Friday, August 9, 2013

Lexus navigation disappoints , NaviExpert shines

Recently I started to drive the Lexus CT 200h. This fuel-efficient hybrid car is really a pleasure to drive.

Before my travel to Poland -  a week ago - I asked a  Lexus dealer in Eindhoven  to install the newest June 2013 update of the navigation maps,  despite my experience with car navigations described in my previous post

To my disappointment I could not find a lot of places in Poland but it was not due to the bad maps. Apparently the Lexus navigation expects you to use the special Polish characters  which was not the case in my previous navigation which I used in my BMW. It was explained to me by a very helpful and kind  Lexus dealer in Krakow

However the way the selection of special characters works is far from being user friendly. First you need to enter a proper sign and then a character on the second screen. I find this very inconvenient especially while you are driving; I believe that the way BMW navigation handles special characters find is much better and safer.


On the way back from Warsaw to Berlin I was completely lost when my navigation tried to “take me away” from the A2 motorway, as the navigation was not aware of the almost 100km A2 motorway between Warsaw and Lodz (Strykow) which has been opened in June 2012!
After finally recognising the A2 motorway the POI of the Lexus navigation could identify only ONE petrol station and NO parking places anywhere on the  400km  A2 motorway from Lodz to the German border!


For that experience I “only” paid 180 Euro.

A good example of a very fast maps update is a Polish smartphone navigation NaviExpert which just two days after the opening of a new part of Expressway S2  connecting Warsaw with A2,  was able to navigate me through this road to the A2. Fortunately I had enough smartphone navigation apps allowing me to drive the fastest way back to Holland. 

This bad experience with the Lexus navigation only strengthened my believe, I described in my previous post,  that the future of the car navigation systems belongs to smartphone based navigation apps.
The recent Waze acquisition by Google shows the importance of engaging driving communities in updating, real time, the status of the road conditions and providing the maps updates.