I Dont Believe It....

[Catlover]

Its hard to believe it but what I read  on the forum is that it cost £250 to update the sat nav map in my 2010 Gen 3 Prius - the model with the hard drive instead of CD player.  I like the ability of storing CD's on a hard drive, very handy, but £250 to update the maps!  The car is 8 year old and never been updated by previous owners. I am ok with the sat nav, got used to punching in enough info for it to get around but going on our hols to Essex/Suffolk in June and much prefer to use the Prius sat nav then have my TomTom (with recently updated maps for free) sat on the dashboard, or my mobile phone on display (which seems to work well for free).

Is there a alternative to the £250 fee at the Toyota dealer?

Someone on eBay offered a hard drive with the new maps loaded for half the official price, but I nervous at taking all the plastic ware from around the cars info centre.

 

[FROSTYBALLS]

No other legal way - fairly standard pricing, especially for an older system.

See also http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/consumer-news/60665/watchdog-shock-cost-built-sat-nav-updates

[Cyker]

Yeah, this is one of the reasons I consider bundled satnavs a negative in cars; At least with e.g. Garmin you can download free opensource OpenStreetMaps and convert them for use if they become EoL.

That said, you can apparently replace the SatNav module of a lot of Toyotas with ones that run custom Android operating systems with a bunch of other features - Seen a lot of them for sale on eBay, although you'd have to track down non-mainstream forums for user reviews.

(Kindalike how e.g. mainstream reviewers like HonestJohn, the Telegraph, Guardian and Which always recommend mainstream dashcams like Nextbase but they never mention the less mainstream ones like Viofo A119's which are the most highly rated on places like the dashcamtalk.com forums and Youtube reviewers like Techmoan)

[Catlover]

Was talking recently to my local Toyota dealer, and I expressed my surprise at the cost of an update (£250), and he said they had the equipment to update this model.....well they did have the equipment until it was stolen along with other things in a break in about 3 years ago....... and they never replaced it, but in that time no one asked for an update..... thats 3 years where no one asked for an update. The fact my unit is now 8 years old and never been updated shows that people are reluctant to pay that sort of price.

Which is better....charging £250 and no takers, or charging a reasonable amount, say £60 and having potentially more then a few takers?  I suppose £60 is a non starter because I heard it takes an hour or so to do an update, so £60 may not even pay for the labour.  

[Heidfirst]

2 minutes ago, Catlover said:

Which is better....charging £250 and no takers, or charging a reasonable amount, say £60 and having potentially more then a few takers?  I suppose £60 is a non starter because I heard it takes an hour or so to do an update, so £60 may not even pay for the labour.  

& out of that £250 apart from labour Toyota have to pay for the data/licence to their supplier.

At least the current system is fairly easy to update & there are reasonably (certainly compared to some other car manufacturers) priced update options (& of course new cars come with 3 years of updates free).

[Catlover]

As TomTom and Garmin both update mobile sat navs for free during the life time of the product, then it could be free for the licence to update a in-car sat nav. No difference really.

From snippets on the internet I just read it would appear a lot of people are totally disinterested in paying for a in-car sat nav when they choosing a car and accessories.  Maybe sat nav manufacturers thought in-car sat navs would be a nice little earner for updates but it appears its not but they haven't'nt latched on yet and cut their charges.  After all, mobile sat navs now sing and dance ie make/accept calls, contact list, mp3 players etc so what attraction is there to in-car sat nave except for the fact they are cordless and mobile ones are not.

[FROSTYBALLS]

5 minutes ago, Catlover said:

The fact my unit is now 8 years old and never been updated shows that people are reluctant to pay that sort of price.Which is better....charging £250 and no takers, or charging a reasonable amount, say £60 and having potentially more then a few takers?  I suppose £60 is a non starter because I heard it takes an hour or so to do an update, so £60 may not even pay for the labour.  

The Touch system began to be fitted  to UK models around 2011/2011 - certainly available in the 2012 Auris (first generation). Think most people with an older system would actually update the head unit.

The £250 includes labour, the licence fee to the mapping supplier, and the update itself. 

Some people when ordering a new car, prefer not to have cables from a stand alone sat nav trailing across the dashboard, etc. It isn't always the companies who manufacture and sell stand alone sat navs, who supply the vehicle manufacturers with the bespoke mapping the vehicle manufacturer decides upon..

[Heidfirst]

1 hour ago, Catlover said:

As TomTom and Garmin both update mobile sat navs for free during the life time of the product, then it could be free for the licence to update a in-car sat nav. No difference really.

