Navigation And Shortcuts

[markminnc]

Started a new job that comes with a 41 mile one way commute. Have been using my other car, a VW TDI which gets mid 40s mpg. Drove the FFE
Thursday after verifing I could top off at work. Was told about a shortcut with the added benny of by-passing a cogested area. Had 61 miles showing to take me 41 miles. Started the shortcut route and got lost. I pullled over and attempted to set up my gps nav. After a half hour I gave up and tried to do it with voice.and was able to set up home as a destination. But, in nav mode none of the secondary streets showed up. Spent another half hour.attempting to get it to show streets. Set off again with the nav arrow blinking and moving across a blank screen. I finally saw a major road on the screen and drove to that. By this time I was -10 to get home. Got to Jacksonville NC which is 31 miles from home and had 21 miles of range. No charging station. Stopped at a Ford dealer thinking they would have a chg stat for their plug hybrids. No chg stations but they let me use a 110 plug. They locked up at 8 and I left with 33 miles showing to go 31 miles. I drove at 40 instead of 55 and made it home with 1 mile to spare.
I charged as normal and looked this morning and the battery is full and shows 107 mile range, normal is high 80s.
I put my spare garmin in the glovebox in case I need it in the future.
Written off short cuts in this car.
I have had the car for 14 months and have enjoyed it. This is the first self induced range problem I have had.

 

[v_traveller]

Holy crap! That was a close one. Glad to hear you didn't get stranded.

Did you try looking at plugshare.com? Not sure it would have helped... Even here in SoCal, chargers are few and far between once we get off of the beaten path...

 

[georgek]

" I drove at 40 instead of 55 and made it home with 1 mile to spare."

Wow. Talk about range anxiety . I'm glad you still like your FFE. Good thing you could charge at the Ford dealer!

 

[jmueller065]

Is there a lot of new construction in your area? (Typically new construction is more recent than the nav map.)

I'm glad you got home ok but am a bit concerned that your map coverage wasn't there.

 

[markminnc]

I looked at plugshare and there is one EV chg station listed in Jacksonville. It is at the Nisson dealer andi should have thought of that.

In terms of the cars nav system and the area I was in there were no new roads. I tried to set a new destination today in my driveway by entering the address and was not able to. I set one of the recent points and was able to set that. No secondary streets were visable while in nav mode. Interesting, the streets show just fine in map mode. Don't understand that.

 

[jmueller065]

Check the zoom level. It has to be zoomed in pretty close to show the streets.
In addition you can also enter in an address via Map Quest:
http://jamiegeek.myevblog.com/2013/10/06/where-ever-you-go-there-you-are/

 

[EVA]

Wonder if you were the victim of a few weird things happening all at once.

Periodically the nav will just have a total brain fart - put you someplace you really aren't. We were driving out of McCormick Place in Chicago (I mostly knew where I was going so this was funny not a problem) - the nav system showed us driving in the middle of Grant Park, then turn right out over the Planetarium and then into the middle of Lake Michigan. It did that for about 5 minutes. Then all of a sudden, bam, it was exactly right - we were a good 5 miles from where it thought we were.

So is it possible the nav just went stupid?

I really hate entering addresses in that system. I've found typing I have to start with the city, no matter where I am, then the street name, and finally the street address. It goes completely dumb if I try to enter the address any other way. It also has its own way about north / south, east / west prefix or suffix to a street name.

Is the other possibility, entering the address, it thought you were in a different city?

Hey, then again, your nav system could be broken.

 

[jmueller065]

I really hate entering addresses in that system.

That is why I usually use Map Quest (see my post above) and send the address over the phone.