I agree. I just try to measure cost against benefit. For me, savings of $270 spreaded during the year don't justify loss of power, loss of fun, and everyday irritation of drivers behind me (I realistically don't see how ISx50 in snow mode can keep up with Seattle street traffic. I tried.).

There are many ways to save $270 that are less painful. I guess turning unneeded lights down in your whole home for a year and using fluorescent bulbs will save about the same. Shutting down PC at night as opposed to keeping it on all the time. Etc. Etc.

Anyway... In 10 years we all will drive hybrids.

 

Very True!

 

I dont think this applies to the awd's out there because that will effect the front and rear diff's which mean alot more wear and tear.

my understanding is that snow mode creates a 50/50 split on the diff's while the other modes are 70/30 fr/rr

 

is that really true? i hope not.. i would like to milk out as many miles from my tank as i can, because i have a 100 mile a day commute.. and that's only monday through friday!

 

gas hit 4.60 for premium.

bleh.

 

Moved here from Chi-town & Dont miss those high a$$ gas prices...premium is only $3.99 here in Phoenix!

 

Also one final question...

Does driving in SNOW mode all the time hurt the car in any way?

I love the extra 2-3 MPG i get! When you switch to normal the car feels like a rocket! lol (yes its a 250)

 

I did the same experiment and saw no change in my instantaneous mpg. I tried it five different times on flats, uphill, and downhill. No change at all.

You might save mpg in snow mode, but it's not inherent in snow mode, its inherent in thinking about mpg while driving. If I focus on being conservative, my mpg goes up pretty significantly (I've seen 26 mpg with city driving in my 350), but if I accelerate hard from just a few lights over the course of a tank, I'll be down to 22.5 - 23.0 indicated every time.

I've played with all of this stuff extensively. I have over 50k miles on the car now, and I have a pretty clear picture of what I need to do to save gas if I choose to. Setting the transmission programming to snow isn't part of it.

 

Is this documented somewhere? I haven't been able to find anything related to this in any of the Lexus documentation (service manuals, new car features, etc) on techinfo.toyota.com.

 

Interesting. While I certainly agree that increasing MPGs is not an inherent property of snow mode, snow mode definitely helps you drive more conservatively.

That being said, I have found that I notice the biggest difference in MPGs while in Snow mode if I'm going 40 or under. Just this morning I was cruising in traffic at 30 MPH and getting just under 30 MPG in normal mode. Keeping my right foot in the exact same place, I switched to Snow Mode and my Current MPGs jumped immediately to somewhere between 35-40 MPG. Then again, we are talking about two completely different engines here.

 

I tried snow mode, and I didn't notice any significant difference in mpg. What I did notice is that snow mode turned my IS350 into a fricken slug. Ahhhhhhh!!! I won't be using snow mode for daily driving anytime soon again

 

A "significant" improvement in MPG is not expected.

A small gain should be considered as saving gas.

 

In the IS300 it also retarded the timing in the car reducing power and in the automatics it would start the car in second.

 

Let me rephrase that, I saw no improvement at all in my city mpg. So no gas saved for me.

 

Thank you for your clarification.