Lexus RX450h headlight adjustment?
Discussion
My friend invited me to join her for an evening of jazz, which entailed about an hour's drive each way to a farm in Dorchester, Oxfordshire. We went in her car, which is a 2016/7 RX450h. One thing that struck me is that she drove the whole way there and back with her high beams on. When I enquired why, she showed me her main beam headlights, which seemed to point at the road about 15 feet in front of the car, making it impossible to do any kind of reasonable speed in the dark. With her high beams on, the lighting pattern was only a little further up the road and it was still difficult to get anywhere near the speed limit as we couldn't see where we were going. It seemed so wrong that I was convinced that she must have adjusted her headlight beam downward using some sort of control on the dashboard. But if I'm not mistaken by the array of lights on the front of her barge, she had LED lights.
My 30-year-old BMW 730i has much better headlamps, and they are plain old halogens. My 16-year-old Audi A4 with halogens is better too. The beam throws decently far and it's easy to drive at night, although the spread pattern could be better. My 20-year old BMW with Xenon main beam but halogen high beams throws its beam (main and high) much further than the Lexus and the beam pattern is okay, and my 2014 Porsche with dynamic bi-xenon main and high beam plus halogen high beam assist lights up the world for what feels like miles, plus with high beam on, signs and trees high above the road are lit up light a football stadium. I imagined that modern LED headlights would best all of them by far, but judging by this experience I'm going to have to revise that assumption.
So what's going on? Are Lexus LED lights terrible? Is this car known for having terrible lights? Or is there a dashboard headlight aim control switch somewhere? I was so convinced that she must have set the headlight aim low for towing that we spent 5 minutes stopped on the side of the road looking for the control that we never found. It also occurred to me that perhaps some level sensor on her suspension is broken, but how likely is that on a 5-year-old Lexus?
My 30-year-old BMW 730i has much better headlamps, and they are plain old halogens. My 16-year-old Audi A4 with halogens is better too. The beam throws decently far and it's easy to drive at night, although the spread pattern could be better. My 20-year old BMW with Xenon main beam but halogen high beams throws its beam (main and high) much further than the Lexus and the beam pattern is okay, and my 2014 Porsche with dynamic bi-xenon main and high beam plus halogen high beam assist lights up the world for what feels like miles, plus with high beam on, signs and trees high above the road are lit up light a football stadium. I imagined that modern LED headlights would best all of them by far, but judging by this experience I'm going to have to revise that assumption.
So what's going on? Are Lexus LED lights terrible? Is this car known for having terrible lights? Or is there a dashboard headlight aim control switch somewhere? I was so convinced that she must have set the headlight aim low for towing that we spent 5 minutes stopped on the side of the road looking for the control that we never found. It also occurred to me that perhaps some level sensor on her suspension is broken, but how likely is that on a 5-year-old Lexus?
I have an RX450h and the LED headlights are fantastic and better than the xenons on an older Lexus I have. There must be something amiss with the automatic levelling sensor. It needs checking out by a dealer. The headlights are of course about £2k each, and decent quality, so I suspect they are not the fault but doing what they are being told to do.
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