New Hybrid Luxury Car from Lexus: RX 400h

Lexus' new luxury RX 400h is essentially a hybrid version of its
gas-powered model, RX 330. When it will come out on April 15, it will
have a suggested sticker price of price of $48,535 - about $10,000
more than the price of 330 model. Lexus is planning to sell about
27000 cars annually.

400h has all-wheel drive and 268 horsepower engine, a navigation
system and a number of high-tech gadgets. Acceleration? 0-60 mph
in 7.3 seconds! Mileage? 27 miles per gallon on the highway and 31
miles per gallon in the city. That is 67 percent improvement over
RX 330 and looks good in luxury car category but for truely Green
people it does not sound too good in the overall category of hybrid
cars which is led by Honda Insight [61 mpg in city, 66 in freeway]
and Toyota Prius [60 mpg in city, 51 in freeway].

Toyota (parent of Lexus) , with its popular Prius model, owns about
60 percent of the hybrid market. The share of Hybrid in total car
market is currently under 1 percent in the United States and may
approach 3 percent by 2010.