DrMabuse

So I have been out for my first test-drive of an IS 300h.

None of the cars the dealer had was equipped with the Mark Levinson stereo.

The car behaved well. Not quite as good acceleration as I had hoped for, but good enough. I have a Volvo S60R (300ph) as benchmark...
The car was steady and handled nicely on the road. Comfortable and quiet.

So the one thing, and it a huge disappointment:
It vibrates.
The whole car shakes with maybe 10-15 Hz.
I couldn't drive more than a few hundred meters before my wife started complaining. There must be an imbalance in some drive shaft for the electric motor or CVT box.
The car is calm and quiet when it is stationary, but when it starts to move the vibration starts. Whether I was driving in Pure Electric mode or with the gasoline engine running. The vibrations did not follow the gasoline engine revs as far as I could feel, and were independent of speed. It kept annoyingly the same in 10km/h as in 100km/h.
Having had bad experience with infra-sound from the ventilation system of my apartment, this **** is a deal-breaker.

There was also some disgusting "new car" smell that made me nauseous. Or it was the vibrations that did it. Not fun at all.

Are these vibrations present in all hybrids, or did the Lexus dealer get unlucky with a crap delivery?

Flash5

Not many people have the hybrid IS on here since most of us are from the U.S./Canadian market which we don't have the hybrid option. I would never have bought the IS as an hybrid, it's not in my mind what the IS should be. The CT hybrid makes sense. Sounds like that particular vehicle was just a badly built one maybe.

RKSTRAT

I may be way off....but on a cold start in winter, the IS300 AWD will vibrate in the NORMAL mode, until the engine warms up.
I assume it was cold in Sweden on the test drive?
As we have discussed here, keeping it in the ECO mode until the car warms up will solve that.

E46CT

Old car w/ an even older hybrid powertrain. At this point there's a ton better options. Why not just get a Tesla model 3.

kj07xk

How many miles (or km) were on the car?
Possibly inner tire wear on the front tires from the soft Lower Control Arm bushings (common problem on the IS).

athanato

Lexus moved the ML package into the IS350 only as the 300 was getting closer and closer to becoming a 350 so they needed something to better differentiate them.

DrMabuse

Please sell me a model 3 Tesla in excellent condition, with 50k miles on it for $25000US and we've got a deal!

DrMabuse

It was a few °C, just above freezing point. I think I did switch to ECO at one point or another. But the engine was warm enough to turn off when I stopped at the red lights. And it still vibrated when I drove a few hundred meters in Pure Electric mode at the end of the test drive.

I'll make a point of checking this the next time I do a test-drive.

Raghza

My friend just bought a used IS300h.
No vibrations at all, the car drives beautifully and is dead silent.
There must have been something wrong, perhaps wheel balancing or sth else.

Moisture

Because Tesla is atrociously unreliable..

A hybrid, whether it is tuned for performance or efficiency is fundamentally a solid choice.

the vibration does not sound normal to me, as per the specific model you were testing.