Hi everyone!

My name's James, I'm in my (very) late 30s, I live in Switzerland and work as a Software Architect and... I'm about to join the W222 and the Mercedes family thanks to a 2018 S560L4 I bought (and will be able to take back home this Friday if nothing goes wrong).

I did come up with a question on maps today, yet I haven't been able to find a proper answer. What's the situation with the maps and how can I add extra countries to it? I can see on the Mercedes Me app that it has the Switzerland/Italy/Germany region already installed, but I am planning a travel to Greece this summer and I am unsure as to how and whether I need to add Greece (and potentially other regions as well) in the maps. I would also rather not rely on the (expensive) LTE connection of the car and do the deed using a USB stick if possible. Note, I'm obviously going to ask the dealer about this, but I'd like to hear from knowledgeable members here for all my options.

Thanks in advance!

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Obligatory info about the car, plus some (preliminary) pictures:

I was a bit bummed to see that there was no information whatsoever in Carvertical or similar sites about this car, apart from the decoded VIN (built in Germany, done 12km and then it was gone!). Still, the car was one of the Mercedes Switzerland board member's backup (his main one was a Maybach; of course) and in that context, the car never left Mercedes nor it missed any regular maintenance.

It has... interesting options. The exterior is 998 Anthracite Blue, which is a wee bit different from the colours Swiss cars tend to have (black, white, silver). It doesn't look half-bad, even though blue generally wouldn't be my first choice. The interior is 818 Magma Grey Nappa with Espresso trim. I am not so thrilled about the interior colour however, but then again, at least it's not boring black.
The rear seats have the folding tables but no heating/ventillation (even though there is 4-zone climate control). It also has the chauffeur package, but the rear footrest is missing (what's the point then?). The situation in the front is way better, since it has almost all extras (premium package, driver assistance etc), and also has the Magic Sky roof.

It comes with the standard trim which doesn't bother me; I couldn't care less if it had the AMG-line. It does have standard 18" rims though which at some point I'd consider chaging to 19 or 20". The dealer provided a couple of years of MSI (the Swiss variation of exclusionary manufacturer warranty) with the option of 2 extra, plus 10y/100K km of free yearly service, and a second set of wheels with winter tyres (thankfully none of the tires are RTF). Very happy with the interactions with the dealer, I hope it will be the same if/when I will need support with the car.

Dealer's store, front. There's a lot of warm light in the building, making the car almost dark teal in appearance.

This version of the S-Class looks great from almost all angles; felt the same way for the W220 as well.

Dealer's store, inside, front. A bit boring, but not gaudy.

I couldn't care less for the 2018 rear entertainment or the single seats, but the price of the car was too good.

The dealer offered to drive me to the train station. I asked to get my car and to ride in the back, since it's probably the only time I will do so. Snapped a picture before he went back to the dealership.

 

Beautiful car. Best of luck with it.

 

First you need a mercedes.me account.
Then go the website (google mercedes.me connect), login in the right hand corner (mercedes me login) - then go to my mercedes me account (RH corner) and select my cars.
You will find online card update. Then select the country you want and save it on a SD card. Only empty SD card works for me.
Now put the SD card in the car and start the car. Your comand will be updated with the selected countries.
I have a s400d selenite gray non AMG. I kept the standard wheels for winter tyres and bought AMG wheels and tyres at the factory website (gebraucht teile centrum) for 1800 euro (very cheap and they were new rims and tyres).
Greetins from Belgium

 

Hi Jerry, many thanks for the response! I can see it now, it was disabled since the Mercedes Me configuration is incomplete (gonna get license plates next week).

Can I have multiple regions downloaded with a suitable spacious SD card? Thanks!
EDIT: I just saw it uses its own download manager and you can select multiple regions.

 

Yes, no problem here, i have belgium, holland, deutschland osterreich italien. You can download them at once i think

 

I first tried with an usb sitck but that didn't work. So i tried a new formated sd card and that was ok.

 

You can choose one region as "your own", that will update on the fly (OTA), but using SD card is much faster and you can update other regions. Total EU is around 32GB.
Without the update, you should be able to see all other countries also, only not the latest version.

Enjoy your car! Let's hope we can drive to CH very soon (still many EU countries on the risk list of CH, so not very convenient to travel to now).

 

Very useful info HAWKiS63, thanks! I think I'd rather go with the SD Card update route anyway, unless the updates tend to come very often. By the way, can I move the maps to the internal car storage incrementally, i.e. if I have a 8GB SD-Card, can I move them in chunks, or it has to be an all-or-nothing affair? On the same vein, must the card remain in the vehicle for the maps to work, or are they simply copied internally and that's it? And since you are here, could I ask if a USB stick would work for permanent music storage (I understand that the car only supports SDHC cards which go up to 32GB)?

Thanks (in advance)! I unfortunately cannot experiment yet since I'm getting the car in 4 days, but having an idea of how things work and what do I need to buy to be prepared (e.g. an extra and rugged SD Card) would be great. Switzerland is (generally) nice and it's a good destination for a vacation, but it's most definitely NOT a place to allow a V6 or a V8 to breathe, because of the traffic laws that are enforced almost religiously with lots of cameras and speedtraps pretty much everywhere!

 

You get roughly 1 to 3 updates a year, and yes, you can do it in chunks (I have a 16 Gb card and can do all of EU in 2 steps). The data is copied to internal HDD and then you can remove the SD card (or use it for other things, like music). But as said, you can already drive through all of Europe without the update, since all maps are already present (maybe the previous owner already did the update? or you can ask the dealer to do it for you, BEFORE you get the car!).

In the USB slot, I have a USB powered HDD (512 Gb), but you can also use a similar USB stick, full of music and even video if you want.

In CH you indeed have to watch out for speedtraps everywhere......happily the German Autobahn with no speed limit is around the corner!