The wife and I took the car for a drive up to visit the in-laws today for the 4th. We were traveling up a bit past Sacramento from the San Francisco area, so this put a tad under 300 miles on the car round trip and nearly doubled the amount of mileage I had on the car. The wife drove up so this was her first chance to have any significant time behind the wheel.

We noticed a few things along the way...

1. The navigation (or perhaps the map) on the car leaves some room for improvement. The build-in nav got us lost at one point. It was trying to get us to take a road that just didn't exist. Waze managed to properly navigate us the rest of the way, but this was the first time I've seen a navigation system so badly off. It is like the maps in the car were thinking we were somewhere else entirely at one point. When we followed the Waze directions it was taking us across roads that weren't even listed on the car's navigation maps at all (just empty space.) I've used the nav a lot around the SF area and never had a problem so I found this odd. Maybe the maps were just way out of date but the roads it said to follow didn't actually exist either so maybe not.

2. It is a bit too easy to accidentally hit the left shift paddle when using the turn signals. The wife didn't even know what the shift paddles were for and dropped the car into 2nd (or maybe 1st) at one point... we both thought the transmission was having some issues since it was right as we started accelerating after coming out of the toll booth, and the car was just winding out and not shifting. Once I realized what happened we got it sorted. Good thing I got her to stop since she was pushing 5k rpm before I realized it. The second time it happened I caught it immediately. I think I will disable the shift paddles when not in dynamic mode going forward since I am the only one who will ever use that anyway.

3. Despite it being 110 degrees in the Sacramento area, the car itself had no issues with the heat. We didn't even realize how hot it was until we got out of the car at the in-laws place. Then we wished we hadn't gotten out.

4. The new CF vinyl wrap I put on the car however, didn't much appreciate the heat. It was fine on the way up, but after sitting in the sun for a while, when we came back out to head home the wrap on the roll bars had blistered in several places. The other vinyl pieces seemed fine though. I was able to smooth down most of the blisters but will probably just end up taking it back to the shop to get them to fix it, or remove it. Mine are gloss black normally so I don't need the CF wrap there, but it does look much nicer.

5. When we got back in the car I wished I had gotten the Suedecloth package instead of the premium leather. That or I had tinted the windows and put a windshield cover in the car to reduce the ambient temperature in the car.

6. Lastly, on a bit of a comedic note, my wife managed to either amuse or annoy someone in a McLaren 12C along the way. I don't think he had any concept of how fast my car is.

The story for the last bit is, when we finally course corrected via Waze and were in the final stretch to the in-laws place, a guy in a beautiful red 12C pulled along side at a stop light. I assume he didn't think much of the Jag since he wasn't really looking over or anything. The wife accelerated off when the light turned green and launched the car forward leaving the 12C behind. She wasn't doing anything crazy, she just put her foot into it when off the line, which is what she normally does. (The car is amazingly quick off the line with AWD.) The guy in the 12C caught up to us at the next red light. This time he was looking over and revving his engine a bit harder. At the next light she did the same thing, and beat the 12C off the line again and this time he certainly appeared to have been trying not to be beat. She didn't continue accelerating past the normal speed limit, so the guy eventually blazed by us at like 3x our speed and flew up the road. We caught up to him again few miles further up the road but he was going straight when we were turning left. The guy gave us a thumbs up before heading off.

I choose to assume he was impressed with the acceleration, otherwise I would expect it would have been a different finger he used at our parting.

 

maybe he didn't have launch control activated?

 

Bummer to hear about the CF getting loose...keep us appraised on how that plays out.

 

Good story.

Sounds as if your wife has a great RT, and if she had been driving the 12C, the results would have been reversed. That's a sub 3 second car to 60 and in the 10's on the 1/4 mile.

 

True... but then again from the reviews and acceleration tests I've seen on the F-Type R, the RWD can do 0-60 in 3.4 seconds. AWD should provide at least 0.1-0.4 second advantage off the line. Either way the F-Type should be slower, but not by a huge margin.

But yeah I don't know what the guy in the 12C was doing since he had both a power and weight advantage over us, so he should have been able to jump us on takeoff if he was really trying. It isn't like we were using launch control or even flooring it off the line, the wife just has a bit of a lead foot on takeoff since she isn't used to the power of the car. Maybe he just didn't have good reaction times and wasn't expecting our car to have acceleration in the same class as his car.

Either way it was amusing since she was like... "what is that guy doing? Is he trying to race us?"

 

On the nav screen, you need to zoom in to 1/8 mile to see local/minor roads.

 

Noted. However, we were well under that zoom level. I normally keep the zoom level pretty close in to begin with so I can always see local roads. I believe it is normally at or near 800 feet, but in this instance I zoomed in further when we were trying to figure out this issue.

I'd have been fine if it didn't show the roads but still managed to navigate us properly. The problem was that it got lost and sent us to a dead end street. I just thought it was weird because when I used Waze to complete our journey, it backtracked quite a bit and then took us down roads that the Jag navigation didn't show at all, regardless of zoom level.

We had a similar issue when we were trying to use the Jag nav to return home. It tried to make me turn left on a road that didn't have a left turn, so I went back to Waze again.

