DRAG your laptop out to your car and set it on the dashboard, so you can see its screen from the driver’s seat. Put your mouse on the center console. Turn on the car and drive away. Then keep an eye on the cursor on the screen and try to scroll, select and click with your right hand while steering with your left.
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Is this distracted driving?
The mouse-and-laptop setup is the general idea behind Remote Touch Interface, a signature (though optional) feature of the new Lexus HS 250h hybrid sedan. Remote Touch consists of a joysticklike knob and mouse-type control buttons on the center console. The knob and buttons direct a cursor on a dashtop LCD screen, which you use to control all sorts of functions, from the audio system to the trip computer to the navigation map.
While the icons are large and some haptic feedback helps you feel where your cursor-arrow is headed, the system still requires a degree of precision and concentration that a driver may find intrusive and distracting.
And the Remote Touch system is just one part of a dizzying array of buttons, switches and knobs on the steering wheel and dashboard, along with multifunction displays, in the technology-infested, though basically likable, HS 250h.
The highest compliment I can give the HS 250h is this: It is a hybrid that doesn’t feel like one. Haven’t many people been waiting for a seamless hybrid sedan wearing a luxury label?
Maybe all the gadgetry is intentional — a gilded disguise for what is essentially a European-market Toyota with the powertrain of a Camry hybrid. The Toyota Avensis, the basis for the HS 250h, is a sturdy but unremarkable compact sedan. For its makeover as a luxury hybrid, the Avensis’ body has been bathed in luscious Lexus paint; its interior has been stuffed with rich leather and plush carpeting.
The makeover may be working: in Japan, there is a waiting list of three to four months for the car. (A generous hybrid tax credit may be a factor.) A base HS is a decent value at $35,525 with a nice array of standard features. But with a full load of options, the price climbs to nearly $50,000.
The HS that I drove (with a sticker of $43,150, before a recent price increase) started as a Premium trim model. For $38,295, that includes an upmarket wheel-and-tire package, woodsy trim and power memory seats with heated surfaces. The navigation package with Remote Touch added $2,125; Mark Levinson premium audio, $1,580; parking proximity sensors, $500; backup camera, $350; and wide-angle front camera, $700.
A $3,900 technology package includes radar-guided cruise control; collision detection, which warns of an impending crash; and the intriguingly named Keep Lane Assist feature, which sounds a warning if the car starts to drift — and can even intervene to steer the car back into its lane.
For another $1,805, you can get adaptive front lighting, which not only dims or activates the high beams, but it also anticipates your travel direction based on the route guidance, and swivels the lights that way.
In body size, the HS slots into the Lexus line between the compact IS and midsize ES models. The Toyota Prius is about nine inches shorter and a couple of inches wider. Yet the Prius has slightly more cabin space; though the Prius is a hatchback, the HS has a trunk.
The HS invites comparisons with the Ford Fusion Hybrid for reasons that begin with a similar-looking grille featuring bold horizontal bars. But the Ford is 6 inches longer and 10 inches wider, a difference that makes the HS cabin feel more cozy. In the driver’s seat, I liked the cockpit feel, but my passengers, front and rear, felt cramped.
The Fusion Hybrid also offers more horsepower, faster acceleration and better fuel economy: 41 m.p.g. on the highway and 36 in the city for the Ford, compared with 34 and 35 for the Lexus.
With a starting price of $28,350, the Fusion Hybrid seems like more car for less money.
Lexus would prefer that you compare the HS with a German diesel, the BMW 335d. It is rated at 27 m.p.g. on the E.P.A.’s combined cycle, compared with 35 for the HS.
Lexus boasts that the HS has “the best combined E.P.A.-estimated fuel economy ratings of any luxury or diesel luxury vehicle in the U.S.” and adds, “The HS 250h emits 70 percent fewer smog-forming emissions than the average new car and is eight times cleaner than any clean diesel.”
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