Navigation package satisfaction?

[Jus-A-CMax]

:love_shower:  Great new then! Yeah, its pretty darn cool on an 8" easy to see screen...gotta luv it  :)

[BIG ROCCO]

We are happy with the Nav - the voice recognition is not so hot - I find it easier to use the screen to input the address.  I think the voice recognition is good for stored system commands For example: saying "Radio Classics" is always instantly recognized as Radio Classics

[Laurel]

Our voice recognition was great until we had the upgrade to 3.6.2 and then it couldn't recognize anything.  Hubby did the re-set and it is back to being pretty good.  But voice recognition seems to have real trouble with certain accents and if you speak softly.  It does better if I sound stern and enunciation very crisply like a drill sargeant LOL.

[wab]

Laurel, Posted Today, 12:46 PM       

 

Our voice recognition was great until we had the upgrade to 3.6.2 and then it couldn't recognize anything.  Hubby did the re-set and it is back to being pretty good.  But voice recognition seems to have real trouble with certain accents and if you speak softly.  It does better if I sound stern and enunciation very crisply like a drill sargeant LOL. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

AH HA so if I talk to (what is her name?) the sync system like my wife commands  me she’ll do what I  ask  say.

 

wab

[Laurel]

I am embarrassed to say that is absolutely correct wab.  My husband is a very nice soft spoken fellow and he has endless difficulty with the voice recognition. Not so with me barking out the commands LOL.  Just this morning we were en route to an appointment and my husband quietly said "navigation, destination, Peace Arch Hospital" and she promptly asked him to repeat the command or ask for help.  I barked out the same command in my wifely bossy boots manner and she promptly recognized and accepted the command LOL.  I suspect you are a nice fellow with a fair and friendly approach and that just won't cut it.

[ceemax71]

Voice recogntion problem on Big Bang Theory (at 1:20):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fho_Raf-FY8

:)

[Laurel]

Ceemax that is hilarious!  Thanks for posting it.

[pjurek99]

So after ~50 miles of intersections, turns and u-turns - I have to admit - that the GPS issue is gone. Now only the thing with intermittent MFT freezes.

 

And btw - the driver's seat became wobbly (like all of a sudden). Why there has to be always something? Is the car cursed or what?

[HPRifleman]

I have never paid attention to the "3D" graphics on the screen. Now I can see as if somebody took pictures of the intersections and put them in the system. WOW. So nice, so precise, so clever.

 

Can you provide more detail on the 3D graphics? Do you mean the Navigation screen shows buildings?

[pjurek99]

Yes. The buildings. But also the right half of the screen when driving thru highway intersections - the overpasses are so realistic or maybe it is just a coincidence...

[HPRifleman]

Yes. The buildings. But also the right half of the screen when driving thru highway intersections - the overpasses are so realistic or maybe it is just a coincidence...

The exit and overpass graphics on the right side of the screen do look realistic.

 

I don't ever recall seeing buildings in the main map screen though. Maybe that is only in large cities.

[pjurek99]

All right. Today I drove to Brooklyn, NY. First - the navigation crashed twice. Then - the calculation failed.

And then it returned to its previous abnormal behavior - indicated as if my position was a few blocks away from my actual location. 

I had to take out my smartphone, type in the address and get guidance from Google.

[Laurel]

I was hoping that your car was fixed pjurek99--how disappointing!  On Christmas Eve we will give our system a test when we drive down to the Oregon coast to spend a few days.

[wab]

pjurek99

 

It’s really a shame about your car.

 

A few decades ago Rumor said that cars built on Monday and Friday were more likely to have problems.

Here’s the way I heard the rumor.

 

Monday: A noticeable % of regular assembly workers wouldn’t come to work.

     Their positions were filled by inexperienced workers =’ed a lot of bad cars

Tuesday: Almost everyone came to work =”ed most cars were ok

Wednesday: Everybody came to work =’ed all cars OK

Thursday: “I really hate my job, if I see one more left door window &%#.

Friday: “I only came to work to get my pay check, I’m leaving early and I’m not doing anything tell then!”

 

Our car was built on a Tuesday, it’s had a couple of problems.

 

wab

Edited December 16, 2013 by wab

[pjurek99]

Of course I can understand that the electronic devices can fail. But in my case they just replaced the gps ("subsystem"?) and the XM/gps antenna... Nobody bothered performing any tests (between car drop/pick-up there was less than a mile difference)...

