PCM Sat Nav - why bother to order on a new Porsche?
Discussion
majordad said:
All the above reminds me why I did not spec Porsche Sat Nav on either my 7GT or Gen 2 Rs. Nothing dates a car more than obselete radio/sat nav/stereo.
Blame lies squarely at Porsche. Ever since PCM1 on the 996 they have consistently failed to provide customers with a proper update service at an affordable cost. If every Porsche buyer relayed their dissatisfaction to Porsche and their OPC, maybe they would get the message and do something 
Bear in mind that PCM isn't just satnav. Whilst the satnav is perfunctory and updated infrequently, PCM adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the cabin. I expect inbuilt satnav on a car of that sort of value/prestige, even if it is crap. Perhaps that's a bit of a snobbish attitude but the market seems to reflect this expectation.
Durzel said:
I expect inbuilt satnav on a car of that sort of value/prestige, even if it is crap. Perhaps that's a bit of a snobbish attitude
I don't find that snobbish at all but I do find it completely irrational. You demand having an old useless satnav system in a car - one that was probably not fit for purpose when it was new let alone now. I am genuinely at a loss.....I would never ever spec SATNAV in a new car. They are almost all utterly useless, none have speed cameras and many still do not allow full post code search. Save your money for a genuinely useful option or for the first service and buy a TomTom or app for iphone instead.
My point really was that having a screen is commensurate with the value/prestige of the car, and it looks strange when there isn't one there. The exceptions to this are the hot/track models where not having it could be legitimately passed off as weight saving, etc. Again all IMHO.
Granted the satnav isn't great, but it's ok for just generally getting around and there is value to not having to worry about whether your satnav is charged, where the screen mount is, etc. Added to which the usual benefits of an integrated system - muting the radio when instructions are read out, etc. PCM is also nice for the other non-satnav stuff.
It is absolutely shocking though that Porsche are so useless at keeping on top of this. Map updates every 2 years (if you're lucky, seems like they get released if the planets are in alignment) is just not acceptable in this day and age. They should get automatically updated over built in GPRS/WiFi or something.
Granted the satnav isn't great, but it's ok for just generally getting around and there is value to not having to worry about whether your satnav is charged, where the screen mount is, etc. Added to which the usual benefits of an integrated system - muting the radio when instructions are read out, etc. PCM is also nice for the other non-satnav stuff.
It is absolutely shocking though that Porsche are so useless at keeping on top of this. Map updates every 2 years (if you're lucky, seems like they get released if the planets are in alignment) is just not acceptable in this day and age. They should get automatically updated over built in GPRS/WiFi or something.
Few issues here. Some we can blame Porsche for, others not really
1. Integrated feel - no substitution here, TomTom look cheap and always will. Until they integrate separate solutions like Merc/Becker I am happy to sacrifice "some" flexibility
2. Maps - this is Navteq dependent, not Porsche. When maps are released they will integrate them into the updates available. No biggie, it's ALWAYS been like that. With Porsche, BMW, Mercedes.. etc etc.. in France they DO build new roads (as opposed to Britain where they seem to have stopped in Victorian times) so you will get countryside driving at 130kmh because route is not there, no biggie honestly, open your eyes, follow road signs and soon enough the satnav will pick up the route again.
3. Postcode issue - this is where Porsche is having a laugh. 100k car and no post-code functionality. Then when releseased they want 500 pounds for it ? Borderline ridiculous, but what did you expect from a manufacturer that charges for carpets and cruise control.
4. Functionality - i haven't had the time to really "play" with the one in my 991. All i can say is that with the 5miles i have done it "looks" ok but a bit more fiddly than the one (HDD based) I had in my 2009 MY E92 M3. The new controller in the bimer is just fantastic to use without having to reach for the screen.. just move your hand from gear changer 15inches back.. and you have everything you need at your fingertips, with shortcuts you soon learn to use by heart. Difficult to beat.
5. Resale value - again.. would not touch a 981 if it didnt have satnav and/or phone prep. And when i was looking at 997.1 few years back would be the same.. despite the relatively antiqueness of the system (which actually worked surprisingly well) cars without it were unsellable.
