's not just our memories um that say they want in a new car some sort of a system that can alert them if they are drowsy or distracted and things like that so people do want this but I do feel that the manufacturer needs to put some sort of an incentive in there or benefit for using the system otherwise I think a lot of drivers are going to turn it off yeah or or at least just make sure that it's tuned really really well so that because those annoying moments if it were me that's what's going to make me shut it off and then I'm gonna lose all the benefit from it right yeah I do want to bring up one more important fact though um and we asked Lexus this when they were describing the system to us is about um privacy right anytime there's a camera in the car that's definitely a concern um and it wasn't very clear we didn't get a clear answer from Lexus IS to uh what happens to these recordings they are being recorded it's in you know the menu it says that and everything um they said that their answer was the drivers can always the owners can request the the recordings they can have access to that but when we asked well can you have access to that who else could have access to that where the recordings being saved we didn't get a clear answer on that and so that's something that we're going to follow up with um and and definitely keep our eye on and um thanks both of you that was great analysis of this vehicle we have a lot more up on consumerreports.org a full first drive on this RX 500h and some information about the regular RX in general we will be buying both the kind of more conventional RX 350. we're also buying the RX 350h the hybrid and we'll be getting them in more uh mainstream trims not this you know High Zoo probably mainstream colors too probably mainstream colors although you never know um so uh check that out and we'll have more on that very soon all right and now let's move on to our audience question of the week don't forget folks the best way to reach us is to send your questions comments 30 second video clips to talking cars at icloud.com so uh this week we're gonna we have a question from Robert and Robert says the staff of talking cars often comments negatively upon the reduction in tactile controls in favor of touch screen controls but you often Overlook voice controls which are becoming ubiquitous reliable and easier to use than moving my hand from the steering wheel I would love to hear the talking cars team comment on voice controls and the role they play in your reviews Kelly I'm going to start with you again controls and usability is a huge part of what you do here so what's your answer to Robert yeah so so he's spot on they are becoming more and more common in cars and they're getting better uh you know everyone loves to to you know harp on the bad voice controls it heard something completely you know Bonkers from what I said uh but they are getting better they're more naturalistic using you know regular phrases that you don't have to learn which is which is the big one right exactly so um it's Alex you're part of the usability team as well we do look at the the voice controls in the car so part of the assessment we do you know see what is available first of all can you change climate settings uh media audio type of stuff um all those types of things and so we we try them out uh but like he said they're becoming more common they're still not that common in cars um and so we actually have a survey don't tell me you have more numbers for us I love data and so we found uh by asking again nationally representative survey that uh how often they use the voice commands in their car to do certain tasks and so for adjusting the climate uh people who say they do it every time they drive or most of the time they drive comes out to 31 okay so bigger numbers than we had seen in the past right but and also just real quick to your point it will be impacted by the fact that not every car like adjusting climate with voice controls is kind of that's right a new feature of them or newer than something like changing radio station it's true that is a phone call right exactly so these are for people who who have the voice yes exactly to do these tasks in their car that's right so huge huge caveat there uh adjusting audio settings 26 is every time or most of the time uh making a phone call 30 uh setting a destination in their nav system 20 so still kind of lower numbers um what we find is that it's not necessarily the primary source of using the climate and the navigation system that's just how often some people might do it and so we still want to make sure that not using the voice control so using them with your fingers uh touch screen hard controls are the fundamentals still need to be in place and accessible for the other 70 or 80 in some cases that aren't going to use those um well and I think part of the problem is even though they're getting better it seems like more often than not on the rare occasions that I do use voice control it doesn't work right like I said I call this person and they either the thing says something says call someone like this other name or just is confused by what I asked for at all right and so I just usually ended up not using them and I have a feeling that's what a lot of people are doing yeah once it gets better and easier then yeah you press one button and you tell the car to do anything you want and it does it then that's when people walk up on board right you got it especially as things get buried more and more like if I could maybe say to that Lexus turn on and off the the active sound control which I didn't ask I should have asked maybe I will do that um I wouldn't have had to dig through to find that but um but they shouldn't be used as a crutch either so having a bad interface well you can use the voice controls that's not an excuse you should have good both ideally right so that people have options 100 and as part of our evaluation not only are we doing it in our controls kind of uh you know debrief if you will that we have where we kind of have our main group that scores controls but also collecting everybody's comments and log books