We just took delivery of our 400h on Saturday. Its fully loaded except the Mark Levinson audio system.

First impressions: As I never had a luxury car before, I am obviously feeling very spoilt now. In fact every tiny part in this car is 5 times better than my old car - which I am not going to name

So no doubt that I really like the car in terms of luxury and ameneties. Its very spacious for both front and rear passengers. In fact, if you slide back the rear seats and recline them a bit it seems as roomy, if not more, as the front. The recline feature is really great when you want to relax and watch a movie in the RES. I was slightly dissapointed with the RES LCD screen though. Even though its widescreen, the resolution is low like how they have it in airplanes. Not sure if aftermarket screens will be better. The reason I went with this system is that it is tightly integrated with the front navigation system. You can get map info in the rear screen. You can watch dvd movies in front (when parked) while its playing in the rear. You can output the dvd audio from wireless headphones (comes with 2 of them) or the car speakers. You can listen to radio, cd, tape from the rear system (with wireless headphones) while the car speakers could be playing something else. You can enter destination address or basically control the whole navigation system from the remote of the RES. So all in all, the benefits outweight the small issues with RES, namely more costly, only single center screen, lower resolution than what I expected (but maybe thats because I have a 52" DLP Tv at home with HiDef) and slight rear visibility reduction (but only about 5-10%) due to the drop down lcd screen, when down.

Other nice features I personally liked: The front seats can drop down to convert the front+back seats into a bed (though not completely flat). Rear video view while reversing. Adaptive front headlights. Bluetooth phone connectivity which you can control from the steering. Voice commands. Cargo space - yes, I liked the amount of space available as I was expecting something similar to X5 which I have driven a bit. Its almost twice as large. And all the other nice touches it has including quality of materials used.

Ok, now for performance and driving impressions:
As suspected, very good acceleration...actually more than I expected even after reading positive reviews. Handling is average, though its still better than some high-end SUVs I have driven. As its not sitting on truck chasis, the ride quality is very close to a luxury sedan though not as good; but definitely better than say a GX 470.

Now about the Hybrid aspect: A lot of small quirks of driving a hybrid which I have to get used to. If the battery is not close to fully discharged, everytime you take your foot off the accelerater, the gas engine will turn off and regenrative charging will kick in. Same goes for when you apply the brakes. So you are saving on gas close to 100% of the time when you are not accelerating and not maintaining constant speed. That happens a lot in my suburban driving. But the quirk here is that regenerative braking makes a faint sound which my wife doesnt like. You only hear that when the A/C and Stereo is off. I love it though as I have assosciated this faint sound with the fact that the battery is getting charged.

Also there is no point in accelerating very slowly from a traffic stop to save gas WHEN there are cars behind you. No matter what, in a second or two the gas engine will kick in so why frustrate the drivers behind you. If you really want to save gas, I think you should drive slowly when nobody is behind you in inner streets with low speed limits. I haven't changed my driving style and I am already getting 25.x MPG in the first 100 miles I drove this weekend.

When accelerating hard or when the gas engine kicks in, you feel a very small - shall i say a jerk - not worse than say when a "normal" car downshifts a gear. As this has a CVT, the up/downshifting is never felt. Actually its not even a jerk, its just that you go from no engine vibration to a small vibration which you feel in most conventional vehicles. I am still amazed how everyhing works seamlessly even when the gas engine turns on and off every now and then. There is a "B" mode in the stick selector which basically means that regenerative braking will be replaced with engine assisted braking or something similar. This is when you care less about saving gas and more about solid braking...haven't checked this one out as the regular braking seems good enough to me.

All in all, the best feeling about driving this is the stealth coasting in parking lots I have already raised a few eyebrows while driving this luxury beast with only the "soothing" sound of asphalt crunching under the tires.

On the whole, I am giving it a 4.5 out of 5. The only reason it doesn't get 5 out of 5 is because its a tad bit expensive. I will recommend this to anyone who has slightly more money to plunk in, who is open to new technology or hates the idea of conventional SUVs burdening the planet more than a car, but has the need for more space than a car.