A4Driver

Thanks. I just set it up to recognize my voice. Looking forward to using voice more often to navigate my way.
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A4Driver

Well, that was a joke. I set out today to do some shopping at Kohl's. There are three stores located within 10 miles of my house. I used the voice control and said, "Google search, Kohl's."

It returned with one entry -- "Dave's Dog and Cat Hospital." Not exactly what I was looking for. So I canceled the search and tried again about six times. Now it was telling me that what I was searching for didn't exist.

So I had an idea, and I searched for "Kohl's Department Store." This time the search came back with all three stores. I guess the name "Kohl's" alone is a little too specific.
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caranddriver

A prime example of why in-car navigation system's are so far behind Google/Waze and even Apple crappy Maps. Tech companies have the resources and expertise to fund lots of R&D and development. Car makers are not software development experts and if they buy 3rd-party, they are buying second tier tech company product.

SCarGuy

May I make another suggestion? Look through your owners manual and/or the tutorials on your MyAudi portal. When doing a voice search, there are specific words the system is designed to look for. For Navigation, it is "Take Me To", for example

SCarGuy

everyone wants everything until it comes time to write a check....

Obsidian3K

I'd happily pay $1,000 for a built-in Google Pixel (or iPhone X for those so inclined), if that's the only way to get a modern navigation and search experience.
IIRC, Audi charges $3,000 for navigation in some markets, so I'd even be saving money by foregoing that system.

The chances of that happening are exactly zero--not least because profit margins on navigation must be pretty healthy--but a guy can dream.

superswiss

I'm curious about the new MMI in the A6 and above, but now that I'm strongly considering abandoning the brand, because nothing Audi is coming out with these days really tickles me I'm finding that Audi is falling behind quite a bit. I'm specifically looking at Mercedes-AMG for my next car so I'm watching all kinds of reviews and the other day I watched a review of the new A-Class. Take a look at that cabin tech! First production car with augmented reality navigation and natural voice interaction with the car's AI. I think Audi needs to wake up and start living up to their "Vorsprung durch Technik" mantra.

I did try the "Kohl's" example above in my RS5 with the older MMI system and I could indeed not get it to work. Instead of "Kohl's" in understood "Calls". Now to be fair, English is my second language and while I don't have a huge accent some of my pronunciation isn't perfect. I did try the same in the Google Assistant on my phone and it understood me right away. This made me wonder a bit, because everything after the "Google search" command is supposed to be processed by Google's voice recognition and not the MMI,

For me the reality is that I rarely drive somewhere unplanned, so while I do navigate using voice commands it happens rather infrequent. Most drives that require navigation were planned in advance, so I simply use the MMI connect app to send the destination to the car, pull it up and start navigating. Compared to Audi's competitors, the MMI connect app at least on the iPhone is actually very good for sending destinations to the car. It integrates with the phone's calendar, so destinations on calendar appoints can be sent to the car with a swipe and it integrates with the iOS share functionality, so destinations can be shared directly from apps such as Apple Maps, Google Maps, Yelp etc. without even having to first start the MMI connect app and search for the location again.

Here's the A-Class review for those who are curious what other brands are doing.

SCarGuy

the natural language thing is something you'll see being integrated into all the premium brands very soon. I played with it for about 20 minutes at a recent event for the new A8, and even in a busy room with background noise, it worked well. A lot better than the current gen, which sort of forces you to use their key words.

fwiw, I took an S5 home last night (not my car)...never did the voice recognition in it. I had to stop at a clients house first, and then to grab some groceries for dinner, and then to home. I used the handwriting for the clients address, but voice command from his house to the local grocery - it picked up the name of the supermarket right away, gave me 2 choices, and asked me to pick the line, which I did, and it navigated me.

I don't understand much about the coding of these systems in any car, and whos language it uses (Audi's? The developers?), or, if success is based on the quality of the data it can pull. But so far, when I use the voice commands (I've done the speech recognition part in my own car) it's worked well the few times I've used it. I am like superswiss in that most of my trips are to places I go to all the time, so I don't use nav all that often. But I do find sending destinations from the phone to the car very handy