everybody that drives the vehicles that might use the voice controls we we kind of collect all that as well right great good stuff Robert there's your answer uh that's going to do it for this episode if you want to learn more about the cars and the topics that we talked about you can click on the links in the show notes don't forget to send those questions comments 30 second video clips of talking cars at icloud.com this episode was produced by Dave Abrams and edited by anatolyshoomski thanks so much for watching and we'll see y'all next weekforeign welcome to another episode I'm Mike Monticello I'm Alex and Isaac and I'm Kelly Funkhouser So today we're going to spend the majority of the episode talking about the redesigned 2023 Lexus RX which we rented from Lexus uh for our first impressions of this vehicle this is the fifth generation of the RX which is a midsize luxury SUV and you know over the years the RX has been an example of stress-free motoring uh due to you know just its comfortable seats comfortable ride it's quiet um and also it's incredibly reliable right so historically historically reliable people love this vehicle for all of those things but it's never been particularly engaging to drive okay right now and that may change just a hint we'll see what happens during this episode but because the one that we rented and I'm guessing this maybe wasn't our first choice but this is what this is what it gave us yeah is a 2023 RX 500 H F Sport performance all-wheel drive which is is a mouthful it's a big kind of a long line name but so maybe this you know is going to amp up the driving Dynamics a little bit so but before we get into this specific vehicle let's talk about the the 2023 RX as a whole Alex just walk us through what are the new things with this 2023 yeah so it migrates over to Toyota's latest platform so that's t g n a k they've got a couple different versions of these this is the K version platform so that's also underpinning things like the Camry the Lexus NX that we also tested um and I think it's a good opportunity to talk a little bit about these platforms as we hear this all the time but really think more about modules that are shared across cars it's not that the the body and white between the NX and the Camry are all the same with all the same panels and all these things right it's more like the steering column and the seat relationship are the same and maybe some of the engines and we'll talk about that are the same or shared across but then of course the interior and the exterior are completely different the sizes are different so some shared things there but um ultimately it is quite a bit uh different than those other vehicles um but like you said Monty the RX is pretty much Lex's like bread and butter vehicle I think I looked up some sales and last year it was over a third of total Lexus sales in the US was just the RX so it's beating out even the NX and all those other things so that's how important it is super important so this is a big um redesign for them but so just dimensionally it's pretty much the same actually length stays the same at 193 inches it's a little lighter wheelbase stretches a little bit but mostly it's the same size um but the big things are controls wise there's no more touch pad inside and then the other big things are the powertrain so before you were talking um V6 is just a naturally aspirated V6 was kind of the standard engine and then a hybrid V6 was the other option but now everything is four cylinder based yeah the V6 is gone it's gone completely so you have a turbo four um as kind of the base option and then you have a four-cylinder hybrid or the turbo four-cylinder hybrid that we rented and then there's going to be a plug-in hybrid coming later so those are the big changes and then of course price that goes up up a little bit start set or the existing one was kind of that 45 000 this is more like 48.49 right that's where it starts quick specifics on the RX 500h that we rented that we're going to be talking about today 366 horsepower 46 pound-feet of torque it's that turbo four-cylinder hybrid that you just talked about has uh driver adjustable adaptive suspension comes with that rear steering which they call again a mouthful vehicle Dynamics integrated management Dynamic rear steering wow I don't know if that's what's going to go I don't know if that's what's going to go on the window sticker yeah and um also six-speed automatic which is kind of interesting because you just you know we've talked about this on the podcast before but you just don't see many besides Mazda you don't see too many six-speed automatics but yeah we'll get into later on it really doesn't matter actually um you know that it's a six-speed because it's so I think it's kind of better for it yeah honestly um and then this one had a whole bunch of options and with the 1150 destination charge the estimated as driven price of this RX 500h that we rented is 70 620 I want to get into the driving Dynamics but you know we joke around sometimes around here but there's also on time so we really need to be serious and talk about things that affect people and in this case I think we need to really take a hard look at what the heck is up with this color on this vehicle can you explain to me um I can try to explain uh so I actually really enjoy when we rent cars and and it's kind of luck of the draw what the manufacturer sends to us like Alex was really something crazy it's usually something crazy that looks really good in photos and this one was particularly unique yeah it has kind of a shimmer to it that I think a few of us were joking it's the new Mary Kay type of yeah of a shimmer right on a car um and and Alex and I we both really love to joke about the name that they give to these pink colors they're almost absurd as a you know nail polish paint colors and so this time I decided to bring a prop uh this morning yeah I decided to go through my nail polish collection and see if I could color match it and I did very well so I went ahead and painted my nails to match the color and what do they call it versus what electricity so Lexus calls there's Copper