Absolutely sick of Alexa's god-awful navigation

[SoCal Rob]

To be fair, the routing algorithm shouldn't need to account for navigating to a location you are already parked in front of...

I can think of two reasons I’d want to navigate to a named destination like FedEx which is close to me:
1. I’m in the right area but for whatever reason I cannot find the FedEx and need help getting to the one I’m near.
2. I’m in the right area and for whatever reason I cannot use the location so I need the next one which is closest or along the route to a different destination.

There’s no way for any navigation system on the market to know what my intent is if I’m just asking for a location by name.

Still, I completely understand why @Oldsmobile_Mike is frustrated with Alexa and nav, though. I’m pretty sure even Tesla allows you to use a location attached to a calendar event in your phone and I don’t think Alexa can do that. Extra annoying when you have the location in the appointment and it’s a tap away on other vehicles.

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[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I found in my last trip the navigation worked well getting me to the parking lots where the chargers were but occasionally did not know where in the parking lot they actually were located.

I figured hey, it got me this close I can take care of the rest… ?

I love y'alls sense of humor. ?

She's a real peach. You reminded me of the time I was driving through Clarksburg, Maryland, and she told me to turn onto I-270 instead of into the parking lot where the chargers were. I mean, technically, I could *see* the chargers from the interstate on-ramp. ?

 

[Webleyaz]

I'm convinced that Alexa is much like TV stations. Everything local is blacked out. Recently, I actually marveled that a place I had typed in was on the side of the street she said it was on. Very confusing.

 

[godfodder0901]

I can think of two reasons I’d want to navigate to a named destination like FedEx which is close to me:
1. I’m in the right area but for whatever reason I cannot find the FedEx and need help getting to the one I’m near.
2. I’m in the right area and for whatever reason I cannot use the location so I need the next one which is closest or along the route to a different destination.

Close to you, yes. But immediately in front of you... Nope.

There’s no way for any navigation system on the market to know what my intent is if I’m just asking for a location by name.

Sure it can. Just by the very fact that you asked a navigation system. You ask for a place by name, and it can infer your intent to travel to said named place. And it can infer you want the nearest one.

 

[SoCal Rob]

Close to you, yes. But immediately in front of you... Nope.


Sure it can. Just by the very fact that you asked a navigation system. You ask for a place by name, and it can infer your intent to travel to said named place. And it can infer you want the nearest one.

tl;dr I think it can be easy for some of us to expect more from Alexa than is reasonable.

Getting into the detail: sorry, I worded the second part too vaguely and I’m talking about a slightly different scenario.
There is no way for the navigation system to know where I want to go between the two examples I listed.

While @Oldsmobile_Mike may be frustrated that Alexa can’t guide him to the FedEx in front of him, I may be frustrated that it’s trying to get me to a FedEx I’ve clearly already reached when I need the next nearest FedEx.

So just saying “Navigate to FedEx” to a typical navigation system when I’m near one already may give me the result I want, or not. It’s not reasonable for me to expect that I’ll get the result I want, but it can leave me shaking my head. Maybe with AI and a conversation rather than a command things will get better. “Navigate to FedEx.” “Are you having trouble locating the one in this area or do you want another one close by?” “I want another one on the way to the restaurant.”

Compare the typical navigation to a human passenger who hears me grumble or curse and sees that the shopping center is without power, there’s a line out the door, etc. If I ask a person in that situation to guide me to FedEx they’d intuitively know I want the next closest one on the way to our destination. If they pointed at one near me with anything other than a sense of humor then my inner dialog would question their powers of observation, their intellect, or both.

 

[CarlM408]

Seems there's a bunch of new Google Maps related items in the latest update, without really clearly saying that the mapping & routing data provider has changed. Would be interesting if folks could re-try easily accessible routing/mapping stupidity and see if it's an better now.

 

[PeterSK]

In all seriousness, this thread does make me wonder if there is a big difference between "alexa" navigation and accessing navigation through typing in a search or "send to Rivian" through google maps/apple maps. Between the three, I think I use them in the following proportion: 0/60/40, respectively. I haven't had a noticeable problem with navigation, but that might have to do with the method that I use and the destinations I am going to (insert dig against Manassassassasss... jeez, even autocorrect doesn't recognize the place). I think there's been one time where I've known there's a better backroads route, but it was a minor thing vs a wrong direction. Perhaps there's some hidden differences to consider...

