Prius Navigation System- It sucks.

[Arizona Charlie]

My navigation system cannot find its way to bring me to my own home. To test it I programmed it for my home address. Now this may seem like an excercise in futility since I know where I live and how to get there. Then I ran a test. Could it bring me to my home?

The Nav screen led me to King street just South of my home and directs me go East [so far so good]. When I get one block away from my home it directs me to turn right onto Clay Street, [totally wrong] .

My home is one block further down King street and in order to get to my home I must drive one block further East and then make a left turn onto Elm street.

For grins I followed the directions given to me by the lady in the box. It eventually ran me around in circles. It could not bring me to my destination.

I registered a complaint with Toyota, both the dealer and the Toyota USA, when I noticed this problem in May 2004. At that time I was given a complaint number by Toyota USA and told that a new Nav. CD would be ready in November. Well, it is now November and the local dealer is unaware of any update to the inefficient, inaccurate and confused Nav. system which came installed in the car.

Those of us who purchased Package 9 paid lots of extra money for an accurate Nav. system. The dealer has admitted that the Nav. system is flawed. I will contact Toyota again this week and see what they plan to do to make things right.

The inaccuracies built into the system are intolerable and there is no way I will pay one penny to Toyota to fix a problem endemic to their Nav. system.

I know that an accurate Nav system is very important to some Pri drivers. Physicians on a house call, delivery persons, etc. and they need accuracy.

I will keep everyone posted about the resolution of this problem.

Perhaps the threat of a class action lawsuit will move them to fix this problem pronto.

Arizona Charlie

[DaveG]

Give me a damn break...

Class action lawsuit?

I don't recall Toyota ever giving ANY promise of accuracy or reliability on the nav system, so you don't have a leg to stand on.

Toyota gets the nav data from a 3rd party company, and infact, the entire nav system was built and designed by another company. Go bother them.

(sick and tired of people running crying to lawyers, which is ALREADY slowing the advancement of technology until we're years behind the rest of the world. Toyota has already admitted that the reason they don't offer auto-park and other options available in the rest of the world is fear of lawsuits)

Dave.

[Batavier]

Indeed, I can understand someone getting a bit frustrated when the nav system doesn't work as one would expect, but hey nothing is perfect. At least you got close to your home.

I agree with Dave on this:

(sick and tired of people running crying to lawyers, which is ALREADY slowing the advancement of technology until we're years behind the rest of the world. Toyota has already admitted that the reason they don't offer auto-park and other options available in the rest of the world is fear of lawsuits)

Only I don't think it's just the US that's getting behind, we're all (as in the whole world) suffering from this. Not only do people in the US start law suits, this plague is spreading to other parts of the world as well. :x

[aarons12]

other parts of the world try to emulate all the wonderful things we love about our country... i guess the bad goes along with the good.

pretty soon half our GNP will be lawyers fees

[altaskier]

Just to make sure, you have the nav system region set to correspond to where you live, right? My car arrived with the region set to be a different part of the country, and that seemed to affect the detail and accuracy of searching for addresses.

[Batavier]

True, aarons...

Oh, and topic starter, check out this topic:
http://priuschat.com/forums/1-vt4237.html?...er=asc&&start=0

[HTMLSpinnr]

I'm afraid I have to agree with the OP more or less - except I wouldn't go for a lawsuit either (also agree it's a huge plague)

My complaint though is the methodology used to determine address location by simply defining a range, beginning and endpoint. Unfortunately in reality this makes the midpoints VERY inaccurate in some locations (sometimes a few blocks off on long streets).

My other challenge is the outdated nature of the V 3.1 disc in my car - here in AZ, it doesn't even know about recently completed freeways or offramps which make directions a bit more lengthy than necessary.

I too contacted Toyota a while back and they also commented on an updated version (fix) being available "soon". However I have yet to see this available, and I'm skeptical on whether or not it will be free or at a reduced charge.

[flyingprius]

Um yeah....
I bought the navigation system knowing that it's not perfect. I use it for guiding me to the general vicinity of unfamiliar locations, finding certain businesses etc...

Those of us who purchased Package 9 paid lots of extra money for an accurate Nav. system.

Actually, we paid a lot of extra money for a navigation system, not an accurate one; I knew that when I bought it. Everytime you use the navigation system (everytime you start the car), you agree that you won't stare at the screen and YOU ALSO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE SYSTEM HAS INACCURACIES You agree that it's not 100% accurate! THAT MEANS YOU CAN'T SUE ANYONE
You automatically forfiet your right to sue anyone whenever you use the system. If you are mad, feel free to buy an upgrade CD. Suing Toyota (who doesn't even make the navigation system) won't do anything.

My experience is that although Honda/Acura's system is slightly better, Toyota uses by far one of the best navigation systems of any car in the U.S. It's better than BMW, VW/Audi , Mercedes-Benz, and Infinity/Nissan's system. I know the frustration of using the iDrive in my father's 7series BMW, the system is so difficult to use, he doesn't even use it; it doesn't label very many streets and it isn't touch-screen, but rather this spin wheel on the armrest. I worked at a VW dealership, the system in the Touareg and the Phaeton is devastatingly stupid and annoying to use. The MultiMedia Interface in the Audi A8 is no walk in the park either, you get my point.

I would consider myself lucky to have this system, it was absolutely worth it when I travelled on a 4,500 mile roadtrip across the country, especially in rush hour traffic in Washington D.C. and Chicago; it knew all of the one way streets and freeway entrances...
I love my Prius, and I won't be happier with any other car...

[DaveinOlyWA]

now you all know why i didnt get the nav package and money had nothing to do with my decision.

for one thing i was rather perturbed that Toyota bundled several desirable items around something that isnt.

so you see sir, you are not paying all that much for the nav. it DOES come with quite a bit of other things too.

my sister got a hand held setup for $299 that works pretty good (no errors noticed yet anyway but its still new...im sure there are some somewheres)

also if you have a laptop with Wifi, MS is coming out with software that will do the trick for about $60 or so. havent seen it yet and i trust MS only about half as far as i can spit. and obviously a laptop will not be as easy to operate while driving although voice control is available.

[Charles Suitt]

MY..MY.. So soon we forget. We forget the days when all we had was a *free* (those days are long gone!) folded road map (Were you ever successful in re-folding those?) as our only navigation aid. Now we complain when the NAV system is a few hundred feet off.

I find the NAV system mostly accurate and helpful. In addition it is in some ways an "Entertainment Center" when using the voice commands. We laugh out loud at some of the responses which seem radically unrelated to our verbal request. (We call our NAV system "Ernestine" after Lily Tomlin's character on "Laugh In"). At least I'm getting something for my tax dollars used to establish the GPS system.

*I love this remarkable machine!*

-Charles Suitt- Dallas TEXAS