Built-in Volvo Satnav vs. TomTom (SIM was missing!!)

[gharper73]

Couple of examples of dreadful ETA estimates. This morning I set off to take the car from W5 to E2.

Immediately beforehand I'd checked the route with the TomTom MyDrive app, which shows a preferred and 2 alternate routes. 1h10, 1h15 and 1h20 duration at that moment.

The Volvo built-in, which does have Live Traffic active, said 40 minutes.

The actual journey took 90 minutes. For the last hour, the car was permanently showing ~ 15 minutes to destination (until we got close).

A few days ago drove from Beckenham to Ealing on a Sunday afternoon, so going to be busy. It's 45 minutes on absolutely middle-of-the-night empty roads. Car said 50 minutes. TomTom said 1h20. It was 1h20 give or take.

I'm not bothered about minute-accuracy, but these figures are WAY off.

But mostly, I fret about how accurate traffic jam avoidance is.
For me, living in London, that's the killer feature of a Satnav. I can manage to navigate my own way if necessary, but only the magic of a (good) Satnav can know about, and avoid jams.

This is exactly my experience. It's like my Volvo system estimates the time on the best possible conditions. Always overly optimistic no matter whether its urban or motorway.

[WelshRobin]

I don’t know how the Sensus satnav/mapping system gets information about scheduled road closures here in the UK, but this morning I was directed along a major A-class road which has been closed to traffic for ten days now. Immediately at the junction, I was still told to turn left into barriers set across the entire carriageway! I am very familiar with these local roads but I feel sorry for any stranger expecting to use this recommended route.