3tonks

I've read everything I can in the brochures, and still find that I have a few questions. I have OnStar in my Escalade and am totally hooked. I'm wondering how mbrace compares. For instance, the brochure says "if you know the address" an agent can send it to your nav system. OnStar would look it up for you. Lexus Enform doesn't even mess with entering info, just sends you straight to the agent. As a single woman traveling hundreds of miles a week I appreciate the reliability and piece of mind OnStar provides, but I want the new S550 sedan. This is going to be a stupid question, but I'm asking. When signing into Google maps, and sending your route to your car, if it includes highways that are newer than the highways shown on your car's CD's, does the actual google map come through, or is the route imposed on the old map. Gosh I feel dumb. But, the MB salesman here is even worse. He says he doesn't have any customers who subscribe to the premium services since the voice activated nav is so superior.

steveb9771

When you use Google Maps to send a destination to your car, that is ALL it does. Your on-board navigation system determines the route. It will only use roads that are known to your vehicle. If you know the destination address, you can enter it directly into your navigation system or you can sent it to your car via Google Maps if you are an MBrace subscriber.

All S550 vehicles have GPS navigation as standard equipment. I believe MBrace and OnStar also offer turn-by-turn directions, but there is absolutely no need for this since your on-board navigation system does this. This is only of value to someone in a vehicle without a GPS navigation system.

Navigation map updates are issued about once per year. Navteq (www.navigation.com) provides the United States map data for most of the car manufacturers including Mercedes, GM, Ford, BMW, Honda and others. Teleatlas provides data for some manufactures.

In general , all vehicle map data will be the same for all of these vehicles assuming they have updates from the same time period. They will differ is the available list of POIs (Points of Interest - The stored directory of locations of stores, hotels, etc).

MBrace has two levels of service. You will have to subscribe to their concierge service to get the features I believe you are asking for. They can send destination data to your vehicle.

egauster

You will LOVE the MBrace consierge service. They will act as a "personal assistant" with anything you need. They will look up addresses, flight or travel info, resturant, hotel, etc. Anything short of picking up your drycleaning! They will do research for you and email results back to you if you wish. They download info directly to your NAV so you type in nothing. They will make phone calls on your behalf to find out information you are looking for and get back to you so you dont have to... Great service. The NAV on our S550's is hard drive based and can be updated, so no worries of compatibility with old disks in a CD based NAV system... I have the service on my s550 and my wife's ML. She loves having any assistance just a button push away and I feel better knowing there is a "personal assistant" virtually riding with her all the time! And by the way, these people are all medically trained (EMT or Paramedic) and are experienced emergency operaters as well so if you need REAL help, they are qualified! The iPhone/iPad app is great too!
Love MBrace!

firefighter608

They must be paid a good bit being medic trained, EMT-B or first aid sounds a little better, I'm an EMT-B