Aquineas
4th Genesis
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2010
- Messages
- 4,326
- Reaction score
- 1,117
- Points
- 113
- Location
- Georgetown, TX
- Genesis Model Year
- 2020
- Genesis Model Type
- Genesis G70
I love having my navigation system integrated with the car. I love seeing my route and guidance and turn information displayed on a big 8" LCD (I think the one in the Genesis is 8", but if it's not, then silently replace my 8" number with the number that makes you happy, and be done with it).
However factory navigation systems as we know them will be dead within 4 years. They are:
Note that my current Genesis is my 3rd factory Nav system. My previous systems were on a 2010 Genesis and my 2004 Acura TL. I should note that the software on the Acura TL was generally better written than on the Genesis, but it isn't/wasn't *that* much better.
Specifically regarding the Nav system in the Genesis, I've mentioned in the past how it really sucks trying to enter addresses. Well you can add sub-optimal navigation to my list of gripes. As I mentioned in another thread, I took a round-trip road trip in my Genny this weekend from Austin, TX to Odessa, TX. After putting in the address of our hotel in Odessa, my wife commented that the 7+ hour trip time was 2 hours higher than what she'd planned for when she mapped it out online. A few minutes off I can handle, but I'm not prepared to drive another two hours longer than I need to. It turns out that the route that it plotted for me, while Interstate heavy, added more than a hundred miles to my journey (If you're curious, the Genesis nav insisted on taking me west on I-10 until the I-20/I-10 merge only so I could go East on I-20 back to Odessa). Since I didn't want...
... I spent several minutes trying to coax the Genesis to come up with a more efficient time/mileage route. If you didn't know this before, before you select "Start Route Guidance" in your Nav, you have the option of choosing other routes. On this screen, you can choose "shortest route by time", "shortest route by distance", along with a couple of other options. No matter what option we chose, it would not deviate from adding two hours to my journey. I finally agreed to nix the Genesis nav and use the one on my phone, at least until I got far enough along that the Genesis finally and begrudgingly auto-routed to a more efficient route (note not as efficient as the Google one, but only 45 minutes longer rather than 2 hours longer). It turns out that the most efficient way to get from Austin to Midland/Odessa is to avoid I-10 entirely and to go through San Angelo, if you're curious...
My thoughts are that if I pay $2000 for a factory nav system, it should be better than it is. Yes, I know Genesis owners don't directly pay for the Factory nav, but we indirectly pay for it in the cost of the car. I think as more and more people have smartphones, it will be harder for auto manufacturers to justify such exorbitant highway robbery (pun intended!)
What I want, and what I think others want, is for my phone to more cleanly integrate with the electronics of my car. I used to think that I wanted the ability to press a button and have my phone upload an address or driving directions to my car's nav. Now I think something more drastic is needed; I think the Navigation, and in fact, portions of the display itself, in cars should be exposed as a Bluetooth interface, and it should be possible for the phone itself to perform the navigation, while the display on the car is nothing more than a smart Bluetooth monitor. The phone should be able to "drive" the car display to some degree, so that they could work for an integrated, connected experience exceeding what we have today.
Furthermore, while car companies have traditionally been very closed when it comes to the software on their vehicles, I think the first company which opens up their software and allows users to easily personalize their cars audio/visual/navigation systems will be the vehicle manufacturer that everyone chooses first (at least until other manufacturers see how widely successful the original manufacturer was and copies them). Note that historically, the companies with open interfaces absolutely destroy the ones with closed ones in the marketplace (see Apple vs. IBM, circa 1985, and Apple vs. Android, circa 2011- you'd think that Apple would be smart enough to not make the same mistake twice, but nope, apparently not). Electronics are already a key portion of the appeal of a car, why not open the tool chest? I am confident that, given a few weeks access with access to the source code for the Genesis audio-visual system, I could at the very least come up with a better iPod interface, for example, and I'm sure there are others out there who could do much better than I.
Imagine for example, cars that have downloadable, personalized navigation voices (I would personally pay for a "hood" version of a nav voice, for example, for mere entertainment purposes alone. Can you imagine: "Homey you was (sic) supposed to turn back there!" I'd die laughing!) Less frivolously, imagine having an audio system that, while listening to the radio, could detect when a commercial came on and then would switch to your iPod while the commercials were running (or switch to other stations entirely), only to switch back to the original station to catch the next "48 minute commercial free" period when the commercials were done. Imagine nav systems that you could program to avoid high crime areas (or at least show an integrated crime density map), or dynamic navigation systems that allowed you to avoid stormy weather, etc. Give me the option to drag my route via my finger or pointing device and have it "snap" to an alternative route, while keeping my destination. It has been shown time and time again that when people are allowed to customize anything, the end-users/modding community will always take it in totally new directions than what the original manufacturer intended (this can be both good and bad; I am not, for instance, necessarily advocating the rest of the CAN to user modification; I don't want any software that could potentially crash to mess with my steering, braking, accelation or operation of my car).
