Where are bug fixes for the Navigation system

I have a Prius v with the technology package purchased about April 2012. Generally it works pretty well, but there are some obvious and annoying bugs, for example:

• If you navigate for points of interest along route (e.g. restaurants along route) it never comes back with anything, even when I am navigating a route. The only thing that works is "near here".
• The XM fuel prices function is nice. It does a good job of displaying the current prices, but it also shows an arrow that is supposed to be pointing in the direction of the station. This doesn't seem to work at all. I can't see any rhyme or reason to the arrows. That makes the function completely worthless because the only way to find out if a station is ahead of you is to tell the system to navigate to that station. Then you find it is 5 miles behind you, and you have to start the whole &&^$%%^$ process over again.
• The XM weather display is really lame. I practically have to be in the center of a tornado to see anything displayed on the screen.

There are more bugs but these are the ones that annoy me the most. I have just spent over an hour talking with the dealership and Toyota customer care to try to find out if they are going to fix these bugs. All I could find out is that there is a part# for a map update for about $160, but that part is on "stop sale" so evidently I can't even update the maps at this point.

I don't want to update the maps. All I want is for this $5000 technology package to work half as well as the system I had on my Ford Flex before I bought the Prius.

Other than this, I love the vehicle, but this is annoying enough I would recommend the Ford C-Max to anybody that asks. Ford seems to get the concept that when you charge a bunch for technology, you really need to make it work.

 

I don't know. How can I tell?

I did navigate through the setup menu and found a screen that was for software updates. It says:

Navigation V6673140

Bluetooth 2.1.200

 

I'm sorry, a non-functional "along the route" is not working-as-designed.
A non-functional pointer to the fuel stations is not working-as-designed.

Maybe XM Weather is a just a crappy service. I can tell you the Ford Flex system was 1000 times better than this on all three points. Now that Ford is shipping their plug-in C-Max, I am thinking about dumping the Prius and getting a product that is supported. I did have some issues early on with the tech features on an Explorer. When I called Ford, they were extremely responsive. They understand why crappy software is not acceptable. And they told me exactly what they were planning to do to fix that -- and that is exactly what they did.

I am not very impressed with Toyota's grasp of this whole technology thing. The parking assist is gee-whiz, but to really park accurately, you have to go through a complex procedure that takes 5 times longer than just parking it manually.

 

I don't mean to be argumentative, but a gas price function that points in random directions, and takes another 5 commands to find out where the $%^# the gas station is, is not functional. It is dangerous. It should not be used.

And a system that has "along the route" as a search option but cannot ever, under any circumstances, show any points of interest along the route is not "poorly implemented. it is BROKEN, period.

Regarding the Ford software, I worked with a fleet of several thousand vehicles at the time. The Flex stuff was great on every model. The early version of the "improved" system on the Explorer was trash (Thank you Microsoft). They put out a major upgrade that was distributes in January 2012. I did not personally use an Explorer after the update, but I never heard of further problems after that fix was applied. Prior to the fix, it definitely was necessary to disconnect the battery sometimes to reset the system. Sometimes you couldn't even use the radio until resetting.

But the point is that Ford acknowledged the problem and they told us what they were doing to fix it, and then they delivered what they said. Toyota seems to not have a clue about software.

 

Thanks. I haven't seen such a result, and I can't offhand think of any point of interest that would be exactly on the route, unless maybe it is a famous bridge or something. Obviously the things people would expect to see "along the route" are hotels, gas stations, restaurants, etc.

As a software developer, I will stipulate this is a non-trivial bit of programming. It would take a good developer 6-8 hours to have a working model of the algorithm, and maybe a week or two to optimize it so that it performs in real time.

I would have thought Toyota might manage to get around to that by now.