GSFRX350

Hahahaha......that's like saying your car is not as quiet as it could be. Be real, the system works, just not as good as you'd like.

Navigational mapping is extremely complex, the amount of data that's required for all the road network around the country is massive. I don't know who Lexus are using these days in the US, it was TomTom but maybe Here Maps now. EVERY road is split up into segments, 30, 50, 65 ft etc, that includes two separate series of segments for each carriageway. Within each of those segments attributes are included like property numbers, median breaks, turn restrictions, etc which can all change with development, with changes to the road attributes and this all needs to be captured and undated in systems by actual vehicles on the road. It takes time to capture, process, validate, and write the software, further time to manufacture the actual disk or drive with the software on it than the car manufactures have to be able to have that software in time to include in their cars as they go down the production line. TomTom software was taking two years from capture to in a new car. Hopefully that has improved in the last few years but I wouldn't expect it to be dramatically different. The mapping companies are there to make money, to develop the software costs big money, sure they could put more into their production at a cost BUT would that reflect in better sales for them, would they benefit with higher incomes, if not why bother.

artem123

Wow! Hard to believe! ONLY Lexus faces such a complexity.

GSFRX350

They don't, the point is many other cars are the same IF they use the same software. Obviously Toyota/Lexus use the same company and so do many others, while a whole lot of other manufacturers use the other company.

Also there are settings within the device itself, people saying it sends you a particular way may have the settings doing that.

MrRuffles

Do we know

1. Where Toyota licenses their software and maps from
2. If other car manufacturers license their Nav data from the same place
3. If there are similar complaints about these other car company's Navs (i.e., just because they license the same data doesn’t mean they’re implementing it the same way as Toyota/Lexus)

As to the settings, I can’t speak for others, but ours have never been changed from the default. I would expect that the default settings would choose the most direct route (though this could easily be a mistaken assumption considering were talking about Lexy Nav).

Cocal

In my case (2017) and I suspect perhaps all, the navigation defaults to Highways/Throughways with no distinction if toll. One can always alter this in settings and on the screen. There have been cases, not on highways, when I wondered why it chose one route over another, but it must have its reasons after all this is a tool and it's not infallible.

MrRuffles

Actually, if your car was unreasonably noisy, you would have a valid reason to bring it to the attention of your dealer/manufacturer and ask for corrective action.

Your assumptions as to the software development process are a bit skewed.
First of all, as has been pointed out earlier, in the 2020 RX, the route processing is done in the cloud and the “optimized” route is sent to the Nav system. That greatly reduces any issue of there being outdated software/maps in the car itself - it’s not as if there’s a disc/USB drive with the mapping data as there was in previous models.
Second, as has been pointed out earlier, inexpensive standalone GPS units which have minimal processing requirements have been able to do routing for years that is more effective and efficient than Lexus. If companies weren’t still making money off these units, I doubt they would continue to sell them. For the price of the Lexus Nav, I could buy at least ten of these units. Even accounting for the Lexus tax, paying that much more and getting that much less is ridiculous.

To chalk it up to “why bother” is a slap in the face to Lexus customers - it just underlies that the supposed Lexus customer experience focus is BS.

gadgetman1

My 2016 runs off of a mini SD card under the radio & over top of the console. It was way outdated when the car rolled off the showroom floor. I may sound pretty negative, but I’m tired of paying big bucks for what amounts to garbage. Paying for updates should be criminal. We didn’t get Nav on the Camaro, because it already has a superior Android/Apple interface to use Google Maps. Being forced to buy Nav because it’s integrated into the upper tier audio systems is also wrong. My next vehicle will be much simpler - I don’t want Nav, radar cruise, lane keep assist or a partridge in a pear tree. My premium system has gone belly up twice since new. I’m not impressed whatsoever by Lexus so-called tech.

toyotaman7

I have 2 Vehicles with OEM Navigation and only used the embedded navi once (and regretted it). In the age of Google maps with CarPlay or Android Auto I do not see any need for onboard Navigation in vehicles. Google maps is updated regularly. This is software and Data. Vehicles Navigation software and interface will always be at least 3-8 years behind equivalent smart phone driven Navigation. Even if you update the map data once per year;

Car companies should save the money and provide high resolution wireless projection screens and leave the apps to smart phones.

IMO.

dibl

??? Are you asking whether the nav is clairvoyant?

Nail34

Lol, can you ask directions with just the name of a restaurant without the address.
It's not clairvoyant, just my wife telling me what to do, nothing new there.

dibl

OK, reviewing pp.215-238 of the fascinating 366 page Navigation manual for my 2018 suggests that, if you set up a restaurant as a "Point of Interest" in advance, with its address, then later when you want to go there, you can use the voice command system to call up POIs, and then state the POI that you want to go to. That's AFTER you have trained the voice command system to recognize your speech patterns.

Makes me just as tired as watching the lady ahead of me at Starbucks waving her phone in front of the code reader, with the sun glaring down and preventing it from working.