Odd Sat Nav Fault Prius Gen Iii

[dgs2001]

Hi All

We have owned a gen 3 Prius since March 10.

we recently set the prius sat nav to go to a london destination (Marble Arch) from our home in sunny Cheltenham.

For anyone wondering the usual and shortest route's from Cheltenham to London are either A40 to Oxford then M40 to london, or A417 to Swindon then M4 to London, the Oxford route is approx 93.4 miles and the Swindon route is approx 111.8 miles. The AA route planner reports both these routes as taking 2hr 17mins and 2hr 47mins respectively.

Imagine my surprise when the Prius Sat Nav tried its best to route us via either Bristol or Birmingham. Neither of these cities are between Cheltenham and London !!! The Prius quick journey weighs in at an impressive 149 miles and 2hrs 47mins with quick 2 weighing in at 154 miles 2hr 47mins also. The short journey also follows a similar route and time.

Having tried this many times now I can confirm that these are always the suggested routes. On investigation I have discovered that with Allow Motorways ticked in the settings the default behaviour is to force the use of as much motorway as possible even if this means going many miles out of your way, and adding a considerable time to your journey.

Unticking Allow Motorways sets the sat nav off in the right direction on the correct A roads, however refuses to allow any motorway so the distance's and times are just as bad. !!

I have tried this every which way and cannot solve this conundrum, so have registered this as a "Fault" with my dealer.

Incidently I also have a 2006 Garmin Nuvi which has never had a map update, and hey presto it can navigate a better route than the 2010 prius !!

Anybody else using fuel because of the Prius Sat Nav ?

Ds

[Jan&tone]

SatNav directions are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools!!

SatNav's should ALWAYS be used with common sense - if you know the general route you should really only need the satnav for the last couple of miles - I, and no doubt everyone else on here, knows where London is, but may not know the way to Marble Arch. Ergo you use common sense to get you to London, ignoring the SatNav (she won't get annoyed unlike the mother in law) and when you get near to your destination you start paying attention!

I have however noticed that if you wait, the 3 routes actually do change if there are alternatives. I've not got lost yet!

Simples

[dgs2001]

Hi

SatNav directions are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools!!

Granted, Luckily I have and use the required common sense and also a clear idea of the direction of travel needed to get from Cheltenham to London!

However I now have no confidence in the abilities of my Sat Nav, which is clearly not working in my best interests or the interests of fuel economy and shorter driving distances.

When you say "wait and the three routes change", are you referring to when in motion or when setting a destination?

I have to admire your very British idea of ignoring the slightly wonky very overpriced Sat Nav in favour of common sense

But I have to question that very common sense in purchasing a duff Sat Nav and then quietly ignoring it without a thought of getting it put right. ;)

Simples indeed

Ds

[flow]

All sat navs i've had, be it tomtom or garmin, have always made silly mistakes in their route calculations. Sometimes, you can't beat local knowledge & a good AA road map. If you get completely lost then, satnav's really come into their own

Good luck with your dealer - i'm also in Cheltenham & have found their service to be pretty poor when dealing with faults/problems etc.

[Jan&tone]

When you say "wait and the three routes change", are you referring to when in motion or when setting a destination?

When setting a destination it flips around till you hit the route selection button.

I regularly travel from home to just outside Nottingham, the satnav has never in all 4 Toyota's I've had, sent me on the route i use! it assumes that I want to use the M1 and A46 - whereas I use the M11 and A1 ... after Cambridge the very nice lady gives up and gets it right! but it is useful as I said earlier for finding exact addresses, I have no idea where so-and-so address is in Nottingham, but my nice lady knows exactly and gets me there without fuss ...

It has also got me round traffic jams on occasion - successfully - which no doubt all other satnavs would do, but as a factory fitted unit I suspect it would be less likely to be nicked than a tomtom or sumsuch in the glove box

yes it probably cost me extra - but I can afford it so why not? when I can't afford a built in one, I'll go back to the AA atlas and local street maps....

[dgs2001]

When setting a destination it flips around till you hit the route selection button.

Thanks I had not realised this. I will try this tomorrow, It's far too cold and wet to rush out now

And yes you are correct that approx 5 minutes into a London bound journey the nice lady does indeed give up and acknowledge my route choice as being the way forward.

Good luck with your dealer - i'm also in Cheltenham & have found their service to be pretty poor when dealing with faults/problems etc.

flow,

I'm not sure when you last had dealings with them but they have a fairly new Service Manager, we met him following the fiasco of buying our Prius in march and being told by the dealer the Brake software had been updated before delivery, we were not pleased to get a letter from Toyota in June/July telling us to visit a dealer and get the Brake software updated.

