Pwlcarz
Standard Member
Well, I haven't yet looked at updating the oem sat nav on my HS, but a couple of thoughts.I have spent the last few hours trying to connect a memory stick to the car, while watching YouTube videos on the process. Not quite the same as the videos for other models, as the screen display is different on my year old HS Hybrid. I get as far as the car telling me it is trying to link to the memory stick .... but it doesn't ..... even if I wait a long time. I have tried four memory sticks, all with plenty of memory, and all with the same result. Then I thought maybe it was becuase I had been using them on the iMac, so I flashed up the Windows laptop and formatted them all on there. They still wouldn't get any further than the car trying to link to the memory stick, so I have given up.
While looking on the menus I spotted Android Auto, and set that up to show my phone's apps on the screen, so I can now use Google Maps on my phone and get it showing on the car's screen. Tested and working, so I now have up to date maps and sat nav on screen via my phone.
I have to say the whole performance has put me off the car, and I may take the hit on value and just buy something else, probably an Audi Q3 like I had before. I have just lost a whole day messing about with this, and suspect it is a deliberate part of the car's makeup to make even more money on residuals for the dealerships
1. Waze is great and I really like that it shows your actual satellite calculated speed rather than the car's speedometer (although in fact it is actually very accurate I've found) similarly Google Maps is also pretty good.
However as far as I'm aware both are real time mapping. By that I mean the maps the apps use are not offline maps loaded to your phone (I may be wrong and stand corrected if so). Earlier this year I did the NC500 in a rented Mitsubishi Outlander that didn't have built in sat nav so used Waze or Google Maps. Unfortunately there was more than one ocaision when my phone lost signal and mapping disappeared (the arrow depicting the car's position showed on the screen but the map was just blank with no roads or other features). Eventually the phone would get a signal, the map would redisplay and on we would go - usually finding we had luckily gone in the general right direction if not the absolute one planned. Far more annoying than the odd road on the oem system not present.
2. Considering ditching the car and taking a financial hit because of a relatively minor glitch with the sat nav seems a rather extreme course of action to take. If I may also say that my last 3 car's before buying the MG were Audi's (two TT' and an S3) and they all had their fair share of glitches, especially with the Sat Nav! The last car (the S3) still couldn't do 7 digit postcodes!! And trying to find a point on a map using Audi's scroll dial was hopeless! Getting Audi dealers to do anything without charge was virtually impossible and they would always demand a thicker wedge than seemed reasonable!
Go ahead and change back to an Audi if you are really keen to spend £1000's more of your hard earned cash but justifying it on not being able to easily update the sat nav seems crazy to me.