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Old Jun 23, 2025 | 3:13 am
  #346  
bocastephen
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Just discovered a new annoyance with the built-in navigation in Toyota cars, specifically the Prius. I had one of the new Prius (the ones that look like an old Prius that was stepped on and squished) last November in Kyoto and it didn't do this, but the car I had this past weekend in Sapporo definitely had this quirk so be aware -

Previously the voice navigation would say "prepare to ....." well before you needed to do what it was - exit, change lanes, turn, etc - but now it just says "turn right" - and then it repeats it a few times as you pass additional intersections until you get to the one where it actually wants you to turn. You would never know this unless you're watching the map on the dashboard. If you actually turned when it told you, you would end up making repeated turns until you were driving in an ever smaller concentric circle.

It was absolutely infuriating - being told to make a turn literally blocks before the turn was needed, and having the same instruction repeated and then being told where to make the actual turn

So if you're renting, likely a Toyota product, be aware of this quirk and always reference the map before actually doing anything.

Also the mapcode function (there are websites you can use to find a mapcode) is not always accurate - it will tell you "you've reached the destination area" without any specifics about where it is, what side of the road it's on, how to enter, etc - so after awhile we gave up and went back to Google Maps.
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