Video: 2008 Lexus LS 600h

What I found driving hybrids, including this one, is the idea of running on the battery and motor power alone is not nearly as frequent as you might be led to believe. If you were to go as slow as you need to go to keep the engine from turning on, the people behind you in traffic would kill you. What I have found is that when you're going in normal driving, the engine turns off more than you think it would when you're coasting and breaking. So there is some savings there. Now this car has an EV mode, which is a button you push. That's supposed to allow it to drive in electric only mode a little bit longer. The EV mode is supposed to raise the threshold where the engine turns on. I'm not finding that it does that very well. Mainly what it does, That's of value, is it gives you a bit of a warning on the instrument panel here. When the gas engine is about to turn on. When that happens, you can back off on the accelerator and keep it running electric only. Another circumstance that would turn off the EV mode is if the battery pack actually gets too low, it'll warn you, the traction battery is low, and then start the engine. We're actually passing a lawnmower right now. And it just helps illustrate how quiet this car is to begin with. The LS is one of the quietest cars you can buy. The simplest gauge is the needle that reads, charge, the blue range. Eco, which is economy or ecology, that's the green range. And then the white, power range. If you're going at a modest clip in the green range, which is where you'd like to be, you're saving fuel. While we're talking about technology, I really like what they've done with the navigation system. If you zoom in, you can actually get street-level. It shows you the shapes of buildings, which is kind of nice. And also there's real-time traffic information on this. If you look at good old Lake Shore Drive here in Chicago, the colors tell you how fast the traffic is moving. Another feature that comes with the hybrid system is a rocker switch that is labeled power, hybrid, and snow. Hybrid is where you usually want to be. The snow mode makes sure that you're not sending too much power to the wheels. Then there's the power mode, which has made for the absolute fastest acceleration. That's one fast hybrid. <v Announcer>For additional information on this car, or any other, go to Cars.com and our blog, Kicking Tires.