Turned out the dealers HAD NOT done the update and had lied to us about it being done. An administrative error apparently

However I have to say the new Service Manager had the right attitude and bent over backwards to appologise, hand delivering a letter of confirmation after it was done.

It remains to be seen what the final answer to me logging the Sat Nav issue as a fault is.

Ds

[Jan&tone]

Dgs, t'will be interesting to see Mr T's response if/when you get one mate.....

[Sagitar]

I regularly travel from home to just outside Nottingham, the satnav has never in all 4 Toyota's I've had, sent me on the route i use!

You can "force" a particular route by putting in intermediate destination points, but I have yet to find a way of saving such a constructed route, so I have to go through the rigmarole of re-setting it every time I need it.

[Goulss]

Mine will get me from Lincoln to an address in Wolverhampton with no problems at all, when I put home in to come back it attempts to send me all the way around Birmingham and back on to the road I came down.

Mayhap it's a cunning plan to get the mileage up!

[Dave R.]

Once you know that the SatNav won't always find the best route, a good game is to see how much you can shave of the time/miles by ignoring the nice lady... once you've missed her turns a few times she gives up and selects YOUR route & you can see how what improvement (if any) you've made to your ETA.

One "Good Thing" is that the sat nav is not persistent like the old ones used to be - so she just quietly recalculates the route rather than insisting that you "Make a U Turn" :)

[Jan&tone]

Once you know that the SatNav won't always find the best route, a good game is to see how much you can shave of the time/miles by ignoring the nice lady... once you've missed her turns a few times she gives up and selects YOUR route & you can see how what improvement (if any) you've made to your ETA.

One "Good Thing" is that the sat nav is not persistent like the old ones used to be - so she just quietly recalculates the route rather than insisting that you "Make a U Turn" :)

She does suggest u turns for a little while, but NEVER gets annoyed when you ignore her, unlike the wife

[Chris Dance]

I our Prius Gen 2 if after selecting your destination you select route on some occasions you get alternative routes which you can select.

On my previous Toyota Avensis coming from Hereford to Buckinghamshire it routed me via Birmingham and the motorways. On that occasion being a newby I took the Sat Nav route. I have never done it since. I always get an AA route for long journeys now.

[dgs2001]

When setting a destination it flips around till you hit the route selection button.

Well I have tried this now but to no avail.

The three suggested routes between Cheltenham / London all involve at least an extra 50 miles (on a 93 mile journey thats a huge extra percentage) and leaving the sat nav alone all it does is flip around these three, at no point does it make any different suggestions.

No word from Mr T yet but I expect to have news this coming week !

Ds

[Doesn'tExist]

Odd, we have used the satnav a lot but never had such a gross mis-calculation. It could just be a map defect, or perhaps TMC broadcasting incidents on the other route, or settings in the routes section, or accidentally you've added a manual blocked road on it somewhere. It is not normal to do that, but not a generic fault either.

[Grumpy Cabbie]

SatNav directions are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools!!

SatNav's should ALWAYS be used with common sense -

lol you mean like the idiots who turn into rivers or onto railway lines "because it said take the next right!"

A SatNav has saved my bacon countless times, but it doesn't always get you there the best route. I agree, follow your own route using the satnav as a guidance and you can't go wrong.

[Jan&tone]

SatNav directions are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools!!

SatNav's should ALWAYS be used with common sense -

lol you mean like the idiots who turn into rivers or onto railway lines "because it said take the next right!"

A SatNav has saved my bacon countless times, but it doesn't always get you there the best route. I agree, follow your own route using the satnav as a guidance and you can't go wrong.

yup, that's them!

Yes, I've been correctly routed round traffic jams more than once, but I will shortly be doing a journey from home to North Devon. Never been by car, always by train but I KNOW it's in the west country, I KNOW that I can use either the A30/a303 or the M4/m5- both will get me to Devon, THEN I use the Satnav to get me to the local destination which I'm not sure of... Road signs, Common sense and an inbuilt sense of direction which ALL humans have all are used - I simply do not understand people being misrouted or getting into trouble with Satnavs

[Opifex]

I just stumbled across this thread while searching for all things satnav.

The thread started being about being misdirected when going from home in Cheltenham to London and the poster was wisely advised to ignore it until you got to the outskirts of London. This is fine if you know the area you are starting from but would not help if you were visiting Cheltenham and the first problem was to find your way out of the city.

