Hate Your Navigation System? J.D. Power Says You're Not Alone

The NAV in my Roadster is IMHO lousy. I have a Garmin Nuvi, which I love. But the Alpine stereo/NAV/"info package" is really crap. The stereo sound is good, but if I'm watching the map or other NAV info, and I want to change a song or play list, it exits the entire NAV program, and then has to re-boot the NAV program when I go back to it. The Garmin tells me the street I'm approaching and shows all street names. The Alpine tells me the street I'm on, and only shows street names under exactly the right conditions of perspective level and position, with street names often wholly or partly off the screen. And canceling a route requires going about three levels deep in an arcane, hard-to-find menu.

The Alpine unit is the worst thing about the car. It wouldn't even recognize my iTouch and I had to buy a Nano just for the car, though in the end that turned out to be a good thing because now the Nano lives in the car and I don't have to remember my iTouch every time I leave the house.

Unfortunately, the geometry of the cabin makes it impractical to set the Nuvi on the dashboard, the way I do in the Prius.

 

It's totally unacceptable that a car manufacturer can't provide a $1,000+ GPS unit that works as well as a $99 Garmin.

If we look at the 2012 Prius offerings, it's either DVD or Hard Disk-based navigation units. Hasn't anyone at Toyota even heard of Flash memory, and it's ability to store gigabytes of data for less than 1/10 the cost of hard disk and DVD storage?

 

Not to mention its resistance to vibrations over the others.

 

One of the main reasons I bought the Prius II trim level was to allow me to install my own electronics. The Kenwood unit I bought has it all -- A Garmin GPS which keeps running while I use other features, AM/FM/CD/DVD, backup camera, Bluetooth, USB, and options for iPod, XM and Sirius. The USB feature is really good -- you just load an 8 or 16 GB USB stick with all your music, and you're all set. It displays song titles and album artwork. And of course there are pre-amp outputs if I want it louder. Toyota's offerings just don't come close to this product.

 

And here it is 2013, and their still deaf to the dis-satisfaction of the costumer. We need a louder voice. Perhaps the media, car magazines, perhaps some consumer advocate can bump bump bump, up the volume.

 

The Toyota system is better than the Ford My Touch. What a piece of crap that is. Thank goodness I had my TomTom with me when I went to Florida. Stupid factory nav had me going on a frickin ferry(finally found where to disable that feature), and then when we got to the other side. it said, and I am not joking, "caution, road is unknown, drive at your own risk". I turned the damned thing off and let the TomTom guide me the rest of the way.

$795 option that gets you lost, vs a $120 4" box that saves your nice person, which would YOU choose?

 

The system available for the Chevy Spark might be the future for factory nav systems. It just links with a smart phone. You have to use their, or a partner's, ap, but that is only $50 including the maps. I think it is available on the base trim.

 

Ford Sync will use your cell phone for turn by turn directions. You can send it from google maps and it will run through SYNC.

 

A cell phone alone means relying on the cell network though. The Onstar hardware includes a GPS antenna so the Spark's system will work outside cell coverage. It can also be more precise in positioning.

It might need the MyLink radio upgrade though. A quick scan of the of the site didn't yeild the info.

 

Onstar, $28.90 a month, $299 a year

Sync, Free

The Ford Sync has GPS built in too, and also has 911 crash alert. Yes it does use your paired phone, but only one plan to consider, no additional expenses to use it. There is an iPhone app that links the phone with Sync, so you can put all your information in before you even get in the car, send it to the car and away you go. You can even do it from your PC.

 

I don't think it needs an Onstar subscription to make use of the hardware. Besides, Onstar offers turn by turn directions on its own. Why make a marketing misstep by forcing one for the other to work?

I just got a Sonic. If the GPS driven dash compass stops working at the end of the Onstar trial, I'll report it here.