My wife and I are on a road trip in our 2024 F Sport. We have taken this car on several trips since we bought it in December 2023 and I absolutely love how the Nav system helps us avoid traffic. Until yesterday…..

We were driving in the N GA mountains on our way to Asheville NC and it gave me the option on the screen to take a faster route. I always tap those because they usually avoid traffic issues. The next thing I know we are driving down a very rutted gravel road. That wouldn’t bother me in a four wheel drive but this car doesn’t like rutted gravel roads.

I just got off a chat with Lexus and was told there is no way to avoid non-paved roads using their cloud based Nav system. My GM vehicles have this feature! This will be a subscription service in three years that I was going to use because it does a great job of avoiding traffic. We’ve also turned on Waze on my wife’s iPhone to see if there is a difference on other trips and find the Lexus system to be much quicker to reroute us. I’m reconsidering paying for a service that doesn’t avoid unpaved roads in a luxury car.

That’s very disappointing! Has anyone here experienced this and how do you avoid it?

 

I prefer my Garmin but the giant screen in the dash doesn't afford a place to set it. Also linking a phone to the car is necessary to use the on board programming. They don't like to tell you this until you've been to finance and signed the papers.

 

So not to be mean about it....but I have actually found my Google Maps and WAZE to be much more updated and efficient. I do think for many, the optional Nav systems in new cars may fall by the wayside. JMHO.

 

I could be wrong, but my impression is that the system in the car is much updated for 2023, but the underlying maps are the same. They've always been grossly inferior to Germin's, or for that matter the Alpine ones in my 2006 Honda.

I personally am old-school enough myself to prefer the onboard nav despite its shortcomings, but Jeaco is right that Google/Waze/Apple Maps is widely acknowledged to be far superior in both route accuracy and real-time guidance. If that's your priority, you're really best served to use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto to access those services. It sucks, but there you have it.

 

I’ve read this many times but what happens with nav systems like Waze, Google, etc….when you lose your cell signal? I was in the N GA mountains with very poor cell service.

 

Both Google maps and Apple Maps now have a feature for downloading map areas so they will work in areas with poor or no internet connectivity to their respective map data servers.

Waze is little bit different in that internet connectivity is required for the real time traffic data aspects of the app; however, if you set up a routing to a destination while you still have a good internet connection you have routing mapping and directions but no real time traffic conditions reporting.

For Lexus's build in navigation system - for 2019 through 2022 model years' Dynamic Navigation there's an on-board permanent map database the system can fall back to using in case you drive outside of the temporary store of cloud based dynamic latest local area map data (if any) and don't have a cellular network connection for the new area's latest loud based map data (if any). For 2023 and later Cloud Navigation systems, there's no permanent on board map database so local area and route map data are temporary and requires a cellular network connection whenever that temporary store map database needs refreshed from the cloud but the navigation system will function as best it can from the temporary map database when there's no cellular network connection. (See Lexus Support's LEXUS INTERFACE DRIVE CONNECT CLOUD NAVIGATION FAQs for additional, if still still somewhat vague, details on Cloud Navigation's operation with and without network connectivity.)