51 Miles From The Point It Started Illumination
The Lexus has an interesting low fuel light, it first starts very faint, and comes and goes before even illuminating enough to see during the daytime. but this is where I reset the trip odometer... I actually did this in my friends 1998 ES300, cause I was always dying to know what happens...
Anyways the light started trickling on and off as I got home from her house, so I then posed the question, could she drive to her work in the next county and back home. So I loaded up a gas can, and drove 20 miles each way, and the gauge proceeded down below E after those 40 miles, but no indications of starvation yet.
This was in general open road, but I decided not to use cruise control, regular foot control as she does and to yield slightly worse maybe more realistic conditions for some, now stop and go will bring this down from my experiment, but I decided to keep driving around the general neighbor hood, more stop and go then the first 40 miles and I think around 48 miles is when I got the first inkling that I got a air bubble in the fuel line, and I proceeded to drive gingerly for easily another 2 miles with a few more hesitation points, but nothing that would have put anyone in danger.
I then proceeded to a park, and drove until the hesitation was becoming more prevalent that you won't maybe want to try to dart through an intersection. but what was funny was I ended up parking in a parking spot at the part, and just kinda reed it a little and wasn't having a problem, the car was I think leaning backwards, so I ended up turning the car around to make the gas shift in the tank the other way, and the car stalled about 20 seconds after doing this, and interestingly enough would not restart until I added gas. This was my 51 miles odometer reading.
now under a quick 2nd test, on level road, the once the car stalled on its own after having no power, I was able to restart it after 3 seconds, and it did run poorly for 10 more seconds and then was completely out and would not restart.
So yes the car gives you ample warning and probably enough to get to a gas station even possibly a mile down the road, it may hesitate early on and get worse, but once it started getting to the point where like your flooring it and its just kinda coughing and such, you are not gonna go much further... but the hesitation start far and few between and this is a good thing.
Oh and to describe how low the needle goes, its at least 2 needle widths of black space below the E line and where the needle sits. I honestly owe my friend a tank of gas for allowing me to experiment, but Ill get that to her in the near future as a thank you.
I have a friend who has a Buick La Sabre and no warning, and no restarting, it just up and dies no notice, and will leave you coasting to get off the road.