 

We have four 2013 or newer vehicles all with nav systems, and none come close to the accuracy and reliability of Waze. In addition, the ability of Waze to re-route around delays is unmatched.

 

agree MB nav useless- Jag nav even more than useless- if its an option I opt out on nav- and sat radio.
Pandora better than sat radio and w Pandora you get to hear your waze prompts!


Do wish there was a way to get that waze nav screen on the monitor- currently ive found leaning the iphone on the dash with the base at the volume knob is best. Putting the phone in the cupholder is way too much of a look

 

Ironically, the best nav of the bunch in our fleet is in the cheapest vehicle, Jeep. Fiat Chrysler's UConnect interface is rated number one by virtually all reviewers of infotainment systems, and the nav display and controls are excellent.

 

I agree for the most part. Unfortunately I have found that there are places where Waze just doesn't work well, either due to poor GPS reception on my phone or perhaps lack of cellular data (or both.) It has caused some issues in previous trips to areas I'm not familiar with. Particularly when traveling to places in very rural areas. In those cases I have to rely on the in-vehicle nav over Waze.

When possible I like using the vehicle nav since I can still listen to music and hear the nav prompts. I tend to listen to XM/Sirius sat radio most of the time though. If we had car play or Android auto in these cars that would be the best of both worlds, since we could just run Waze in the car directly.

 

I like my sat radio. It works everywhere and doesn't require cellular data to be working on the phone.

Once the cars support Apple carplay or Android auto we will be able to do that, but who knows when Jag will catch up with the rest on that front. In any case, Navdy should be shipping soon as well, and that will probably remedy my personal issues in this regard. It will be nice having a HUD again.

For now, I have a phone mount that I have connected to the flat panel right below the top air vents and it puts my phone at a perfect viewing angle and distance.

 

Of our various vehicles, the wife and I both agree that the BMW far and away has the best nav. It is accurate, reflects local condition changes and traffic (though nowhere near as well as Waze of course) and integrates into the HUD of the vehicle brilliantly. That is one of the things I'll miss about that vehicle when I turn it back in at the end of next month. Well that and the other amazing tech options that they have that none of the others offer.

I find the Lexus nav to be the worst. I cannot really tell how accurate it is because I hate using it. Aside from the poor interface, it doesn't prompt me early enough for any direction changes or exits so I almost always end up missing turns, etc. When I drive the Lexus, I just use Waze if I need nav.

The Jag nav is okay... I haven't had any issues around the SF bay area yet anyway. It is better than the Lexus at least, both in terms of when it prompts and the interface. One thing I do miss is more in the interface/display, in that it doesn't show me how long until the next turn or what direction and street I should be planning/looking for. Most other nav displays do this. The center display between the gauges will eventually show the street and a little diagram showing the upcoming turn when you're getting close (like under 1000 feet maybe) but I generally like knowing further out.

 

Waze relies upon real-time data and reports from users. Thus, it has no advantage over regular nav systems in areas where few, if any, users are connected.

 

Right. Plus the GPS on a phone isn't generally as good as that in a vehicle, so phones use cell towers as a secondary form of GPS. So if you're in an area that doesn't have cell reception and you're having problems tracking GPS (or you have a phone that doesn't actually have real GPS) then Waze doesn't work properly (or at all.)

 

Unless I'm using them, my cupholders are usually closed. The 6S wedges almost perfectly between the two raised pieces of the console in that state. There's apparently an overpriced third party GPS application you can get for the InControl Apps, but it doesn't look particularly special, and I'd guess it's about as useful as in-car nav systems because of it.

With the existence of a nav app that can display through the car, it means it's certainly possible - has anyone considered getting in touch with Waze (or even Google) and asking them about developing for ICA (and other similar systems)

I suspect someone can make a more reliable app that displays to the dash for less than $80.

 

all in-car navigations will suffer from outdated info. that why I still often prefer using Google Maps navigation on my phone. More accurate, more real-time data. I'm guessing the nav data in the Jag is probably 2 years old by now!

 

A company called VAISTech developed a kit for Lexus that mirrors your phone display on the factory in-dash display, and retains functionality of steering wheel buttons and touchscreen. Link to their website below, and in the video you will see them launch Waze, Pandora, etc...

Video,Audio Information Solutions for Toyota and Lexus (iPod/iPhone/iPad, Android, USB, XM/Sirius SAT Radio, Video integration)

Perhaps they can develop something similar for the Jaguar system. I don't have any personal experience with the unit, but it was reviewed highly by members on the Lexus forum who purchased it.

 

The Nav has worked well enough in my area. All vehicle systems are subject to being out of date and slow to make changes. Before you invest in any of the annual updates, be sure it includes revisions for your area.

My main observation is that the Jag seems to chronically overstate the travel time 20-30% when I take a road trip. Of course, there could be something else coming into play that causes that pattern...

 

That looks awesome. It appears that they're mainly focused on Android, but have some folks using iOS devices too. I'll need to take a closer look at that and see if it is something that will work with our vehicle without causing issues with the OEM stuff. The car is a lease so I don't want to make any changes I can't back out later. It also doesn't seem like this is something that one can easily self-install, which is a bit of a pain.

Thanks for the suggestion!