Boost Addiction

Just back from our ED trip, and our experience with the loaner Garmin unit was that it was fine, but slow.

By "slow" I mean that it would say something like "turn left in 50 meters" when in fact the turn was right in front of you. The rolling map on the screen was somewhat more accurate, so we tried to rely more on that than on the spoken instructions.

We missed several turns in the confusion, and I got good at u-turns on narrow roads.

I wish that there were an option to pay to rent the euro maps while on the trip- I assume the headunit is the same, and only the maps are different?

Being able to use the factory navi would have improved the experience (it has a bigger screen, is integrated with the rest of the car, and learning it would have been useful- as opposed to learning the Garmin system, only to abandon it when the car come home).

gforaker

Unfortunately, Audi says that the head unit actually is different.

TIME89

Correct. From engineering point of view - this make no sense to me - why BMW unit work with European navigation software (old one on DVD and new one on Hard Drive) and Audi not. I assume satellite signal is the same - or BMW will not working. I'm thinking that AUDI system has no ability to install European map, then wipe out hard drive and install US maps. No one thinking that their system need this functionality and this was never implemented.
OR
Audi VDC facility in US has no instruments to update software from the scratch at the port.

gforaker

I think it is just more likely that the head units are entirely different. Satellite radio is built into our system and is not even available in Europe. I read that the European car can read the adaptive Autobahn speed limits off of the overhead signs and let the driver know the current limit on that stretch. That kind of feature does not exist here. The GPS maps must be able to be updated on the US units because they get out of date and can be updated. That involves a re-load of maps. More likely, it just is not worth it to Audi to custom design a European map package for the US units. Audi seems to do far fewer ED cars than BMW or Mercedes. Yes, a well designed system could use either maps and be easy for the dealer to update with US maps, but ED is really a niche market and does not drive product design.

CarSwami

I rented a navigation dvd from him when I did ED and he was great. Fabulous customer service.

I believe that the new BMW's have integrated the navigation maps into a hard drive somewhere in the car. They install European maps when the customer picks up the car in Munich, and replace them with North American maps before the car is redelivered to the customer. Do the new Audis still use dvd's?

TIME89

No, Audi use hard drive (to my knowledge), but they do not pre-install european maps for European Delivery customers.

CarSwami

Good to know that the nav system is integrated into the hard drive, thanks for the information.

gforaker

Just a quick check in after my return. The Garmin unit was very up to date and generally worked well as most Garmin do. There were a few times I wanted to throw it out the window, though. One time, it led me through a village fair to a ferry dock to cross the Rhine. Because of the fair, the line for the ferry was an hour long and dealing with the detour and the fair cost me almost 2 hours instead of taking the normal autobahn. I quickly went into the options and turned off ferries. Other times it seemed to prefer scenic routes rather than sticking to the faster autobahn. I recommend buying a simple road map to check your route against. At least twice, the Garmin told me to take a turn and then after taking it, changed its mind and recalculated.

Fithian

When I picked up my S5 in Ingolstadt in 2012, it came with a Garmin for navigation, which died in Belgium. I used an iPad with a local SIM card to navigate with Google Maps. For my next ED in July, an A6, they will give me another Garmin. I will just use a newer iPad with a local SIM and possibly the European software for iOS TomTom ($69).

superswiss

I never took the Garmin or whatever it was out of its bag when I picked up my RS5 in 2013. I use my Lumia 920 Windows Phone with built-in offline map support and the HERE apps for all of my trips around the world. Never need much roaming data and it has never gotten me lost or took me on strange routes. I've read horror stories from people trying to navigate Europe with Google Maps. Some guy, whose story I read very recently, ended up at the bottom of a flight of stairs in Italy or somewhere and Google Maps was telling him to drive up the stairs, it somehow switched into pedestrian mode on him while driving and was starting to give walking directions :-).

Next time, I might get a local SIM and stick it into the car and then connect my phone to the Wifi hotspot. That way I'm still reachable on my phone using the US number, but I can use local data through the car. I did that with the rental Audi on my last trip to Germany.