You got me curious, so I started my ‘16 450h, put the transmission in “N”, set the parking brake & got out. I put my hand over the badge & the hatch opened! Perhaps because I still had the key in my pocket? I’ve never had anything other than myself trigger the hatch, but it’s opened a few times while I was washing the back window.

I think Lexus has a lot of work to do to achieve any kind of perfection in going thru car washes. The engineers need to do more to either make it really fast & easy to disable this stuff upon entering a car wash or make these systems immune to triggering inside of a car wash. How did Lexus miss this stuff?!

My wife reminded me the the Lexus Enform has something that will disable these systems for car washing. We don’t subscribe to Enform because of the insane price they charge for something we rearely used (maybe once). Maybe this will help someone that has an active Enform subscription.

Exactly! Put a button next to the worthless steering wheel heat button that says “Car Wash”. Push it to disable all these features & when done, push it again to reactivate everything.

I couldn’t remember - she thought it was there, but for what they charge, it should wipe your butt!

It also says to disable the rain sensing wipers & the parking sensors. Geez, it will take you 15 minutes to shut all that crap off just to wash the car! They need a car wash button!

On 2018 Lexus RX, I am pretty sure the tailgate sensor will not operate because the doors are locked if the car is not in park and I am pretty sure that you need the key near the trunk to open it as well. On the other hand, I would fold my mirrors, turn auto wipers off and let the car wash dp its thing. If it’s your first time at a automatic car wash with your lexus and all the safety technology, tell the person who is running the conveyor belt about it and make sure your safety technology doesnt cause any problems in the car wash 😁

As Greg noted, “Most RX owners do not wash their vehicles.” I’m in the minority. I visit a car wash regularly by driving into a manual wash bay and quickly rinse, then pre-coat with low pressure soap, then high pressure wash, then rinse again, before heading into a touchless wash bay. The touchless washes the undercarriage and blasts the lower 1/3 of the car as I drive in. I get the full works, including the extra lap of bug removal. I drive slowly through the blowers. On good days, at home I grab the leaf blower and dry the car and wipe down all door jambs.

Even if if I decide to hand wash, the above is repeated before I even start to hand wash. I don’t like touching or even allow the dealership to touch the paint. However once clean, I will machine buff and wax.

There are only a few chain drive washes around here, so the only things I routinely turn off are the wipers and headlights. Since the car is usually off or in park, no alerts and the liftgate doesn’t open.

When traveling, I ask destination assist to find touchless car washes.

I’m a firm believer Lexus clear coat is very delicate and any touching will mar it.