2021 Annual Chinese Auto Product Quality Performance Research (AQR) Lexus ES: Customers report immense satisfaction of ride comfort but complain about engine oil emulsification

At present, Mainland China and Hong Kong are the world’s second largest regional markets for Lexus, with sales peaking a historical high of 227,000 units in 2021. According to data from the compulsory insurance for vehicle traffic accident liability, Lexus ES sales reached 105,800 units this year, becoming one of the best-selling models. This research takes Lexus ES as the sample, from the perspectives of product quality, pre-sale attention and owner satisfaction, to explore its quality status.

AQR is an annual research project of Car Research. Since it was first launched in 2019, AQR has always adhered to the issue-oriented rule, that is, putting consumer concerns first and presenting respondents' views on all quality issues of the car through revealing its negative performance. The negative performance = Issue Amount × Complaint intensity; the Score is negatively correlated to quality performance.

The overall quality performance of Lexus is better than that of its rival cars, but there exist complaints about the issue “Oil emulsification”

Lexus ES owns the leading product quality performance in the luxury full-size sedan segment involved in this research. There are some differences in the performance of static and dynamic dimensions, among which there is no feedback of quality issues about function configuration, A/C and ADAS, but some more prominent issues about engine.

Lexus ES performs the best in the number of quality issues and the complaints intensity customers hold to car issues, which brings it good negative performance. Among these subdivision dimensions, Lexus ES outperforms its competitors in 5 dimensions, and only one inferior to them--- the engine.

Among top complained issues of Lexus ES, the top five all involve the engine, and the proportions of the top four issues are all more than 20%. Compared with engine issues, the others in the top list are more dispersed.

The issues of oil increase and oil emulsification being analyzed in detail, it is shown in our study that the two issues were more likely to occur at the same time and were related to outdoor temperature and driving distance. In addition, the two issues appeared within 1-3 months successively after the new car’s use, leading to many complaints from car owners. Apart from that, customers of Lexus ES paid great attention and expectation to the product quality before buying cars, thus the probability of the issues and the time point when they occurred also discourage customers’ confidence in the quality of this car.

Customers express high level of satisfaction on the aspects they have paid attention to before buying cars

Customers who buy luxury full-size sedans care less about factors such as price and configuration, whereas they pay more attention to safety and quality or so. Rather than common attention of customers in this car market segment, Lexus ES owners pay more attention to service, brand and the car’s residual value.

In terms of products, Lexus ES customers prefer cars with better performance of enjoyment, such as air conditioning, vibration and noise, ride comfort, etc., attention level of which are higher than the average.

In the process of car use, Lexus ES customers are fairly satisfied with most functions, but many of them feel dissatisfied with the on-board screen configuration and the car’s power performance. It is worth mentioning that as many as 96% of the customers are satisfied with the front seat comfort and 92% feel satisfied with ride comfort when driving, which echoes the high pre-sale attention of this performance.

Conclusion

According to the study, oil increase and oil emulsification have become the core quality issues of Lexus ES, which show high probability and early occurrence, resulting in a large number of customer complaints. In fact, these two issues also occurred in other models of Toyota, which should be paid attention to by Toyota Group.

The attention and satisfaction level of Lexus ES customers correlate closely to each other.

Dimensions with low satisfaction, such as screen and power performance, get low attention likewise, and exert few negative impacts on the satisfaction index, which bring Lexus ES good scores of satisfaction index.