It is different. Toyota have to pay HERE for the map data  (Tomtom own their own company) & pay Harman (or another supplier) to build the head units. The more links in a  supplier chain the dearer anything will be. Also, as you may imagine the testing of something that is embedded into a vehicle is somewhat more stringent than a standalone unit  - this both slows things down & increases costs.

However, prices have come down as more & more cars come with satnavs (& there are some advantages to built-in systems) as standard.

Interestingly & perhaps similarly I have been talking to a contractor about installing a dash cam in my car - his background is car hifi but got out of that as cars came with increasingly better systems so that the demand for after-market upgrades has declined dramatically. I suspect that in a few years lots of cars will come with dash cams as standard so who knows what he will do then ...

 

[Mike169]

Hi All.

A guy I knew that worked for another car main dealer told me ages ago when cars had CD/DVD's in for the sat nav's it wasn't uncommon for either snyde copies to be bought a certain web site we all know in the UK but worst than that a potential customer would ask for the keys for a certain car in the showroom or forecourt with no intension of buying the car put purely to press the eject button of the sat nav disc and slip it into their suit pocket saving themselves a few hundred quid as long as they didn't get caught of course and the first thing salesmen would do is check to make sure the disc was still there after their visit.

Mike.

[PeteB]

12 hours ago, Heidfirst said:

...prices have come down as more & more cars come with satnavs (& there are some advantages to built-in systems) as standard.

...I suspect that in a few years lots of cars will come with dash cams as standard ...

 

My last Gen 3 Prius was an ex-demonstrator, 6 months old when I got it.  It was a basic T3, but had the optional SatNav fitted.  If I'd bought the car new, it would have cost £1,000 extra for the SatNav, even though the screen, buttons and audio hardware was already standard in the car.  If I'd been buying new, I wouldn't have given £50 for it!

I bought a Dashcam 10 years ago and predicted than that dashcams would soon be available built in, even before they started fitting built-in cameras for the safety systems.  I can't believe in 2018 no one is offering that yet (ARAIK).

My TomTom looks reasonably neat on it's beanbag, is ideally positioned so the screen's about the steering wheel and below the HUD.  It powers on automatically when dropped onto the magnetic mount or when the car is switched on if already present, and turns off if lifted off or the car is switched off.  The cable to the lighter socket is barely noticeable.  When I bought it 3 years ago it was the very latest model, so I expect to keep getting free quarterly updates and traffic data for some time.

[Cyker]

The thing with dashcams is there isn't that much demand for them; If it came built into a car most people would take that as a checkbox but it wouldn't influence their buying decision much.

Even the Tesla Model S and X, which have umteen cameras in the car, could easily turn them into dashcams with a software update, but don't. Some people were asking them about it and they said they'd look into it based on customer demand but that was like, 2 years ago and AFAIK nothing happened about it.

That said, Dashcam used is on the up - Usually I'd see more people without their brakelights on while waiting at traffic than dashcams, but now there's definitely more dashcams! Mostly cabbies, but definitely an increase in passenger vehicles (Although this just might be because of where I work; Gotta be in the top 10 for worst f'ing drivers in London!)

[danowat]

I wouldn't bother, the built in sat nav on the gen 3 is rubbish, i never use mine. 

In leui of fitting an android head unit, i am just using an app on my phone. 

[Heidfirst]

11 hours ago, PeteB said:

I bought a dashcam 10 years ago and predicted than that dashcams would soon be available built in, even before they started fitting built-in cameras for the safety systems.  I can't believe in 2018 no one is offering that yet (ARAIK).

Citroen do on at least one model https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/does-it-work-citroen-c3s-connected-cam-built-in-dashcam/

[PeteB]

11 hours ago, Heidfirst said:

Citroen do on at least one model https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/does-it-work-citroen-c3s-connected-cam-built-in-dashcam/

Thanks, nice to know.  The link doesn't seem to work at the moment, I think it's a problem on carmagazine's web site as I googled it and got the same result.

This one also has a review:  https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/citroen-c3-connected-cam-review-dashcam-that-also-tweets-road-trip-snaps-1623975

As they say, now someone's doing it, other will probably follow suit.

[Drpepper99uk]

23 hours ago, danowat said:

I wouldn't bother, the built in sat nav on the gen 3 is rubbish, i never use mine. 

In leui of fitting an android head unit, i am just using an app on my phone. 

Same here!

 

I use either Google maps or another free mapping app with my mobile via bluetooth which I connect to the Sat-Nav unit in my Gen 3 for voice instructions and this works well for me. Mine is a 2010 model and has never been updates either.

 

Mike.