Crest I don't know about that in the yeah exactly so so it's not necessarily true to life when you're in person so in the sun especially it really has this kind of a pink undertone That You Don't See online or on the screen the copper part I was kind of surprised when I saw that that was the name of it because I'm like more like Mary Kay pink is on yeah right right exactly and so so they call it copper crust I found a nail polish that is called um Inferno okay but it definitely has quite the pink undertone so so just know that if you're shopping for this car online right you might get a little surprised when you see it in person and not to make fun Alexis but they seem very proud of this color for one day when they called it out I know do you like it okay I think it was polarizing uh amongst people I'm down for like cool colors on cars like whites and stuff get super boring I don't know if I would choose copper crust white silver is so boring like I need some Copper Crest well you know as we always say beauty is in the eye of the beholder so we'll let you folks out there that are watching uh make your own judgments on it right as far as color recite Alex what is this thing like to drive let's just get into a little bit of driving Dynamics yeah so all right first of all it's completely tuned and set up to be comfortable and luxurious soft suspension that absorbs the bumps you know that type of thing and I know we're talking about kind of a new performance version which is a little um kind of goes against the whole mission of the RX in my opinion I mean I'm down with all the power it's great but in terms of trying to add some handling um you know extra supportiness if you will to the handling Dynamics doesn't really work out that well because it's still super soft yeah um but that's great I think that's if you're somebody that really wants a comfortable car and there seems to be less options these days for things that are truly comfortable and just stick to that you know really comfortable kind of um objective this does a really good job even in this 500h version so in a way don't be scared by the f-sport part because I don't think so no because that's supposed to mean a pretty sporty deal yeah and it comes with some more aggressive uh low profile tires and it has the Adaptive suspension and of course the more power the 366 horsepower that we're talking about but yeah I don't think it's really a sports SUV if that's something you're looking for maybe like a an X5 something in that realm is that's rear wheel drive based would be so you're not going to be wowed by the handling I don't think so you're going to be kind of dull you're gonna to be happy with the ride even with these 21 inch tires I was kind of impressive you know you didn't get a lot of like harshness coming through uh and I loved the powertrain it's great yeah no it's it's really nice the automatic shifts so smoothly you know and like I said just because the six-speed doesn't mean that it can't work well it works that was my takeaway was as much as I love having that power and it is responsive is that I would much rather have my hybrid with a six-speed automatic than a CVT which is what the Lesser powerful RX Hybrid comes with and Cali did you find something kind of similar with the ride and handling mix or balance yeah I I kind of liked how with a lot of hybrids you kind of feel that engine coming on and off at you know lower speeds this kind of felt more smooth and gradual it didn't feel like it was you know changing you know shifting all the time to higher gears so I found it to be quite smooth and pleasant especially you know driving around the city yeah yeah I did too and one thing I I was a little confused about though was on my eval Loop which includes a highway section according to the energy monitor on the infotainment screen the gas engine was on the entire time even on the slightly downhill sections where usually a hybrid would go into like a post motor yeah I noticed it as well and this one was on the whole time and I'm it's a performance type but so I get it to some extent but also because of that the powertrain was quite noisy but then I found out later on there's some kind of an active sound control yeah that I couldn't figure out how to turn off but you did and how do you do it uh it was buried a couple layers deep into some settings section of the center touch screen and I did it once I turned it off and then for comparison's sake wanted to go turn it back on and I couldn't find it again even though I did it once before it was really in there So eventually sitting in my driveway for a few minutes I found it but um I did notice that and it's pretty loud there's a couple different settings for it but um it is loud and I did notice that the engine was on quite a bit more often than um with just a kind of a more efficiency geared type of hybrid right but even with it off and the engine running all the time you do hear it um the active sound control off is what I mean and it yeah I don't know if it's charging the battery to some degree at times where you're not really on the power so it's just kind of running in the background I don't know but you do hear it and it took away a little bit from uh just that luxury feel that luxury hybrid right Serenity but I will say this is just for full disclosure and kind of an asterisk on the whole thing is that it's uh pre-production right so maybe that tuning will change when we buy one and experience and we won't buy one of these we're gonna buy a regular RX 350 and rx350h and this is this particular version is very Niche yes version so we don't want to judge too much on this right but the controls were probably going to be pretty similar across the board and Kelly you're kind of our controls and usability experts so let's get into a little bit what what is better about this new RX and maybe what isn't you know what is still annoying or distracting yeah uh so we were pleased to see that they have room removed the touch pad that's you know on the center console we've had a lot of issues with that you know there's kind of some backwards movements that you do and they call