The main argument for hybrid drive is the cut in emissions. As already mentioned, Lexus is a luxury brand focusing rather on bigger cars for demanding customers. It is possible to cut the emissions in different ways, of course. Their production is proportional to the fuel consumption, so one of the ways is to make the engine smaller and thus cut its performance and of course also the size of the car, because smaller engine simply cannot handle a big car. But those interesed in a Lexus simply would not like it.

But a luxury road or light terrain car is not a racing car, which would need the performance all the time. During ordinary operation the high performance is needed only sometimes, at overtaking, or when driving uphills, for example. The rest of the time it lies unused and thus many brands use at their bigger engines the technology of switching off some of the valves, for example, when the unnecessary part is simply switched off. The Lexus hybrid drive solves this problem by adding an electrical unit to a quite high performance combustion engine for such a class of cars, which adds performance, when it is really needed, or drives the car at situations, when the combustion engine is not efficient, so the result is in much lower emissions and consumption, than at a car driven only by a combustion engine.