CarSwami

Hi All

I need your help with programming the navigation system in my 2018 Q7. Whenever I use the system to help me navigate, the directions I get invariably tell me to take toll roads. I know this because once I get to an area that I am familiar with, the system will prompt me to take a toll road even though I know that the "freeway" right next to the toll lanes is perfectly okay. I know that I have a feature in my Garmin that allows me to tell the system to not take toll roads, but I cannot seem to figure out how to do this in MM1. Any help that you can give me would be most helpful.

CarSwami

Force-1

Enter destination menu
Select right control button > Route criteria
Select the Avoid function

CarSwami

Thanks my friend, I will try it the next time I need to find my way around. Your help is very much appreciated.

CarSwami

Doc H

You are also given the option on the right side of the map when you first enter a destination to select one of three alternate routes - Fastest, Alternate Fastest (whatever that is), and Most Economical (whatever that is). Or you can select from the menu on the right drawer whenever the map is displayed and a destination is selected.

ConservativeConsumer

Don't mean to be rude,... but why not start reading the Manual, the section describing navigation system operation in details?

mbs

You're not being rude. There is a whole class of people who are unable and/or unwilling to read a manual. It's just easier for them to ask. It's no different than the people who post a question on any forum, not just car forums, that could be answered in 30 seconds with a google query.

It seems obvious to you and me how to research a question and get an answer using multiple different resources. But, too many folks don't know how to do anything other than ask someone else to get the answer for them.

Doc H

It's a pretty complex system, and written instructions are often not the clearest or best organized, or sometimes even easy to find in the Millennial's Bible (Google). I'm happy to provide any information from my own experience, and I've benefited more than once from the helpful folks on this forum, which is actually one of the ubiquitous "resources" on the Interwebz. And unless I'm mistaken, answering a question here, or even reading one, is not mandatory,

SarhoshAmiral

On the topic of navigation, should the nav system automatically reroute you based on traffic or direction you are going?

I don't know if it is something to do with the maps but I have a certain route from my office to home and I can never get navigation to give me that route. In fact it actively tries to make me not use it for some reason until I am halfway through. I dont' have any avoid options selected. Apart from this I've also noticed multiple times that the routing will not switch to a shorter ETA route and only when I take the turn it changes the route and actually shortens the ETA.

Now as I write this I wonder if I should give a try to setup a route with a midpoint in between to see what ETA time it calculates.

Doc H

It's unfortunately the case that an in-car GPS doesn't always give you the fastest, most direct, or most economical route. The Audi system is fairly typical, but I understood it was supposed to have some sort of "learning" logic that eventually understands your personal routes, although I haven't noticed that on mine. I've found most after-market systems are better than any OEM built-in, even phone apps. It is supposed to factor in traffic updates, but my experience has been that a built-in GPS may re-route you on a longer journey after whatever traffic delay has been cleared, so even there it's not exactly accurate. Your quandary is "Should I believe it and take this exit, or press on because it doesn't know the accident was cleared three hours ago?" The alternate routes do help, so you don't end up backtracking on the Interstate when your actual destination is 10 miles closer via a direct route, on roads that are actually not that much slower. And it doesn't always "see" the road that goes straight to your destination that you take every day, and is actually on the map, but instead wants you to make a left turn and go 5 miles out of your way, but I think that's just the state of in-car navigation technology, at least today.

gsobol

If you recall, sometime back a consortium of mostly German car companies bought nokia maps company (currently names HERE) in order to drop royalty fees related to GPS map. Some time after that HERE entered into partnership with INRIX in order to provide "real-time" traffic information. So that's what we have in our Q.
Now, we all know about Waze. The big difference between Inrix and Waze is how the traffic data is derived. Inrix (and Google Maps as well) derive data from various in road sensors and mobile GPS devices mounted in delivery vehicles and Inrix mobile smartphone applications. Waze is all community based providing traffic data from user devices using Waze.
When comparing the frequency of updates between the two, it seems that Inrix updates traffic every 5~15 minutes (at least that's my experience), where Waze is much more frequent and quicker. Also, the traffic data is not available everywhere on either of these platforms. Both of them require "sensors" to provide traffic data information. However, because Waze is community based, it will gather more data from more locations and it will show more information on secondary and tertiary streets - Inrix won't. This can lead to better alternate route calculation giving advantage to Waze. So if your goal is to find a quicker route home (or somewhere else) use Waze.
However, the advantage of a build in system is that when you are somewhere where the data connection is not available you can still rely on the build in maps to get you to where you need to go. I guess it's good to have options, as long as you understand the advantages, disadvantages and the limitations. But in todays' busy world, taking the time to research and educating oneself is overrated.....