 

What IS annoying is that the navigation was a must-have for me and its Ford's mindset look just perfect. Just the performance is far from a state of usability. Simple thing. 

 

Some time in 2016 I will surrender the car and probably then, at that future time there will be new fancy solutions. Will I take another Ford? Well - not with the Microsoft badge anywhere in a distance of 10 miles.

 

PS: Mine was built on 1/17/2013 - it was Thursday...

Edited December 16, 2013 by pjurek99

[ScubaDadMiami]

Such a tough break.  I thought that it was certainly fixed once they replaced the GPS module and all that.  Is it possible that this is happening in a spot with poor coverage?

[pjurek99]

it happened on Hamilton Pkwy in Brooklyn. It was a sunny day. It began on Goethals Bridge with a system crash. Then two failed calculations. Then off-route location indication mentioned earlier.

 

The sequence was like this:

 

1. Driving on Goethals Bridge. Voice button and Navigation Voice command

2. crash

3. quick recovery - then voice command again

4. voice - find a street address

5. ok

6. on i278 it showed a turn that made no sense

7. i did continue on I287

8. instead of calculating new route it displayed Route Calculation Failed

9. I clicked Nav amd then Previous destinations

10. I retrieved the last entry

11. clicked it and then it failed again

12. steps 9 and 10 again

13. now it accepted the destination

14. it guided me thru upper level of the V'zano Bridge

15. I knew I had to take exit 18

16. then the location separated from actual position and it got lost completely until like 2 blocks before the right turn. But I already pulled over and took out my phone and set the destination on Google Maps which guided me to the end.

 

The bldgs in that section of Brooklyn aren't tall. In the Bay Ridge and Boro Park sections of Brooklyn there are no skyscrapers and the trees are not covering the sky.

Edited December 16, 2013 by pjurek99

[CarpeNivem]

Overall, I've been quite pleased with the navigation system, and this is coming from someone who's never bought a car with factory navigation before, nor seen a system I'm able to understand why anyone would pay money for, ever. I used to opt for Garmin units, years ago, but have been using my phone recently.

 

That said, I knew I wanted the My Ford Touch 8" center screen, navigation or not. I just loved that stereo. I also thought the button design if you opted against MFT was ugly, personally. And while MFT actually is available without navigation, it's extremely hard to find, and really not a whole lot cheaper. So I said, sure, get the nav.

 

I'm glad I did. I never use my phone for nav anymore. I do however, annoyingly, have to use my phone to learn street addresses. Trying to use voice recognition to recognize POI names is extremely difficult, often impossible. I have found it does work pretty well with destinations that have names comprised of dictionary words, like American Furniture Warehouse, or Chart House, for example. But anything which is a proper name, and/or a confusing order of words (is it "The Denver Museum of Natural History and Science" or "The History and Science Museum of Denver", for example) the car just can NOT understand. So, basically any time I need to search for a POI, I rarely attempt even speaking the name anymore. I just pull over, whip out my phone, search for the address, then pull the voice command stalk and say, "Navigation, Destination, Address". It's much faster, and usually works quite well at that point.

 

Once underway, I've found the directions provided are accurate and efficient. I particularly like that the voice can be eliminated, so instead of hearing "Turn right in whatever feet, Turn right in a few more feet, Turn right now," I just hear the tones. The tones are so much nicer. I highly recommend changing that setting ASAP. The system will beep once when you're a little bit from your turn, beep once more when you're close to your turn, and beep twice when you should be turning now. The tones can also be muted entirely, if you'd prefer, you can do that too. Just be sure to put the nav screen on the mini display to the right of the speedometer, or else you're likely to miss your turn, since there will be no audible reminder.

All in all, I think the nav package has a lot of really nice features, so I'm really glad we got it, and I would definitely recommend it. If nothing else, I'm told it'll increase the resale value of the car. I don't know if that's true or just something the salesman said, but it seems believable enough.

[zhackwyatt]

it happened on Hamilton Pkwy in Brooklyn. It was a sunny day. It began on Goethals Bridge with a system crash. Then two failed calculations. Then off-route location indication mentioned earlier.