it you know the true touch and it's all you know kind of awkward to use and people don't really like it a lot of people are wanting to reach towards the touch screen and just use that instead so that is gone so now we have saved some some real estate it kind of cleans things up however the steering wheel now has capacitive touch and hard button combo which are kind of a little confusing to get used to um you mean because just because they're on completely unlabeled and you have no idea what any of these buttons do exactly they're just totally unlabeled and so when you you know Touch without pushing button you're just brushing right so it feels your finger on the button then you get a pop-up either in the driver display or in the heads up display that kind of shows you a map of what those buttons will do at any given time but they could change depending on what you're doing okay and there's buttons to switch like below these little four ways controllers there's little toggles to switch it virtually kind of flips the switch pack over and now you have four other controls right and that must be why they on they didn't label them right because they're trying to be them be Dual Purpose right so they couldn't really label them because then they'd be locked into those exactly and I did not like that especially when using like the adaptive cruise control right like you're you have to kind of hover over it and then you know sometimes you push it but you don't really know and I had an issue where I had turned off the heads up display because some people don't like them yeah exactly and then they the you know map of what the buttons do temporarily pops up in the instrument cluster in the darker display but it blocks everything else on the screen if you're trying to cycle through the little Pages the pages exactly I did that so it was like okay so I push you know side and I want to go side inside so I put my finger up and don't push it but touch it and then it's covering the entire display of what it is you want to go and change it then you have to wait for it to disappear see if that's the one nope okay do it again is that the one nope it was just kind of a bad design yeah two things on this though we saw it with the rented annexes that we borrowed maybe a year or so ago and then when we bought rnx kind of a lower less you know Decked Out trim level it didn't have that it had normal because it didn't have a high it seems to be tied to the hood head up displaying the heads up as well yeah right now I will say and there are some other issues like when you're turning the wheel and you accidentally brush against the thing and it's just popping up in the hood that was a little distracting but the one thing I did like about it is you can customize the controls if you dig into another crazy layer into the center you'll never find it again you'll never find it but I did once uh you can assign climate controls to one of the um the the buttons on the left side of the steering wheel so you can put temperature on there which you I had that in an old Buick of mine that I just absolutely love being so it's a Nostalgia thing it's not totally yeah okay I don't even know if I use it but I put them there enough you just want to know yeah okay there's a couple of other issues some people didn't like the electronic door release buttons and the electronic gear selector was a little wonky that you have to go up and and left to go to reverse uh but here's I you know what I enjoyed there is a physical trip meter button on the left side of the dash that you just push Nostalgia and you can yeah so many cars these days you can even find you have to dig meter um so but let's move on from that and Kelly I want to talk to you so more about active driving assistance systems Lexus has a new thing on this vehicle this is I believe this is the first vehicle with us called proactive driving assist am I correct about that that's what they call it and it's something that you can choose or not choose on the infotainment screen but tell us a little bit about what that is because it's a little it's not readily obvious what it is definitely not obvious what it is so in the menu screen you can toggle the feature on and off but that's the only information you have inside the vehicle about this system at all so there's no description or a little you know I text or something that you can push where it says this is what proactive driving assist is and no graphics and this isn't something you're just making up other automakers do this right they give you the option either when you click on it it immediately tells you what it does or there's this little icon you if you want that information you click on it it shows up on the screen nothing here right right it's just it's blue which is on or it's gray which is awesome with some ambiguous symbol probably to tell you exactly so I did play around with it um we did have kind of a hint from talking with Lexus about this vehicle so you know they kind of told us what to look for so I kind of knew I had the cheat code um but what it essentially is is an always-on kind of distance um indicator and assistance so if you're driving I was in Hartford driving around in traffic and it was always looking for a vehicle in front of me and when I was coming up closer to that vehicle you know I'm coasting and there's going to be a red light I felt uh what kind of felt like regenerative breaking right in an EV right come on and it was very gradual and subtle and kind of ramped up uh but as I got closer you could feel that breaking I really enjoyed it because it was quite subtle and again I'm like trying to figure out what this thing does and I'm like is that what it is okay that's it so it was subtle um and and I really you know felt that there's potential with this system to be you know a safety system because um you you get a little bit of that kinesthetic you know feel of the brakes which alerts you and you know puts your attention on the road um so you know you need to do some braking and things like that but it was very non-intrusive um and so I really kind of liked how it was how it worked did it come