I noticed when I first used my Nav System that it will not map to a specific house address but a grouping of numbers (1200-1900 Main street). Is this due to the data on the CD or the overall sysem? (i.e. the Hertz Neverlost System navigates directly to a specific address.)

Are there aftermarket data sources (CD media) available for this Nav System? Any aftermarket fix that can overcome what appears to be (at least as far as German engineering is concerned) a fairly poor nav product.

Lost, but only by a block or two...

 

that is part of the system, and cannot be changed. only an aftermarket system will be able to do this. i know it kinda sucks, but thats all they offer GL

 

It has to do with how dense the addresses are on the final street of your destination. The more dense, the greater the likelyhood that you will see the destination when you get to that "range". Its accurate enough, you'll see. The ranges given vary by denseness.

 

Lovely.....or should I say not. Give me a break. My wife's '99 740iL can do better than that. I live in Atlanta and use her GPS and used the one in the '03 Range Rover I punted for the E320CDI and they are never more than 200-300 feet off (I live in a city of 100,000 population and mostly use it when going to true downtown). Which is still inexcuseable as I am a pilot and aviation GPSs are now certified for instrument approaches. If I meet a cheap accounting basturd from one D-C he or she has another thing coming if this is true.

My E320 CDI arrived at the dealer on Friday. I can hardly wait.

 

My guess would be that it was an engineering decision, not a marketing one. No upfront cost involved. The actual street address on Navtech's maps are wrong or off a fair percentage of the time. The cost with dealing with customer questions and issues probably made the vagueness a solution.

I wonder if the Euro nav systems have the same issue.

 

This forum answers that question.

I can recollect only one unfavourable comment from a member living on the very edge of the European coverage and this just stated that it only covered the major towns and cities.

I live in a relatively small town in the south-west of England and I suppose the information on streets is perhaps two or three years out of date. It does however cover even small hamlets and villages.

I do not believe it has all the bells and whistles of the Pioneer DVD navigation system in my Sprinter, but that is just a personal opinion.

No complaints from me.

John
Cloudy Torquay

 

I would echo what Glojo says about the covereage of areas being fairly well complete. However, we too have just a range of house numbers offered rather than a specific one. The entry of only the first part of a postcode (Zip) rather than whole thing is a bit naff too.

 

In Norway, some streets have accurate house numbers, and some only in groups. I always enter the house number via Linguatronic, and I only say 5 3, and it will find house 53, regardless if grouped or not. The maps are approx. 18 months old. I checked that with a roundabout (traffic circle, rundkjøring, rundell, kreizverkehr, what ever you call it) in our neighbourhood. I remember it was opened in Febraury 2003, and it's in the database.

 

That is my only gripe. With the Pioneer I have a type of linguatronic and it goes down to the correct house number. However we live in an area where the houses are not numbered. (I hate the idea)

It makes me even more cross over being let down by my salesperson.

John

 

I agree! What goes on in the mind of MBUSA?


I saw your car. I was at Atlanta Classic Cars on Friday while their shipment was unloading. BTW, they don't seem to want to add the satellite radio option right now in fear of drilling the needed hole through the trunk.

 

All that being said. The Navigation system WILL get you there with no error in your location. You will know that you are there. Remember, you're driving a car down a street. SOME input/brain activity IS required. We already are paying a lot of money for the car when compared to some of the other cars in its class, are we looking to pay even more? Are we incapable of locating a house on a block?

I notified the manufacture of the DVD that they had the name of the 2 block street that I live on misspelled. 2 months later they emailed me and told me according to their records it can be spelled 2 different ways...
1. I LIVE on the street
2. It is a made up word with no "correct" spelling other than the one on the street sign on both ends of the block! (Like "TAXI" is Taxi and "KodaK" is Kodak all over the world, no debate.)

 

Thanks Jocko. I was on the west coast all week and travel again tomorrow so I am one of the few customers who is telling them to take their time as I won't be able to pick it up til next Friday. They are doing the SIRIUS install on Monday as well as swapping the wheels for SL staggered setup. I have instructed them rather firmly to figure out a way to not do an external mounting and showed them and emailed a few threads from here.

 

Hmm...Well, let me know if they do a good job so that I could have them do the same. Take pics. I will be picking up my car from them in about two weeks.

 

I have used the NAV system extensively on east coast and it does an admirable job. In a lot of scenarios, I have found the NAV route to be better and faster than what people have anecdotally told me to take. More importantly, regardless of how, the system will absolutely get you to the block you need to go to. It has never failed to take me where I wanted to go. Sometimes, the instructions can be confusing when there are a lot of complicated roads/highways, but even if you take a wrong turn it will bring you back. I have learned to trust the system.

 

I have found it to be very dependable in getting you there, but sometimes, if you need to go in a southerly direction to reach your destination, and you are midway between 2 freeway on ramps, it makes you go north thru town to pick up the more northern, south-bound freeway on-ramp when it could have sent you south thru town to the next southerly south-bound on-ramp onto the freeway... which common sense would have you do. Why go north to go south? I can't figure out how to avoid this scenario. It sometimes adds 20 minutes on to the trip needlessly.

 

I found that as well, after leaving the dealership I decided to use the Nav system for the drive home, I was about a mile from the highway I needed, but it took me on all backroads and ended up taking nearly twice as long.

Not really complaing tho, it did give me chance to acclimate myself to my newest toy.


btw, I did check the settings to see if "avoid freeways" was selected, and it was not.

 

there are ways to install the sat radio without drilling, search for t-bones install or contact scorchie

 

Be sure you have your options setting for "fastest time" and NOT to "stay off of freeways."

Overall, I've been reasonably pleased with the MB NAV system but dislike the fact they don't provide upgrade DVD's for free. I have a Rode Mate 700 for use in my other vehicles and now find it superior to the MB system You can use either touch screen or cursor (like MB's). It's advance warning for turns is better both visually and by voice, but best of all they come out with free user upgrades. Last week, they upgraded the system software (12 Mb download) and also provided a new Items upgrade (144Mb download or a free CD if you don't have a high speed connection.) The system upgrade made many improvements to the user interface and display and the Items upgrade put in all of the new POI's and road upgrades. I installed them both using my laptop in about an hour total time for downloads and updates to the unit. It seems to me that MB should provide new DVD's to prevent a possible serious incident by someone using an old one and making an improper turn such as "worng way on a one way street". This should be part of the "Scheduled Maintenance" in my opinion and provided free on 2003-2004 E's. Salesman and Service Advisors at my dealer are sympathetic to this approach but say MBUSA insists we buy the new DVD's. It would cost them less than $2 per DVD to provide them to us in my opinion. I routinely make DVD videos and can buy the blanks for ~50 cents/disc in bulk on sale at Best Buy of Fry's on occasion.