AaronAlfa

Howdy,

My 2011 RX450h has been nearly trouble-free its 166k miles, but I recently had to have the small battery in the trunk replaced (It had been almost 5 years since it was last replaced) and after doing so I have the following problem I can't figure out:

When I get out of the car and leave it unlocked, the alarm apparently arms itself even though the doors are still unlocked. It don't hear a beeping or anything. I know this is the case because if I open one of the doors without the keyfob with me, the alarm horn goes off and I have to retrieve the key to silence it. This never happened prior to having the batter replaced, and I can't find any settings for this behavior. I would actually prefer the doors lock by themselves like our other cars (a Toyota and Mercedes) but it has never done so since new.

This got me to thinking, I always wondered why the doors don't automatically lock after a certain amount of time by themselves. Our 2006 highlander hybrid does that after about 60 seconds of walking away, and it beeps to let you know the alarm is on. Is this not possible with these cars? My daughter has a "techstream" computer that she thinks may make that possible or fix this, but I wanted to see if this was maybe a problem I needed to address before I let her tinker with my car!

-Thanks in advance!

Clutchless

You should be able to change that via the Nav screen settings for the vehicle. It sounds like they reset when the battery was swapped, which is unusual.
If you have Navigation it is easy to go through the screen prompts to find door lock settings. Even my Sienna has this feature.
If you don't have Nav, it must be done via steering wheel controls and consult your owners manual first.

AaronAlfa

Thanks for the reply, I went through all the menus through the nav screen, and "auto relock time adjust" is set to 60 seconds, which I interpret to mean if would lock the doors if there is nobody or no key in the car for 60 seconds... but it doesn't.

On page 52 of the manual (which admittedly I haven't read probably since I bought the car) there is a passage that reads: Security feature: If a door is not opened within approximately 60 seconds after the vehicle is unlocked, the security feature automatically locks the vehicle again."

-which is exactly what both our highlander and mercedes ML have always done. The RX has never done this that I can recall. Any other ideas what to check, or is it time to head to the shop?

WHLex4

I am not sure what you are asking -- do you want the doors to lock 60 seconds after you get out? I believe the auto lock on the RX (and other Lexus') is if you push the unlock button on the fob, but do not open the doors, the doors will lock again after the time you have preset (60 seconds for example). Just as you mention in your second paragraph above. If you open the doors after pushing the unlock button the doors will not lock until you do something to lock them (push the lock button on the fob, touch the lock section of the door handle). Otherwise, there is no self locking feature (there is an auto lock while driving the car once you reach a set speed, the doors then unlock when the car is put into Park).

If I am not correct about your question, my apologies. I note that there are some steps to reset the locking features of cars, check Google or search the forum for reset locking features! They show a series of presses of lock and unlock on the fob while the car is switched on but not started.