across as more of like a convenience or a safety thing I know they also said that it detects like pedestrians and uh cyclists and things like that or Corners Corners yeah buildings in fact yeah I'm assuming um I don't know if you experienced any of that but well she tried not to run into a building or a person there were probably other people that had to drive it out it's sort of like a an early forward Collision warning in a sense or automatic emergency braking but without startling the heck out of you right yes that's exactly exactly how I would describe it it's like an early system so you know the forward Collision warning and automatic emergency braking are really kind of there at the last possible second to help you avoid or mitigate um you know the speed and impact of a collision this kind of you know alerts you there was a a little icon of a car that popped up in the driver display to say hey I see a car and then you start to feel that braking um so it was kind of a visual warning without you know being intrusive and annoying you don't want to turn it off right um so yeah it's kind of an early warning system you know potentially it could have safety benefits right um interesting about that so we did talk you know we had this meeting with Lexus like we do with a lot of our the manufacturers when they come out with a new vehicle and I asked them about that and I said you know there's nothing no information right and they said well we're yes we realized that we're going to put it on our dealers that they're going to inform the customers that doesn't seem like a great plan does it I mean I don't even understand why yeah what the point it doesn't seem like a great plan but I don't understand why you even go down that route when you could easily Implement something in the in the center screen to even explain at least the basics they did say thank you for the for bringing that up in the meeting we've told our people right but as of now we have no plans to put any information in the screens um I want to talk about while we're on the subject uh direct driver monitoring this is something you have been you and Jake Fisher have been harping on for a couple years now right that that's what systems with vehicles with active driving assistance systems which is we we consider that the combination of adaptive cruise control and Lane Center and assistance uh they should always have a direct driver monitored system so that if you do if you let go of the wheel which you shouldn't folks but uh if you did it would notice if you weren't paying attention this this thing uh so there's an infrared camera right yep and it's monitoring you all the time even when you don't have ACC and LCA on correct that's right yeah we we asked Lexus uh when the camera's on can you turn it off and and we heard from them then that the camera is always on uh you know you can turn off these warnings and I have a follow-up where they wanted to just make sure they were clear in their answer the audio warning can be turned off but the visual cannot so you have this camera um and it's not linked to using the active driving assistance right it's different than what we've seen so far exactly uh that means that you know if you don't have to have this on because you're using those systems I don't know how many drivers are going to essentially you know want to have just a camera on them that could warn them that they're distracted or you know not paying attention I don't see much incentive for them to have it on um so that's definitely a concern right so you you can turn the camera off so you can turn off the warnings right so if you're like but the one in the instrument cluster will always come on if you so they according to Alexis they said the camera is always on right but you can turn off the warning so if I mean the people that are going to leave it on are probably the people that don't need it as much right if you're someone that's like I don't want this the car to beep at me and you know whatever when I'm looking at my phone or something you're probably gonna turn that off so so on the one hand this is a good thing right because you could be distracted anytime not just when you're using uh active driving assistance but but if it annoys you that's not a good thing right if it's warning you if it's giving you warnings when you kind of are paying attention right and I I found that yeah when I tried it out um it most of the time it worked well and it is responsive in terms of the time it takes for it to to react and warn you so if I was looking away for let's say five seconds that three to five seconds maybe it would give a little beep and a message but then it would also do that other times where I was just driving and not trying to trick it or do anything right just driving and it would just kind of false alarm type thing um so that that was a little annoying for me so that's more of a tuning issue but um just anecdotally is driving this car around um with my wife Ali and she I was explaining kind of how it worked and and what the system does and her immediate reaction without driving the car but just seeing it in action was that she would really want that in her car yeah um to just bring her attention back to the road if she gets distracted or anything like that so where it was annoying me she saw that and was like that that's great yeah and I actually have some numbers from a survey that we put out two years ago you know we love 2020 I I love numbers um there you know there's a fair amount of people almost 50 percent of drivers this is a nationally representative survey so it's not just our memories um that say they want in a new car some sort of a system that can alert them if they are drowsy or distracted and things like that so people do want this but I do feel that the manufacturer needs to put some sort of an incentive in there or benefit for using the system otherwise I think a lot of drivers are going to turn it off yeah or or at least just make sure that it's tuned really really well so that because those annoying moments if it were me that's what's going to make me shut it off and then I'm gonna lose all the