SiNi

I am sorry to hear of these tales of woe regarding poor navigation functionality in the US. If the system performed this poorly in the UK I would be pretty hacked off too! I accept this is not the centrepiece of the car but even so it is not acceptable and Porsche really need to address the problem with a software upgrade and/or improved database for the US.

simsgw

They really do. You should have read my rants when I had a 997.2 which version is even worse. I see two reasons they have not, as an outside observer:

• First, even with the generous cost roll-up permitted by the margins Porsche commands, engineering budgets are finite. A good engineering manager works with the marketing managers to get a realistic assessment of marginal sales associated with each candidate effort. With Porsche Carreras at least I suspect the marginal benefit in the showroom is quite low with navigation systems. How many of us rushed to the forums and Consumers Report to check how well the nav system works? Did you say: "Wow. Great nav system. Let's get a Porsche instead of a Lambo this year"? (Last I heard, Lambos use that Volvo nav system that is reputedly the worst in the world.) Was that why you chose a Porsche? Yeah. I thought not.
• Second, engineering groups have a spirit, a shared culture, that creates priorities almost without their being voiced. In launch work, no one has to say "It's important to hit our launch window" because it's built into the culture. Launching at the wrong time is as bad as not launching at all. I'm very sure that after sixty years, the Porsche engineering culture is a strong one.

That second one is a killer for doodads like nav systems. I'm using slight hyperbole, but the spirit is correct when I say that if Marketing absolutely insists that something must be included that isn't part of that culture, like ... let's say cupholders, then it will be provided grudgingly and by sending the local junior college intern down to the dimestore to pick up something that can be added with duct tape. Reality isn't too far removed from that. Instead of an intern, the tendency is to assign something that "isn't our interest area" to a subcontractor. I didn't own a Porsche of that generation, but I'm told that as recently as the 993, they didn't even have a glove box, so I suppose no cupholders either.

I would say the current ones are adequate with clear-cut straddle. That is, they work for people who use them in their daily commute, and they hide away nicely for people like me who enforce a no-food-drink-or-non-automotive-stimulants rule. But I'll bet the first couple of tries were pretty pathetic.

Combine those two reasons with the likelihood that someone in the corporate family is a provider of nav products and you get the result we endure. Send it to a subcontractor; forward the complaints to them; and make fun of them at the annual picnic because they get no other pressure to improve since they are a lock for the work.

I'm not being cynical. Exaggerating slightly, but only a little. This bit about 'culture' is a known problem of managing the engineering of complex items.

Gary

fbroen

I have had a Garmin route me in a 4 mile or so circle in Maine. Literally. It wanted to do that loop for perpetuity. So hardly flawless.

I use the Nav map to look at, sometimes. Used the Nav a lot in Europe where it was super.

Haven't bothered with the Nav at all here. This is neither a criticism nor an endorsement of the Nav. It is a reflection of how good the Google maps on the phone is, IMO. (as opposed to Apple Maps, which I guess again shows the Euro bias in Tom Tom)

In fact, Last Destination on car Nav still says "Porsche Strasse, Zuffenhausen" from when we returned the car for shipping.

Cogito_Ergo_Zoom

Actually one of my "biggest" sore points with the car so far (and there are very few). Trying to coax POI information out of the car, the interface, the database for US roads, how it "forces" you to input the city name instead of suggesting a list to choose from after you've entered a road name..all in all it's a pretty frustrating experience.

On the positive side, I like how I can use the manual zoom function in the TFT instrument panel screen to dial in juuuust the right view of the road ahead when I'm jamming on an unfamiliar backroad. Sort of like my own personal rally map.

rnl

I must have low standards or am easily satisfied. With the exception of early turn announcements, The nav system in my 991 works just fine. I have used Tom Tom, garmin and Toyota systems (I even have a bicycle garmin nav sys / heart monitor / power meter monitor - that actually literally saved my life - really) and found the Porsche system just fine.

It's a nav system and not a substitute for thinking. While I never mastered the art of refolding a gas station map I always scout out a new or unlnown route on my home computer or an atlas before venturing out.

simsgw

A certain amount is cultural differences in how we expect to interact and how we expect to use the available roads. As someone said, the Teutonic preference for reverse ordering, even unto addresses, feels like I'm dating a supply sergeant from WWII. But I can accommodate such things as idiosyncrasies. The bigger problem is the spotty database. I get the sense that Europe is covered adequately and also the East Coast of the United States. Here on the West Coast, it's considerably more annoying because we have to pull out a Smart phone and use Google maps just when a built-in nav system would be perfect because we're negotiating heavy traffic and/or busy city streets.

But it's acceptable in the long run, because I didn't buy this car for the center stack. I can always pick up a Nissan Juke if I want gadgets.

Gary

Hothonda

My DD is a '12 Acura MDX....the navigation technology/system is far beyond the 2013 991. The Porsche nav is worse than worthless.