When I got my ex-demo car I found that the satnav had been set to avoid an area of the local town. Could this have been the cause of the Cheltenham - London problem?

[stompe]

Hi All

We have owned a gen 3 Prius since March 10.

we recently set the prius sat nav to go to a london destination (Marble Arch) from our home in sunny Cheltenham.

For anyone wondering the usual and shortest route's from Cheltenham to London are either A40 to Oxford then M40 to london, or A417 to Swindon then M4 to London, the Oxford route is approx 93.4 miles and the Swindon route is approx 111.8 miles. The AA route planner reports both these routes as taking 2hr 17mins and 2hr 47mins respectively.

Imagine my surprise when the Prius Sat Nav tried its best to route us via either Bristol or Birmingham. Neither of these cities are between Cheltenham and London !!! The Prius quick journey weighs in at an impressive 149 miles and 2hrs 47mins with quick 2 weighing in at 154 miles 2hr 47mins also. The short journey also follows a similar route and time.

Having tried this many times now I can confirm that these are always the suggested routes. On investigation I have discovered that with Allow Motorways ticked in the settings the default behaviour is to force the use of as much motorway as possible even if this means going many miles out of your way, and adding a considerable time to your journey.

Unticking Allow Motorways sets the sat nav off in the right direction on the correct A roads, however refuses to allow any motorway so the distance's and times are just as bad. !!

I have tried this every which way and cannot solve this conundrum, so have registered this as a "Fault" with my dealer.

Incidently I also have a 2006 Garmin Nuvi which has never had a map update, and hey presto it can navigate a better route than the 2010 prius !!

Anybody else using fuel because of the Prius Sat Nav ?

Ds

Hi Ds

I thought you might like to look at this link and Toyota being very cagey about the problems with the Sat Nav http://www.toyotaownersclub.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=120917. You might like to take a look at this link and add your comments http://blog.toyota.co.uk/new-prius-everything-you-need-to-know.

Stompe

[MG Nut]

Hi All

We have owned a gen 3 Prius since March 10.

we recently set the prius sat nav to go to a london destination (Marble Arch) from our home in sunny Cheltenham.

For anyone wondering the usual and shortest route's from Cheltenham to London are either A40 to Oxford then M40 to london, or A417 to Swindon then M4 to London, the Oxford route is approx 93.4 miles and the Swindon route is approx 111.8 miles. The AA route planner reports both these routes as taking 2hr 17mins and 2hr 47mins respectively.

Imagine my surprise when the Prius Sat Nav tried its best to route us via either Bristol or Birmingham. Neither of these cities are between Cheltenham and London !!! The Prius quick journey weighs in at an impressive 149 miles and 2hrs 47mins with quick 2 weighing in at 154 miles 2hr 47mins also. The short journey also follows a similar route and time.

Having tried this many times now I can confirm that these are always the suggested routes. On investigation I have discovered that with Allow Motorways ticked in the settings the default behaviour is to force the use of as much motorway as possible even if this means going many miles out of your way, and adding a considerable time to your journey.

Unticking Allow Motorways sets the sat nav off in the right direction on the correct A roads, however refuses to allow any motorway so the distance's and times are just as bad. !!

I have tried this every which way and cannot solve this conundrum, so have registered this as a "Fault" with my dealer.

Incidently I also have a 2006 Garmin Nuvi which has never had a map update, and hey presto it can navigate a better route than the 2010 prius !!

Anybody else using fuel because of the Prius Sat Nav ?

Ds

Hi dgs2001,

I found the same thing with my Tom Tom in France, we seemed to be going miles out of the way, I did the same thing turned off the motorway bit,

then all seems well, this is how we use it on our last trip, will be interesting when we use the sat nav in the PRIUS.

MGnut Colin

[kithmo]

Anyone see Top Gear this week, someone from the west midlands wanted to go to Devon avoiding the Motorway and the Satnav sent them North then across to Ireland then down to France and up to Devon.

[Chris Dance]

I have had the same problem with the Sat Nav as outlined, on the Avensis and my Gen 2 Prius. I always get the AA route now and then set the Sat Nav. I then ignore the Sat Nav and follow the AA route and the Sat Nav soon picks up the AA route.

To get to Oxford from Aylesbury the Sat Nav routes via Bicester which is a long way round.

I was routed from Hereford to home via Birmingham. As an idiot in the early days of using a Sat Nav I took the Sat Nav route. I learned my lesson from that.

What Grumpy Cabbie says is correct. I do not think there is a fault as such on the Sat Nav it is the way they work.