benefit from it right yeah I do want to bring up one more important fact though um and we asked Lexus this when they were describing the system to us is about um privacy right anytime there's a camera in the car that's definitely a concern um and it wasn't very clear we didn't get a clear answer from Lexus IS to uh what happens to these recordings they are being recorded it's in you know the menu it says that and everything um they said that their answer was the drivers can always the owners can request the the recordings they can have access to that but when we asked well can you have access to that who else could have access to that where the recordings being saved we didn't get a clear answer on that and so that's something that we're going to follow up with um and and definitely keep our eye on and um thanks both of you that was great analysis of this vehicle we have a lot more up on consumerreports.org a full first drive on this RX 500h and some information about the regular RX in general we will be buying both the kind of more conventional RX 350. we're also buying the RX 350h the hybrid and we'll be getting them in more uh mainstream trims not this you know High Zoo probably mainstream colors too probably mainstream colors although you never know um so uh check that out and we'll have more on that very soon all right and now let's move on to our audience question of the week don't forget folks the best way to reach us is to send your questions comments 30 second video clips to talking cars at icloud.com so uh this week we're gonna we have a question from Robert and Robert says the staff of talking cars often comments negatively upon the reduction in tactile controls in favor of touch screen controls but you often Overlook voice controls which are becoming ubiquitous reliable and easier to use than moving my hand from the steering wheel I would love to hear the talking cars team comment on voice controls and the role they play in your reviews Kelly I'm going to start with you again controls and usability is a huge part of what you do here so what's your answer to Robert yeah so so he's spot on they are becoming more and more common in cars and they're getting better uh you know everyone loves to to you know harp on the bad voice controls it heard something completely you know Bonkers from what I said uh but they are getting better they're more naturalistic using you know regular phrases that you don't have to learn which is which is the big one right exactly so um it's Alex you're part of the usability team as well we do look at the the voice controls in the car so part of the assessment we do you know see what is available first of all can you change climate settings uh media audio type of stuff um all those types of things and so we we try them out uh but like he said they're becoming more common they're still not that common in cars um and so we actually have a survey don't tell me you have more numbers for us I love data and so we found uh by asking again nationally representative survey that uh how often they use the voice commands in their car to do certain tasks and so for adjusting the climate uh people who say they do it every time they drive or most of the time they drive comes out to 31 okay so bigger numbers than we had seen in the past right but and also just real quick to your point it will be impacted by the fact that not every car like adjusting climate with voice controls is kind of that's right a new feature of them or newer than something like changing radio station it's true that is a phone call right exactly so these are for people who who have the voice yes exactly to do these tasks in their car that's right so huge huge caveat there uh adjusting audio settings 26 is every time or most of the time uh making a phone call 30 uh setting a destination in their nav system 20 so still kind of lower numbers um what we find is that it's not necessarily the primary source of using the climate and the navigation system that's just how often some people might do it and so we still want to make sure that not using the voice control so using them with your fingers uh touch screen hard controls are the fundamentals still need to be in place and accessible for the other 70 or 80 in some cases that aren't going to use those um well and I think part of the problem is even though they're getting better it seems like more often than not on the rare occasions that I do use voice control it doesn't work right like I said I call this person and they either the thing says something says call someone like this other name or just is confused by what I asked for at all right and so I just usually ended up not using them and I have a feeling that's what a lot of people are doing yeah once it gets better and easier then yeah you press one button and you tell the car to do anything you want and it does it then that's when people walk up on board right you got it especially as things get buried more and more like if I could maybe say to that Lexus turn on and off the the active sound control which I didn't ask I should have asked maybe I will do that um I wouldn't have had to dig through to find that but um but they shouldn't be used as a crutch either so having a bad interface well you can use the voice controls that's not an excuse you should have good both ideally right so that people have options 100 and as part of our evaluation not only are we doing it in our controls kind of uh you know debrief if you will that we have where we kind of have our main group that scores controls but also collecting everybody's comments and log books everybody that drives the vehicles that might use the voice controls we we kind of collect all that as well right great good stuff Robert there's your answer uh that's going to do it for this episode if you want to learn more about the cars and the topics that we talked about you can click on the links in the show notes don't forget to send those questions comments 30 second video clips of talking cars at icloud.com this episode was produced by Dave Abrams and edited by anatolyshoomski thanks so much for watching and we'll see y'all next week\n"