Anyway, these are my thoughts, other opinions are welcome.
However factory navigation systems as we know them will be dead within 4 years. They are:
- Too expensive
- Too hard to enter destinations/addresses in to
- Almost immediately out of date
- Too expensive to update
Note that my current Genesis is my 3rd factory Nav system. My previous systems were on a 2010 Genesis and my 2004 Acura TL. I should note that the software on the Acura TL was generally better written than on the Genesis, but it isn't/wasn't *that* much better.
Specifically regarding the Nav system in the Genesis, I've mentioned in the past how it really sucks trying to enter addresses. Well you can add sub-optimal navigation to my list of gripes. As I mentioned in another thread, I took a round-trip road trip in my Genny this weekend from Austin, TX to Odessa, TX. After putting in the address of our hotel in Odessa, my wife commented that the 7+ hour trip time was 2 hours higher than what she'd planned for when she mapped it out online. A few minutes off I can handle, but I'm not prepared to drive another two hours longer than I need to. It turns out that the route that it plotted for me, while Interstate heavy, added more than a hundred miles to my journey (If you're curious, the Genesis nav insisted on taking me west on I-10 until the I-20/I-10 merge only so I could go East on I-20 back to Odessa). Since I didn't want...
- For my wife to have to hold her smartphone for the entire 5+ hour trip
- For me to switch my own smartphone (which was conveniently mounted where I could easily see it) away from the app it was running (radar detector integrated app), I didn't want to switch my phone to the Nav app
... I spent several minutes trying to coax the Genesis to come up with a more efficient time/mileage route. If you didn't know this before, before you select "Start Route Guidance" in your Nav, you have the option of choosing other routes. On this screen, you can choose "shortest route by time", "shortest route by distance", along with a couple of other options. No matter what option we chose, it would not deviate from adding two hours to my journey. I finally agreed to nix the Genesis nav and use the one on my phone, at least until I got far enough along that the Genesis finally and begrudgingly auto-routed to a more efficient route (note not as efficient as the Google one, but only 45 minutes longer rather than 2 hours longer). It turns out that the most efficient way to get from Austin to Midland/Odessa is to avoid I-10 entirely and to go through San Angelo, if you're curious...
My thoughts are that if I pay $2000 for a factory nav system, it should be better than it is. Yes, I know Genesis owners don't directly pay for the Factory nav, but we indirectly pay for it in the cost of the car. I think as more and more people have smartphones, it will be harder for auto manufacturers to justify such exorbitant highway robbery (pun intended!)
What I want, and what I think others want, is for my phone to more cleanly integrate with the electronics of my car. I used to think that I wanted the ability to press a button and have my phone upload an address or driving directions to my car's nav. Now I think something more drastic is needed; I think the Navigation, and in fact, portions of the display itself, in cars should be exposed as a Bluetooth interface, and it should be possible for the phone itself to perform the navigation, while the display on the car is nothing more than a smart Bluetooth monitor. The phone should be able to "drive" the car display to some degree, so that they could work for an integrated, connected experience exceeding what we have today.
Furthermore, while car companies have traditionally been very closed when it comes to the software on their vehicles, I think the first company which opens up their software and allows users to easily personalize their cars audio/visual/navigation systems will be the vehicle manufacturer that everyone chooses first (at least until other manufacturers see how widely successful the original manufacturer was and copies them). Note that historically, the companies with open interfaces absolutely destroy the ones with closed ones in the marketplace (see Apple vs. IBM, circa 1985, and Apple vs. Android, circa 2011- you'd think that Apple would be smart enough to not make the same mistake twice, but nope, apparently not). Electronics are already a key portion of the appeal of a car, why not open the tool chest? I am confident that, given a few weeks access with access to the source code for the Genesis audio-visual system, I could at the very least come up with a better iPod interface, for example, and I'm sure there are others out there who could do much better than I.
Imagine for example, cars that have downloadable, personalized navigation voices (I would personally pay for a "hood" version of a nav voice, for example, for mere entertainment purposes alone. Can you imagine: "Homey you was (sic) supposed to turn back there!" I'd die laughing!) Less frivolously, imagine having an audio system that, while listening to the radio, could detect when a commercial came on and then would switch to your iPod while the commercials were running (or switch to other stations entirely), only to switch back to the original station to catch the next "48 minute commercial free" period when the commercials were done. Imagine nav systems that you could program to avoid high crime areas (or at least show an integrated crime density map), or dynamic navigation systems that allowed you to avoid stormy weather, etc. Give me the option to drag my route via my finger or pointing device and have it "snap" to an alternative route, while keeping my destination. It has been shown time and time again that when people are allowed to customize anything, the end-users/modding community will always take it in totally new directions than what the original manufacturer intended (this can be both good and bad; I am not, for instance, necessarily advocating the rest of the CAN to user modification; I don't want any software that could potentially crash to mess with my steering, braking, accelation or operation of my car).
Anyway, these are my thoughts, other opinions are welcome.
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