2013 Lexus Rx350 Nav System - Etas Alway Too Long

DebFulmer · March 17, 2013

Title: 2013 Lexus RX350 NAV System -- the ETA feature always shows too long of a trip.

On a short 70 trip, the ETA stated two hours which freaked me out knowing I had an appointment in 1 1/2 hours. Then yesterday, I traveled from Oklahoma City to Texarkana for about 300 miles and the ETA was well over 6 hours! That included the Indian Nation Turnpike at 75 MPH. The trip is only a little over 5 hours, and it finally caught up with itself only 20 miles out from the final destination. What's the point of using it when it is so inaccurate? My old Garmin was always right on target to the second. Then today as a test coming home from church, we tested it with a little shortcut. The NAV did not even pick up the side street we used which has clearly shown up on Google Maps for over a year!

1990LS400 · March 17, 2013

My suggestion is follow the instructions on page 129 (Section 4.Setup) of the 2013 RX350 navigation manual and make appropriate changes to the "Driving Speeds" settings. I think this will fix your ETA issue but remember that the "E" in ETA stands for estimated.

It is not all that unusual for a street or road to be missing from map databases used by auto makers or Garmin.

My street was put in over 30 years ago and my address still does not show on GPS systems or in Google Maps, MapQuest, etc. - might be confusing that I live near the intersection of 85th Terrace, 85th Terrace and 85th Terrace.

Also, you might want to check that your RX GPS system has the latest map updates - it might be one or two releases behind current.

RhoXS · March 25, 2013

My 2009 RX350 Nav system calculates the ETA based on fixed speeds for various types of roads preset in one of the setup screens. For example I set the setting for Interstate highways to 60 mph when traveling with my wife because from experience I know no matter how fast I try to go this is what we always average because of all the stops we must make. It then gives surprisingly accurate estimates for long trips. When by myself I reset it to 65 or 70 and this seems to work well also.

Surprisingly, the $2,400 Lexus system system uses these fixed preset values when my $200 Garmin seems to look at some average of immediately past actual driving speeds and continues to update the ETA based on that. No matter what, the ETA I do in my head for short trips is always much more accurate than either of the GPS's. In other words, ETA is not a strong point for any GPS because driving conditions are so variable.