Re: I Finally Got To Drive My Subaru Somewhere

On 6/16/2021 5:47 PM, Bob Wilson wrote:
> On 6/16/2021 10:28 AM, John McGaw wrote:
>> For various reasons, not all of them pandemic-related, the 2018 Subaru 
>> Outback 3.6 Touring I purchased in January of 2018 never got further than 
>> 35 miles from home. Well, on Saturday I finally drove up north to take 
>> care of some serious family matters. After completing ~1125 miles I have 
>> a better feeling for the car. First off, the mileage while not stellar, 
>> was not horrible either at 26.8mpg overall with maybe 75% being at high 
>> speed on major highways but sometimes it degenerated to gravel roads (and 
>> badly-maintained county roads) in the SW PA 'gas patch.'
>>
>> I have determined also that the built in navigation really sucks. It 
>> gives you three choices based apparently only on time and distance but 
>> never warns about the pitfalls of any of them. It gives 'accurate' 
>> directions but almost never 'good' directions and will gladly divert you 
>> to a gravel road from a county road if it will shave 5% off the distance 
>> and will put you on that crappy county road even if a perfectly good 
>> highway route was available that is only 5% longer. Up until now I had 
>> been unable to get Android Auto to work (reasons unknown) but in 
>> desperation I tried again on my way home and it worked perfectly and gave 
>> much better results even though I was using it blindly. I hereby 
>> apologize to all those who have posted that Android Auto is superior to 
>> the inbuilt. I was definitely wrong.
>>
>> Oh, the seats are comfortably enough even for someone as old as me, 
>> visibility is good except when driving straight into the sun with bugs 
>> splattered on the windshield, handling and stability are excellent, the 
>> cruise control is exemplary, the lane keeping can get annoying, and the 
>> noise level is good. The newly-installed replacement Michelin 225/60R-18 
>> Michelin CrossClimate2 SL tires were excellent even in some blinding 
>> downpours in West Virginia with never a trace of hydroplaning.
>>
> My cars range from 1960 to 2002, so I can't directly compare. But all of 
> the navigation systems I have used let me set priorities, like "shortest 
> distance" or "fastest" for its route choosing. Is there a chance that's 
> where things are going wrong?
> Bob W

My Subaru in-dash system gives precisely three choices involving 
time/distance. It even shows a sorta-map for each as you select. The 
problem is that there is not enough detail to see exactly what any 
particular line segment is. Is that a nice four-lane or is it a gravel road 
leading past a gas-well drilling pad? That is what I meant 'accurate' vs. 
'precise' -- any route shown will get you there but you cannot see what the 
real route is until you drive to a perceived junction and by then it is too 
late. There is no option to tell the nav to prefer paved roads over gravel 
or limited-access over country lane. In fact they do give you options to 
avoid highways but no way to ask to stick to the good roads. I'm pretty 
sure that the DeLorme software I used on my laptop with a GPS dongle 
decades back gave fine-grain control and would let you demand the minimum 
number of road changes be used so that one wouldn't be diverted off a 
'good' road to save a few miles.

Anyway, now that Android Auto is working on my phone/car it is no big deal 
-- AA provides real-time traffic re-routing and live warnings about 
construction and accidents and closures which the Subaru system doesn't 
even dream of. Yeah, maybe I'd use the the Subaru system if I was just 
going to the other side of the county and needed to find an address -- it 
is good at that -- but for long-distance travel, no way.

-- 
Bodger's Dictum: Artifical intelligence
can never overcome natural stupidity.