I just finished manually update via USB key yesterday to version 252 for my region and now MB connect portal says version 260 is available. Not sure what their update frequency is but it definitely feels better than updating at the dealer once a year.

By the way my car is shipped with version 23 of maps data (from 2018) for all regions. It didn't auto update to version 252 so I manually did it. The update was smooth and relatively quick. You can check the current map version on the car or the web portal, but on the web portal you also see what's the latest available. It seems according to the manual, if the version is too old you need to manually update it before auto update can kick in.

Haven't noticed any difference from version 23 to 252. Will give it a day or two to see if the car auto updates to version 260 for my area.

 

The download manager is asking to have the storage device (USB drive) formatted to NTFS or exFat. How do you do that?

Thx.

 

Go go to windows explorer and right click on your usb drive. Then click format. There should be an option to change the file system.

 

and make sure to back up the usb drive. Both reformatting and the download manager will wipe out files on it.

What version of map is your car shipped with?

 

I have not checked the version yet. Where on the web portal can you do that? I just see "Online Map Update."

So once the updates are on the USB drive you just plug it in to the vehicle and it will automatically update?

 

On the portal, before clicking on Manual Download, you can click on your region and the version should show up.

Or on your car, go to the Advanced manual in Navi. There is a Map Version option.

 

Mine shipped with v22, updating to v260. So second part of the question (the manual doesn't say) do you just plug the drive into the vehicle and it automatically updates, or do you need to do something in the Nav menus first? b Thx.

 

You will get a notification soon after connecting the drive. If not you can go to Settings / Software Update. If you don’t see anything try a different USB drive. One of my two USB drives do not work for some reason.

 

Are you able to connect your GLE to WiFi and download update this way?

 

No.

 

First it asked me to add the Mercedes downloader. Then I didn’t get far before it asked for JAVA to be installed. Since I have JAVA installed it must want a newer version. Always complications. I’ll look again when I have more time.

 

Their developers made the whole process easy for them, and more difficult for customers. The manual update process could have been as simple as downloading a single package from browser, copying to any common format USB storage (flash drive, hard drive, SD car), and plugging into the car. No JAVA or backup and reformatting needed.

 

Actually - for most it will ask to download install a Java "tool" .. different thing than :"normal" java..

 

The download tool complained about missing Java Runtime Engine (JRE) paths, however, it continued to work without any problems despite the error message - my machine already has Java installed anyway.

Rather stupidly, the download tool requires the entire download space to be available on the computer main hard drive *as well as* on the USB device to which it will be written. Not a big deal on most PC's, but finding a spare 28.5 GB on my laptop with a 128 GB SSD drive meant juggling some stuff around to make room. It appears to work by downloading individual regions, and then shunting them on to the USB drive in a somewhat asynchronous way, so there's no good reason to attempt to block out all the space on the main computer hard drive - it could tidy up as it shunts files onto the USB device. Not going to be a problem for most people, but could confuse if you don't know what it's doing.

My GLE had version 34 maps installed, and I did a manual update to version 260 for all available EU maps (approx, 28.5 GB).

For those interested, it took about 90 minutes for the car to update - progress % went up slowly for the first 70%, and then picked up pace after that. Again rather stupidly, the car started to download the version 35 maps as part of the automatic update, and there was no way to stop it from continuing that, even though it was already installing newer maps. Eventually, the version 35 installation failed due to "newer maps already being installed" - no sh*t Sherlock :-) it would be nice to be able to clear these messages out of MBUX, but so far i've not found a way to do that.

All in all - reasonably painless, but some clumsy programming by MB in my opinion on JRE, disk space management, and automatic updates starting up while a manual update was in progress, and no apparent way to clear / archive / delete messages after updates have finished.

One other thing - while it was updating, the car warned me several times to "Check dipped beam direction setting" - unclear why it would do that, unless during the map updates something within the electronics thinks the vehicle may be in a location where the traffic is on the other side of the road? Just thought i'd mention it in case anyone else sees this behaviour and worries about it.

 

Did mine today for Western region only. Worked fine; took 12 minutes or so.

 

Mine is a 2016 GLE and I just took it to the dealer to update the GPS system and they charged me $185!. Was not happy but had no clue I could do an automatic upgrade. Is it really that simple and we could do it ourselves?

 

This thread is discussing 2020 GLE - your 2016 GLE can only be updated at Dealer - or do a internet search for a hacker seller out of Thailand ..

 

Well, you can buy the CD and do it yourself. On my 2012 the dealer was kind enough to lend me theirs free of charge.