Tesla navigation too "aggressive"?

[RedFiveZero]

I've been driving my MS for about ten weeks now... I've noticed that the onboard navigation system seems a bit too "aggressive" in finding the shortest route.

Recently in Northumberland County, PA the navigation system sent me down a couple of poorly maintained dirt roads... roads better suited for 4x4 Jeeps than a MS. Then yesterday in Lancaster County, PA I was sent down a narrow back road, across a one lane covered bridge and then through an apartment complex on what appeared to be a private road.

Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[Xenius]

The in car navigation is a bit lacking overall. It's best to use waze or google maps unless you need the route planning for charging purposes on long distances.

 

[RedFiveZero]

The in car navigation is a bit lacking overall. It's best to use waze or google maps unless you need the route planning for charging purposes on long distances.

Thanks for the tip!

 

[Dborn]

The nav does not learn. Also, it favors expressways and tollways. Yes, I know you can turn off tollways, but it is not convenient in a big city.

 

[ecarfan]

I've been driving my MS for about ten weeks now... I've noticed that the onboard navigation system seems a bit too "aggressive" in finding the shortest route.

Use the Waze app on your smartphone to double check any car nav routes that you think might not be optimal.

 

[ig_epower]

For long/critical trips, I too use Waze on my Smartphone in parallel to the Tesla Navigation. Needless to say, I have a lot of monitoring programs running (for range, accidents/traffic/police, weather conditions etc) to keep me busy while I am driving on those lengthy trips. It tends to make the excursion more interesting at least. Between those smartphone apps and watching when I have to answer to an AP nag, it is a wonder I have time to look at the road ;-)

 

[jerry33]

I've taken quite a few long distance trips, and the Tesla Nav system has worked much better for me than the other in-car Nav systems I've used. The consensus is that it's not better than Waze, but I've never felt the need to use Waze. If I was inconvenienced often, I'd get Waze, but that hasn't ever happened.

 

[ColBatGuano]

I have found that I sometimes need to turn off the feature to save x amount of minutes. If left at say 5 minutes saved the car will try to cut freeway intersections by having you use the frontage road, stuff like that. Otherwise it typically does its best to avoid using smaller roads that might be just as good or better than the freeway. I basically use it as a range estimator and ignore it if it tries to send me the long way.

 

[jerry33]

I have found that I sometimes need to turn off the feature to save x amount of minutes. If left at say 5 minutes saved the car will try to cut freeway intersections by having you use the frontage road, stuff like that. Otherwise it typically does its best to avoid using smaller roads that might be just as good or better than the freeway. I basically use it as a range estimator and ignore it if it tries to send me the long way.

Setting it to ten instead of five fixes that issue.

 

[jcaspar]

It has strange paths at times but every time I have taken the Waze path over the Tesla one I have regretted it. I cal Waze "out of the Waze"...

 

[Gig103]

Yeah, I have noticed it too (1 month of ownership). Today, rather than west 3 miles, north 4 miles, it wanted me to zig-zag in a NW direction. Which, sure it's shorter but would definitely be slower with the various left-turns, not to mention unnecessarily complicated.

 

[IT Geek]

I just got my MS about a week ago and today I went back to the SC in Ohio where I did my last test drive several months ago. On that trip I had Google Maps doing the Nav for me and today I was using the car for Nav...and since I was going to a SC I figured it would take me there the same way. Unfortunately it seems like my car prefers to take the back roads rather than taking the highways.

It's done that to me twice now. The first time was when I was going from the Angola, IN Supercharger to the Ann Arbor, MI Supercharger. The car had me get off on Michigan Avenue...and unfortunately I listened. Sure that route would have been 20 fewer miles, but it's filled with stop lights, winding roads and 35mph speed areas for about 60 miles. It made matters worse that I was off on this dark, unfamiliar back route at 10PM. Sometimes the well traveled, well lit highway is the safer route.

Seems like my Google Nav prefers the route that's the shortest in time, whereas the Tesla one seems to prefer the shortest in miles. I suppose I'm going to have to pay more attention to that difference going forward.

 

[Gig103]

I would like to see Tesla/Navigon offer us the option to choose between Fastest & Shortest. Or at least let us choose a route from a few options. It seems to be only on shortest, or maybe it has to do with expected energy efficiency on surface roads? Either way, I end up using Google on my phone more often, or at least until I get to the part of a journey where they align.

