I have to tell you I have mixed feelings about the GPS. There are parts I love and parts I hate. I really hate they disable most of the features when driving even with a PASSENGER! Also, the bluetooth is not as good through the Infinti NAV as it is with the cars without the NAV based on my two weeks of a Journey without NAV.

However, I have the NAV working pretty well and have found workarounds for most things except one.

Is there any way to get the ETA even close? I will have it tell me it is 28 minutes to get somewhere that takes 14 minutes. It also doesnt show a time which would be nice.

When you set the ETA to auto does it learn over time? I also tried ot manually said my speeds on different types of roads but it doesnt do a great job.

Do I need to just wait and the NAV will learn or is the ETA just way off by default and not learning?

Thanks,
Dean

 

ETA is just an estimate, and the time should adjust as you begin to drive. I don't bother paying attention to the ETA but rather the total distance. I know if something is 12-13 miles away its not going to take me 30 minutes even in 5 o'clock traffic.

 

It just bothers me because the Garmin Units are spot on and learn your driving habits and can be within 5 minutes very commonly on 4 + hour trips.

So it does NOT learn? This is big to me because that means I am going to turn the auto off and adjust the speed on different road types and get it as close as possible.

I do find having the time to be handy. I am driving and a client calls and says a meeting is moved up and asks what time I can be there. It is nice to look at the GPS and say around 3:35pm/

Dean

 

Yes it learns in a way. It changes as you travel based on the speed you drive and the traffic that is on the route if you have XM. It worked for me in L.A. The XM traffic doesn't work in Colorado Springs but the ETA seems to work for me rather well.

 

[quote=bboysteele;2390850]Yes it learns in a way. It changes as you travel based on the speed you drive and the traffic that is on the route if you have XM. It worked for me in L.A. The XM traffic doesn't work in Colorado Springs but the ETA seems to work for me rather well.[/quote

But it doesnt learn over time like the Garmin does? I am partial to Garmin because I made a lot of money on their stock

I simply am going to adjust road setting speeds then and see how close I can get it.

Seriously though, anyone who spends their day traveling from client to client really likes to have an accurate time. It is not like I am going to client a to client b every day. It may be from client Y to client g to client r, etc.

What about with routes? Does it base the times on previous times you have driven the route or use the same method?

Dean

 

The ETA works pretty well for me... It definitely calculates it based on your average speed, typical speed limit on roads traveling, and distance.

 

Was it accurate from day 1 or did it take some time? I have only had my car since Friday of last week and it has less than 300 miles. I am trying to figure out if adjusts over time to my driving speeds and learns.

Dean

 

This is probably going to be a hard answer for anyone here to answer. I am not aware of anyone here that has paid that close of an attention to the ETA on the NAV. The only time I really did was on my road trip I took last month. Hopefully someone here has actually paid attention to this since day one and can give you an answer. If not, it looks like you will be the expert on this when you find the answer after driving around for awhile.

 

I am going to talk to Infiniti and I have already done some research. Unfortunatly, there are many posts on other forums stating the same thing.

It does frustrate me that a two year old Garmin is superior in many ways to the Infiniti GPS. It imports the phonebook 100% (and I have over 500 contacts with generally 2 to 4 contacts each), it allows voicedialing of any of the contacts it imported in, and the ETA is dead on and it learns your driving habits. This is a unit that retailed for $1100 but the street price was around $700. It is probably only worht 400-500 now.

Now with that said, the integrated GPS is superior because of the fact it is intergrated and it is not bad overall and does have some nice features but in a 40k + car I would expect it to be better.

The good news is that GPS can have firmware updates and I am going to push my local Infiniti dealer hard on the issues and see if he can get some more technical details and find out if any firmware upates are available.

I am not the average driver and the GPS is more important to me than other people because of the nature of my business.

I am going to tweak it as much as possible and try to find out everything about the unit even if I have to call the company that made it in japan.

I also do know that the Infiniti GPSs are ranked the highest out of all car makers at least according to reviews on cnet. Based on other integrated GPS (especially Mazda, Acura, Volvo), the Infiniti one is better.

Dean

 

Just for the record guys, I am not trying to trash the NAV. It is a good NAV but I feel it should be better. I am really impressed with this car but there are some features that dont make sense to me. I simply call them as I see them. These are many more things I like about the car than I dislike it. It is a great car but there is always room for improvment. Here are some issues to me that need to be addressed in future models:

1. Weight. The car is too heavy. Even shaving 200lbs would make a big difference. If they could shave 300 - 500lbs then this thing would be a rocket.

