Bruce
Kraftwagen König
This latest Lexus pushes the envelope in a couple of ways. One, it’s the first production big-league luxury sedan to utilize a hybrid powertrain. And two, it’s the first Lexus to command a (gulp!) six-figure price tag, going toe-to-toe with V-8- and V-12-powered variants of the Mercedes S-Class and BMW 7 Series.
Is a hybrid necessarily better in this application? Well, it is smooth. One could almost say vibrationless when its 4-cam 32-valve 5.0-liter V-8 shuts off automatically at most every traffic light, and during very low-speed operation. Gas it (hmm, poor choice of verb) and as much as 389 bhp’s worth of internal-combustion power and up to 49 bhp from one of the Lexus’ two motor-generators feed through a two-stage planetary-gear continuously variable transmission, then a compactly designed Torsen center differential, and on to each axle with a normal 40/60 front/rear torque split.
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Is a hybrid necessarily better in this application? Well, it is smooth. One could almost say vibrationless when its 4-cam 32-valve 5.0-liter V-8 shuts off automatically at most every traffic light, and during very low-speed operation. Gas it (hmm, poor choice of verb) and as much as 389 bhp’s worth of internal-combustion power and up to 49 bhp from one of the Lexus’ two motor-generators feed through a two-stage planetary-gear continuously variable transmission, then a compactly designed Torsen center differential, and on to each axle with a normal 40/60 front/rear torque split.
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