 

[CjRichMar]

The only issue I've seen is at one particular segment of a trip I regularly make. My Tesla always insists that I get off the highway and take a parallel street back to the same highway that's longer in both distance and time. No matter how many times I ignore the routing, it still shows up next time.

 

[sdorn]

I actually had a very bad experience today with the nav system. Myself, my wife and our two kids (2 and 4 years old) were going to go hiking at a short trail near a waterfall in the North GA mountains. We were headed to the trailhead, and it turned out the access road was a pretty bumpy dirt road. We ended up turning around after about 1/2 mile and went back out to the paved road to find another hiking option.

We got to the paved road which had easy access back to the major roads that lead back to Atlanta and to the various towns in North GA, and then tried to pull up directions to Amicalola Falls on Waze. We couldn't get a signal on the cell phones where we were (common in many parts of North GA), but the Tesla was still getting enough of a signal for nav to work.

We entered our destination (Amicalola Falls State Park) and it came right up with what looked like a reasonable 20 minute drive on the nav system. I had no way of double-checking the route since we couldn't get a cell signal.

Below is the route it gave us from Google maps (note it said 20 minute drive on the nav system):

Here is the route it should have given us, which was both shorter and on completely paved and well-maintained roads:

The road we took ended up being an extremely rocky mountain road that you really needed a raised 4x4 to traverse. We spent 2 whole hours crawling along at 3 - 5 mph over extremely rough terrain. My wife and I were afraid we were going to end up stranded in the woods with no cell signal. I still can't believe we somehow made it through. I am very glad I had the air suspension which I set on "very high" and all wheel drive which helped pull us through some mud pits and up some very rocky inclines.

I ended up scraping the bottom of the car a few times, but luckily it looks like only a few scratches on the scrub plate and bottom of the front spoiler. It was really a miracle we made it through.

Here is a 3 minute clip from my dashboard cam that shows what the road was like. We were stuck on this kind of road for 2 hours.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4480164/videos/2017-02-26-12-36-25.MOV

At the end of the day, I know it is ultimately my fault for following the nav, but I really didn't think any nav system would take a vehicle on a road like this one. It really wasn't a road at all.

 

[JSergeant]

I've had many issues with the Tesla navigation, but one of the worst was when we were on a road trip last year. We were at the Twin Fall, ID SpC and decided to go visit Shoshone Falls Park. The first link below shows the route that Tesla nav took us, along the North side of the Snake River - of course when we got to the end, it turned out we were on the wrong side of the river and there was no crossing. The second link shows the correct route which we then followed using Google Maps. This taught me that it's sometimes a good idea to have a look at a paper map to get an overview of where you are going if you are in an unfamiliar location.


Google Maps

Google Maps

 

[bob_p]

The navigation software tries to use the real-time traffic data to find the shortest time path. Lowering the "minutes" setting will cause the route to change frequently, adjusting to very small differences in the time on different paths.

Assuming the same real-time traffic data is being displayed on the Google maps, it can be wrong sometimes, which would also cause the nav software to choose a bad route. Increasing the "minutes" setting can help, reducing routing changes due to changing traffic conditions.

And the navigation software can also get confused if there have been road/speed limit changes in the last 1-2 years, that haven't yet been distributed in a map update to the car.

For Tesla to achieve their EAP/FSD goals, Tesla needs to make significant improvements to the navigation software, using more up-to-date mapping & traffic data, and be able to choose a route at least as good as, preferably better, than a human driver.

Hopefully Tesla is working on this - and will surprise this year, and provide an improved nav system, using up-to-date maps.

 

[Boatguy]

The navigation system is somewhere between awful and poor. Even navigating between SCs on an interstate freeway can cause it to make odd decisions.

Tesla simply does not put any resources on the CID apps, they're all show, no go.

 

[Maximapolak]

Google maps on your phone first. Then navi on the car. I never rely on the car's navigation.

 

[Galve2000]

The nav does not learn. Also, it favors expressways and tollways. Yes, I know you can turn off tollways, but it is not convenient in a big city.

how do you turn off Tollways in the Nav? (I should know this. I've had my almost 20 months now.