 

The sequence was like this:

 

1. Driving on Goethals Bridge. Voice button and Navigation Voice command

2. crash

3. quick recovery - then voice command again

4. voice - find a street address

5. ok

6. on i278 it showed a turn that made no sense

7. i did continue on I287

8. instead of calculating new route it displayed Route Calculation Failed

9. I clicked Nav amd then Previous destinations

10. I retrieved the last entry

11. clicked it and then it failed again

12. steps 9 and 10 again

13. now it accepted the destination

14. it guided me thru upper level of the V'zano Bridge

15. I knew I had to take exit 18

16. then the location separated from actual position and it got lost completely until like 2 blocks before the right turn. But I already pulled over and took out my phone and set the destination on Google Maps which guided me to the end.

 

The bldgs in that section of Brooklyn aren't tall. In the Bay Ridge and Boro Park sections of Brooklyn there are no skyscrapers and the trees are not covering the sky.

Have you had your SD Card replaced? That fixed my navigation issues.

[pjurek99]

Yes. Twice.

[robertiv]

Overall, I've been quite pleased with the navigation system, and this is coming from someone who's never bought a car with factory navigation before, nor seen a system I'm able to understand why anyone would pay money for, ever. I used to opt for Garmin units, years ago, but have been using my phone recently.

 

That said, I knew I wanted the My Ford Touch 8" center screen, navigation or not. I just loved that stereo. I also thought the button design if you opted against MFT was ugly, personally. And while MFT actually is available without navigation, it's extremely hard to find, and really not a whole lot cheaper. So I said, sure, get the nav.

 

I'm glad I did. I never use my phone for nav anymore. I do however, annoyingly, have to use my phone to learn street addresses. Trying to use voice recognition to recognize POI names is extremely difficult, often impossible. I have found it does work pretty well with destinations that have names comprised of dictionary words, like American Furniture Warehouse, or Chart House, for example. But anything which is a proper name, and/or a confusing order of words (is it "The Denver Museum of Natural History and Science" or "The History and Science Museum of Denver", for example) the car just can NOT understand. So, basically any time I need to search for a POI, I rarely attempt even speaking the name anymore. I just pull over, whip out my phone, search for the address, then pull the voice command stalk and say, "Navigation, Destination, Address". It's much faster, and usually works quite well at that point.

 

Once underway, I've found the directions provided are accurate and efficient. I particularly like that the voice can be eliminated, so instead of hearing "Turn right in whatever feet, Turn right in a few more feet, Turn right now," I just hear the tones. The tones are so much nicer. I highly recommend changing that setting ASAP. The system will beep once when you're a little bit from your turn, beep once more when you're close to your turn, and beep twice when you should be turning now. The tones can also be muted entirely, if you'd prefer, you can do that too. Just be sure to put the nav screen on the mini display to the right of the speedometer, or else you're likely to miss your turn, since there will be no audible reminder.

 

All in all, I think the nav package has a lot of really nice features, so I'm really glad we got it, and I would definitely recommend it. If nothing else, I'm told it'll increase the resale value of the car. I don't know if that's true or just something the salesman said, but it seems believable enough.

 

I would have to agree with you, CarpeNivem. I think you summed it up quite well. I find that I use the navigation much MORE than I expected to, and for the most part, works really well. Using a smartphone with Ford Destinations app works for getting an address into the SYNC system quickly at startup. And, voice recognition of POI names (at least while driving) usually sucks. 

[ScubaDadMiami]

I hope that they get NAV to the point where we can say: Destination, Address Book, Joe Smith at Work.  Right now, I end out looking up the address on my phone, and then I use that to state the Street Address for NAV.

[zhackwyatt]

Everybody always forgets about Sync Services to that you can call and get destinations downloaded to the car.

 

I find when I have problems with POI, it's because the place isn't in the car's database (only so much can fit on that SD card) in the first place.

[bigalpha]

Honestly, I think that the navigation isn't really that good, which is a real shame. 

[Red Twin]

Just got my car back from the Dealer.  I had the Three Update Recalls done and my second run with GPS Issues.  They Updated the GPS Computer Program, Tested and returned.


I am enjoying the updates, in that my cold weather Mileage has already improved by 3 MPGs and seem to be increasing.  My GPS is another matter.  It has decided to head off on it's own and lock on parallel streets and have try to do the acrobatic U-turns.  Caled my Dealer this morning and found out three other C-maxes also have the same problem and the issue is now with the Engineers at Ford.  Interested in hearing that outcome.

Other then the GPS and SYNC in general I really do like my C-Max.  I had 8 Months of Dealer hell with my 2003 F-250 Diesel when I bought that home, and once Ford fixed all of the issues I ended up keeping it for 10 Years, and 244,000 miles of fun filled Driving Enjoyment.  I can only hope right now.