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Using North American nav system in Europe

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Audio and Electronics' started by Exophrenologist, May 16, 2019.

  1. Exophrenologist

    Exophrenologist Junior Member

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    2010 Prius
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    I apologise in advance for posting a topic of
    Interest to maybe 2 other people on earth, but I’m out of ideas on this.

    I have a US spec 2010 Prius 5 / V (the top trim level hatchback) with the JBL head unit and nav.

    We moved to Europe recently and brought the car with us. Naturally, the stored nav map is useless here and I know it’s an outdated unit and Waze on a smartphone is better (it is!).

    Nevertheless in the US I liked having the car nav on during long drives zoomed all the way out so I could see what general part of the trip I’m on.

    Here in Europe it would be even nicer because it’s often not clear what country you’re in if you miss the signs, which are smaller than county or state signs in most of the US.

    Does anybody know if it’s possible to load a Euro map into this car’s JBL system?
     
  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    have you asked a dealer?
     
  3. Karolis

    Karolis Junior Member

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    Short answer - yes, it's technically possible.
    But I doubt any EU dealer would touch that US spec JBL unit with a stick.
    I have the same problem (US spec car in EU), so I've done some poking around and found that there are people who'd load EU maps into a US JBL Navi unit.
    But the deal breaker for me was the price: 30 euro for a "licence fee" (whatever that is, considering that it's not coming from the dealer) and... 300 euro for the map itself. Ouch.
     
    bisco likes this.
  4. StarCaller

    StarCaller Senior Member

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    what about this one:

    [​IMG]
     
  5. Exophrenologist

    Exophrenologist Junior Member

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    2010 Prius
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    Thanks everybody.

    To answer the first question, yes of course I asked a dealer and as Karolis said they have less than zero interest in even talking about this.

    In fact, in terms of maintenance overall it’s almost impossible to find a dealer who wants to do anything with this car. It had 145k miles and I want to change the transmission fluid and so far, out of 5 shops, nobody will do it (or the coolant). I don’t know if it’s because it’s US spec or what.

    StarCaller, I’d be up for trying that map but the listing doesn’t seem to identify model years or specific Nav unit models, unless I’m missing it.

    Karolis I’m interested in hearing if you’ve had trouble finding shops who want to deal with US spec cars?
     
    #5 Exophrenologist, May 21, 2019
    Last edited: May 21, 2019
  6. Karolis

    Karolis Junior Member

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    Five
    Let's put things straight - you won't get the EU map through dealer.
    But yours is a G05 generation US spec unit, so map updates are done through DVD (contrary to EU spec ones, where a HDD is used), so there's quite an easy (and cheap) way to get EU maps (see the attached pic).

    No, I've never had any problem getting the maintenance done, even at the dealer (on the other hand, I do most of it myself).
    Mechanically US and EU cars are the same, so any competent mechanic or independent shop could easily do transmission fluid drain and refill or change the coolant.

    [​IMG]