Lexus' Luxury Hybrid Car (RX 400h) Rolling Out Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is the day! Lexus will roll out its new RX 400h Hybrid model.
Lexus' new luxury RX 400h is essentially a hybrid version of its
gas-powered model, RX 330. 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.