gps not updating at all

Does your display show the "GPS" icon/letters?

 

What do you mean by "stop and recalibrate it"?

Tom

 

To clarify this comment, the accuracy of the GPS system is not good enough to pinpoint a car on the width of a road. To compensate for this, the nav system looks for the nearest road oriented in the same direction as the car is traveling, and snaps the car's position onto that road. You can see this when you first start up, and sometimes the car will be shown going diagonally through a field. All of a sudden the car will jump back onto the road where it belongs. On occasion, the car will snap to the wrong road and it will take a few seconds before the nav system gets it all straightened out.

If you are on a new road, one not in the database, the nav system will try to snap onto any nearby road. Lacking anything nearby, it will give up and show your Prius cruising through empty space on the map.

Tom

 

It gives you a certain amount of freedom floating in GPS free air. If you want the latest disk be prepared to pay around $300 or just get a Garmin Nuvi for $100.

 

Hi All,

If the system has dead-reconining, but not receiving any satellite fixes, this might explain the OP's observations. Dead-reconining alone would not keep the car sufficiently accurately placed on a road over miles and miles. Its there for breif satellite reception outages (tunnels, heavy tree cover, etc).

tbcinnc do you have heavy foileage there at the end of summer in North Carolina? Other possible issues is placing a metal item (radar detector, clip board, stash of CD's ) on top of the dash board. The GPS antenna I believe is imbedded in the dash (at least I could not find it outside of the dash on the GPS equiped Prius cars I have been in). Even a heavy non-conductive item (plastic clip board, news-papers, magazines, etc), in the right location on the dash might detune the antenna center frequency.

Another issue is windshield tinting. Some tintings reflect the GPS signals significantly, and others absorb it. The tinting layer is so thin, however, that absorbtion tintings probably do not have a big effect.

If those things are not it, you may have a broken antenna or receiver.

 

You'd have to have the Gen III, with optional sirius satelite, and HD NAV in order to get map updates on the fly. Since you have a 2007, you will never get updats without buying a new DVD.

.

 

Once again, what do you mean by "recalibrate it to the closest point I can...". I know of no such function. The GPS finds its own location without any sort of user input. If you mean you need to move the location pointer to your current spot, that mean the GPS isn't working, in which case the dealer's diagnosis is probably correct.

Tom

 

Go to Garmin. You'll like it much better. Much simpler, more intuitive and with more functions, like speaking street names. I just went back to my old Garmin and what a relief that is. I just bought my girlfriend a Nuvi 255 for about $170 at Sam's Club. Very nice. Only thing better with the Denso (what you've got in your Prius) is the way it plays through the sound system loud and clear. But that's not enough.

 

I also like my old Garmin Presentation better, as it is so
user-friendly.

Is there any way to "de-boot" the Toyots program,...... then install the Garmin product?

(Newby, with 2010 Prius V-4 W/sunroof....superb car!)

Cheers!

 

The "update disc" is beyond expencive

Fact: The GPS in every Prius is a POS. A high volume dealer recommended I use my cell phones' GPS for better accuracy and to save a significant amount of money.

 

Your opinion: The GPS in every Prius is a POS.

It may depend on jurisdiction, but I ran a Prius navigation alongside the same route (in the UK, as it happens) in google maps a few times (just for fun), and was surprised to find the Prius gave me the better route. Not saying it will always be better, but then neither will Navman, Garmin, Google or Apple.

In addition, I regularly use google maps around my local area, not to know where to go, but to get the traffic data and estimated arrival time to destination. With my local knowledge, I regularly ignore the google map directions and take my own route at certain points.

All mapping software has limitations, but without a doubt they all got me to my destination at around about the time they said they would. Was it the best/fastest way? Maybe or maybe not. But whether it is or not, is a highly subjective opinion.

One thing we all agree on, is the updates are expensive. Having said that, it is not necessary to update every year, roads don't change that much so the cost can be relatively cheaper. Back in the day when you used to use hard copy map books, you did not update them every 5 minutes, more like once in 5 or 10 years. Life never stopped, people never died and we managed.

I think having a built in nav unit has value, and I don't think it is a POS, so, I would maybe update it once in every 5 - 10 years when it started to show it needed it.

But that is just my opinion, one you can take or leave as you see fit.