Oh, they're not building it anymore?
You might not have noticed. Indeed, it seems pretty much everyone but the folks on the assembly line missed the fact that the Lexus HS250h went out of production back in January.
And no surprise. Even at its launch in mid-2009 normally upbeat U.S. officials for the Toyota luxury brand were already making apologies for what was billed as the first dedicated Lexus hybrid. It was cramped and slow, with a strangely laid-out interior that hardly supported the marketing claim that it was a high-mileage luxury car.
Consumers all but ignored the Lexus HS250h, sales plunging to a marginal 2,864 last year, down a whopping 73% from 2010’s already anemic numbers.
Lexus allowed the HS to go gently into the automotive equivalent of that good, dark night and its departure might not have been noticed had it not been for a question posed by Inside Line.
The Toyota luxury division responded that, “Production of the HS 250h ceased in January, 2012. Lexus continues to monitor sales for each product and we make adjustments to make sure that we meet market demand, and the discontinuation of HS was part of that adjustment. The ES 300h is not replacing HS in our lineup. It’s merely part of the hybridization of many of our existing vehicles in the Toyota and Lexus lineups.”
While the HS may be gone – but few a few cars still sitting on dealer lots waiting for buyers – Lexus is anything but backing off on its long-running commitment to hybrids. It was the first luxury maker to offer one, folks might recall.
In line with comments made by Akio Toyoda during the launch of the 2012 Lexus GS – including the GS 450h – last summer, Lexus soon expects to offer gas-electric powertrain options for most, and possibly all – models in its line-up. And it will keep its other dedicated hybrid, the Prius-derived CT200h, in production.
The newest hybrid will be the updated version of the ES, which shifts to a beefed-up 2.5-liter engine. Notably, while it’s expected to deliver better mileage than the soon-to-be-forgotten HS it will also come in with better performance.
That appears to be part of a strategic shift for Lexus. When it introduced the original GS hybrid, nearly a decade ago, the brand said it was looking for ways to use hybrid power to enhance performance as much as mileage. But critics faulted that strategy and the result was the HS250h, a high-mileage offering that reviewers felt had little else going for it. The new GS again turned the dial towards performance — but without excessively sacrificing fuel efficiency. The 2013 ES300h is expected to follow the same approach.