The navigation itself is generally fine. Occasionally gives me an oddly roundabout route, but so did my Teslas and other mapping apps. Where it falls down is the Alexa voice input. It seemed to work okay initially (I’ve had my car since July 2023), maybe even improved in the first few months, but after one of the big recent updates (improved suspension?) it started finding places that seemed to be in Mexico or something, over a thousand miles away. And even when it finds the right location, sometimes it will announce a distance of hundreds or a thousand miles to it, while the screen shows 7 miles or whatever. I’ve pretty much given up using the voice input - and would never demo it - and instead type on the screen or use the Rivian app or Siri on my phone and send it to the car.

This is a shame because I used the voice input for destinations all the time on my Tesla, and to play songs or albums on Apple Music as well. Rivian’s marketing for Connect+ talks about improved voice input or something - we really need it!

 

[PeterSK]

The navigation itself is generally fine. Occasionally gives me an oddly roundabout route, but so did my Teslas and other mapping apps. Where it falls down is the Alexa voice input. It seemed to work okay initially (I’ve had my car since July 2023), maybe even improved in the first few months, but after one of the big recent updates (improved suspension?) it started finding places that seemed to be in Mexico or something, over a thousand miles away. And even when it finds the right location, sometimes it will announce a distance of hundreds or a thousand miles to it, while the screen shows 7 miles or whatever. I’ve pretty much given up using the voice input - and would never demo it - and instead type on the screen or use the Rivian app or Siri on my phone and send it to the car.

Here’s an example, navigating to a local supermarket in the next city over, a few miles away, it sent me to southern France. When the directions failed the only way to clear them was to use voice input to “cancel navigation.”

Then when I typed the name, even without a space, it immediately found multiple locations.

This needs major repair, especially if as Wassym said, the future of automotive controls is voice input.

 

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Here’s an example, navigating to a local supermarket in the next city over, a few miles away, it sent me to southern France. When the directions failed the only way to clear them was to use voice input to “cancel navigation.”

Omg, your first video made me want to scream at Alexa on your behalf. ?

My "favorite" recent issue is when you're navigating and get on a toll road or express lane and she doesn't understand them, and she just babbles about "make a U-turn" over and over and over and over and over and over again. I'll prompt her with "Alexa, tell me a joke" just to get her to stfu for a moment. It is infuriating, LOL. ?

 

[RealBillNye]

Is it just me? Or can Alexa / MapBox not ever find anything? Voice assistant is supposed to save time / keep hands on wheel while navigating, but is absolutely infuriating. For example, I asked it to go to the UPS Store. I'm literally parked in front of the store and it's telling me to go back out on the main highway and around the block:

This happens every day. No matter where I ask her to navigate to. Absolutely sub-par garbage experience compared to Google Maps / AA. My favorite, of course, was when I asked her to navigate to a charging station at the mall and she told me to get on the interstate. Yes, you can *see* the chargers from there... LOL. ?

/rant

I don't think Alexa does the routing. I do have issues with Alexa actually finding the correct location. If there are multiple locations for a place it almost never locates the closest one.

 

[Mark_AZR1T]

I concur. The native navigation is "horrific". I have been misled' countless times via the mapping software, so much so I have google maps open on my phone at the same time. Just another poor implementation by Rivian on mapping. My wife refuses to use it after being misguided 3x. She has a three strikes law, which is a remnant of being born and raised in SoCal.

Get your act together on this Rivian and stop saying it's solid, it isn't.

 

[KenCar]

Alexa is incredibly better than the voice navigation in my other cars. I put Alexa's success rate at 95%, and that's for a first-time request.

I sometimes played a game with my other cars. I'd start driving to a destination and give my car a voice command to navigate to my destination. They sometimes failed a dozen requests and never offered the proper destination. Ultimately, I gave up the game...it was just too frustrating!

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