2. NAV Issues -- The ETA and the safety mode that cannot be disabled without a 3rd party hack. The fact you can only pick destinations from one screen when driving and no option to say next page or voice tags so you can say any destination at any time by voice tag. The thing that boggles my mind is the car has the ability to know when there is a passenger so it should allow safety mode bypassed when another person is in the car.

3. Bluetooth -- It is better without the GPS. The one built into the NAV is real buggy and has an issue where it shows you are in a call when you crank up the car with many Wm phones. Windows Mobile phones are very popular.

4. Phonebook -- Again, this is for the NAV only. It cannot read WM phonebooks and it also doesnt allow multiple numbers for one voice tags like the non-nav equipped journey. It is nice to say Call John Doe and then it have it ask Office, Mobile, or Home. You have to program three different voice tags as a voice tag with the NAV and you cannot access more than the first page of the phonebook when driving even via voice.

5. Musicbox. The fact that you cannot copy MP3s directly to it from ISO CDs with MP3 or from the CF card renders it nearly useless. I had to go buy a 80GB Ipod to get the functionality that he music box SHOULD have had. I am not a fan of Apple but the IPOD integration is nearly perfect. I dont understand why they wont allow you to copy MP3s if it has a IPOD adaptor and it RIPS cds. If this is for the RIAA then why does the car RIP CDs? You can borrow your buddys CD and hand it back in 8 minutes with the contents on the hard drive. Also, I feel the car should read DVD MP3s. This would cost nearly nothing more to allow such functionality.

Most of my complaints are about the technology but this will get better in future models. Overall I am very happy but there is room for improvement. If the INfiniti would have an 80GN hard drive, allowed you to copy MP3s to it from a CF and CD/DVD then think how much extra praise this car would get. People really like their music and creature comforts. The Infiniti is EXCELLENT with its technology features but adding a few features would have moved it to GREAT.

I will keep you guys updated on tweaking the GPS even if I have to figure out how to hack the firmware myself!!!

Dean

 

I am pretty sure it predicts the ETA based on the avg speeds you set in the NAV config. There is a setting for avg Highway speed, avg Road speed, and avg side-road speed. (Not sure if thats the exact names, but there are definately 3 settings)

I would try adjusting those up or down depending on how off the ETA currently is for you.

 

It has the option to set it for AUTO or the speeds you set. The speeds you set are too limited. For example, it only lets you go up to 55 or 60 on what it calls not Interstates. I happen to travel daily on a road that is not a interstate but traffic averages 70.

It doesnt make sense that they limit your average speed on different roads.

I have been trying it on Auto lately to see if i "learns" or gets more active.

If it doesnt get any better, I will then switch it back to base on the speeds I set.

This sounds bad but I may need to up the speed on neighborhoods to much faster than I would drive in a neighborhood (I do drive really slow in neighborhoods) to up the overall computer average since it limits your average on other type roads.

This system will be hit or miss at best. It might work decent for driving around town but not for long highway trips.

Dean

 

Not really sure... I can't say I really paid much attention to it up until my last trip to NC.

 

I contacted Zenrin who makes the GPS and then went to their website to contact them. I pointed out how the street pilot technology was superior in every way from dead on ETA to reading full Windows Mobile 6 phonebooks of 500 + phone numbers and the bt is part of the NAV.

I am not encouraged because their contact form asked for the make and model of your car and the newest they had on the website was 2006 G35.

I am hoping in the future that the cars will give youa choice on what GPS to use. Lets them come up with the built in screen, bluetooth connector, and GPS antenna but then allow you to choose which brand GPS goes in. They could make it a small box with the code in a eprom which would be nice.

At this point in time, people are just looking to have the NAV as an option. However, in the future I suspect people will want better GPS. I personally think those low priced $250 GPS are a joke but the fact that all the GPSes have been out for a while with features not offered on the in car ones will probably force the car companires to become more competitive.

At some point, people are going to save 2 grand and put up with the cord to use a third party GPS.

I did this in 2004 when I bought an RX-8. I could get the car price down but they wanted 2500 for that POS GPS that had ***** and no touch screen on it. I was using the Street Pilot 2610 which came out with touchscreen controls 3 years ahead.

The GPS in the cars is going to have to get better.

Dean

 

I always try to beat the ETA and make it readjust if you drive faster than the posted speeds.