Very disappointed.

rnl

Perhaps it's because I rarely drive to a place or an area where I have not already been...I suppose this is a function of age. I do find it very useful as we approach heavy or jammed traffic. I pull off to a side road and turn on the nag system to obtain alternate routes.

yes, I suppose that the good news is that while eastern states have few new roads for nav system accuracy, the bad new is that most are in poor repair.

simsgw

I might not go that far, but the California-designed interface combined with the superb database standards of the Japanese makes the Acura nav systems very tough to match.

The Japanese have been obsessed with curing the navigation problems of driving in Tokyo for at least fifty years and it shows. They just extended that obsession to our continent. Or at least to the West Coast. But I don't remember any Acura owners complaining of database problems on the East Coast, so I don't really believe it is simply a question of which coast is closer to each manufacturer.

The 991 navigation system is much better than the 997 version, though Lord knows they had a lot of room to improve. But it does reward an effort to learn the obscure ways it expects us to interact. Not worthless, just a lot more work to extract the benefit than it should be. And of course I don't have time for that effort while rolling through San Diego County at 85 mph, nor do I suppose anyone else does.

We definitely have to study it at home, or at least on our home grounds. I've taken to using the nav system around here in areas where I don't need it at all, just so I can identify the quirks with no real downside to screwing up the commands.

Gary

simsgw

Oh yes, you remind me of one feature I didn't expect to appreciate. I have about a million miles of commuting under my belt and never expected to need a bloody computer to tell me how to get somewhere while avoiding traffic. But I do find the traffic-based route-finding to be effective. Since I'm an old man too, I don't use the roads every day and I lose track of the 'hot' spots and when they congeal. Not to mention, I'm going to cities I haven't visited in thirty years. Again, the interface is somewhat poorly done, but it still works well enough that I am actually considering renewing XM Radio just to get the traffic information feed for my nav system.

That's a great example of cultural differences though. If you tell a Southern California driver to join a freeway, it does no good to correct yourself ten seconds later with "your route is being re-calculated to reflect traffic conditions". By that time, I'm halfway up the on-ramp and committed. A late decision to route me on surface streets won't do me a darn bit of good. Once or twice, I've been held up by on-ramp traffic actually backing up the surface streets approaching the freeway, so I've been able to avoid getting on at all. But otherwise, I'm on the freeway -- sitting still on the freeway -- cussing out the nav system that tried too late to send me down some surface boulevard as an alternate route.

I infer from this that Europeans treat getting on the Autobahn as a considered event, not an offhand flick of the wheel. In our car-culture-driven Southern California, we get on freeways and off again just to avoid a traffic light between us and a supermarket we want. The European designers of this nav system seem to figure they have a couple of minutes to re-compute before the driver is embroiled in the mess the re-route is intended to avoid.

Gary

rsteele

I've only owned my 2013 Panamera GTS for a couple of months. The navigation system has taken a little getting used to, but I find it to be satisfactory overall. I've always regarding navigation systems as second best to knowing the optimal driving directions from experience. I doubt any of the systems are smart enough to pick the best route every time. A navigation system has two principal benefits: (1) getting back on track after making a wrong turn, and (2) reaching a pinpoint location as one gets close to the destination. The most accurate way to enter a destination is to find the exact destination on a reliable map using MapQuest or Google Earth, then use a navigation system's map input function to selection that destination precisely. For any destination, I've already figured out ahead of time from other resources the basic route I want to take, so if the navigation system tries to send me from Atlanta to Denver by way of Little Rock, instead of St. Louis, I just ignore it. If one takes the proper basic route the navigation system will eventually catch up.

I was pleased to discover that on the Porsche I could use GPS coordinates for my destination, but unfortunately the "degrees, minutes, seconds" format doesn't allow the sort of precision needed as one gets close to the destination. Entering coordinates in degrees and a six-place decimal fraction of degree (easily obtained from Google Earth) would have been much better, and far easier than using the map input feature. It's a shame that Porsche had the right idea, and yet still missed the boat.

The navigation system on my prior BMW M5 provided altitude information for the vehicle's present location, which though not particularly needed for navigation, was interesting nonetheless. The Porsche system doesn't appear to provide the user with vehicle altitude.

TTCarrera

Actually, the version in my 2013 991S does provide the altitude. It can be one of the optional items you can display in the Multi-Function Display gauge (not the big PCM screen, but one to the right of the centered Tachometer). It seems to be fairy accurate when compared to a GPS-based altimeter app on my iPhone.

rbrenn

How often does Porsche typically update their SatNav software/mapping? And specifically, what is the date and version number of the most recent PCM version and mapping software? I'm looking at a Panny with a January 2012 build and was wondering if there's been an update since then? Thanks.

GregD

I was playing with the GPS altitude display on the MFD, and I was visibly 10 ft above sea level and the car was telling me I was -20FT ;-)

Pavegeno928

Altitude is the least accurate of GPS measurements. Don't get hung up on it being a few feet off. It's strength is in the x and y axes, not z.