1. Integrated feel - no substitution here, TomTom look cheap and always will. Until they integrate separate solutions like Merc/Becker I am happy to sacrifice "some" flexibility
2. Maps - this is Navteq dependent, not Porsche. When maps are released they will integrate them into the updates available. No biggie, it's ALWAYS been like that. With Porsche, BMW, Mercedes.. etc etc.. in France they DO build new roads (as opposed to Britain where they seem to have stopped in Victorian times) so you will get countryside driving at 130kmh because route is not there, no biggie honestly, open your eyes, follow road signs and soon enough the satnav will pick up the route again.
3. Postcode issue - this is where Porsche is having a laugh. 100k car and no post-code functionality. Then when releseased they want 500 pounds for it ? Borderline ridiculous, but what did you expect from a manufacturer that charges for carpets and cruise control.
4. Functionality - i haven't had the time to really "play" with the one in my 991. All i can say is that with the 5miles i have done it "looks" ok but a bit more fiddly than the one (HDD based) I had in my 2009 MY E92 M3. The new controller in the bimer is just fantastic to use without having to reach for the screen.. just move your hand from gear changer 15inches back.. and you have everything you need at your fingertips, with shortcuts you soon learn to use by heart. Difficult to beat.
5. Resale value - again.. would not touch a 981 if it didnt have satnav and/or phone prep. And when i was looking at 997.1 few years back would be the same.. despite the relatively antiqueness of the system (which actually worked surprisingly well) cars without it were unsellable.
Durzel said:
It is absolutely shocking though that Porsche are so useless at keeping on top of this. Map updates every 2 years (if you're lucky, seems like they get released if the planets are in alignment) is just not acceptable in this day and age. They should get automatically updated over built in GPRS/WiFi or something.
100% agree.Been a loyal Porsche customer for countless years and new cars, and this is my only significant grievance with the marque.
I'm currently taking issue with them over the quoted cost of updating my 2010 systems (c.£600),but I fear my voice alone will be lost in the void.
Aside from bleating on the internet, it needs every dissatisfied customer to push Porsche to resolve this debacle.
For the nth time, it's not just satnav.
I guarantee if you enquire about selling a Porsche to an OPC one of the first questions they'll ask is whether it has PCM. The market expects it, them's the breaks.
Agreed that the value and purchase price will decrease accordingly from lack of PCM, but so does the pool of prospective buyers.
I guarantee if you enquire about selling a Porsche to an OPC one of the first questions they'll ask is whether it has PCM. The market expects it, them's the breaks.
Agreed that the value and purchase price will decrease accordingly from lack of PCM, but so does the pool of prospective buyers.
ducgas said:
The reality is I have bought my car for me and not for the next person to buy it.I just don't get it when it comes to sale time that people won't buy it because it doesn't have PCM. Sure for some it will be a factor and they can look elsewhere.No problem.
Because most people who buy Porsches aren't petrolheads?! 
The Royal Borough of K&C makes the largest purchases of Porsches in the UK - a bod at West London told me - and when I was living there most of my neighbours who drove 911s were housewives whose husbands bought them just for the school run.
I actually like my PCM 3 console a hell of a lot more than I expected to. It is frankly not as good as my TomTom, but I don't have that in the car day to day and having an integrated system is actually rather handy from time to time. Would I have paid the asking price to spec it new - no. Would I pay a premium for it on a used car - probably a little all other things considered but nothing like what it cost the original owner. So is a car without it unsaleable - nope, it just has to be priced a little cheaper but the person who specced it will never get back much of their money on it, so it had better have been worth the convenience for them to have it.
Off on a tangent though - I trust that we still don't know whether the PCM iPod integration (universal audio) will work with the forthcoming adaptor for the iPhone 5 to old style 30 pin connector do we? Anyone?
[All I have seen confirmed so far is that rather ironically it won't work properly with the BMW iDrive setup]
Off on a tangent though - I trust that we still don't know whether the PCM iPod integration (universal audio) will work with the forthcoming adaptor for the iPhone 5 to old style 30 pin connector do we? Anyone?
[All I have seen confirmed so far is that rather ironically it won't work properly with the BMW iDrive setup]
Mankey, i get your point re the main feature being the car itself and not the toys, but we do become accustomed to these creature comforts, like sat nav. my issue is that any odd bit sat nav operates in the UK, it's intended market, as such operates with 7 digits, in the same way cars are made RHD for his market. To see this as a upgrade is in view an outrage.
DiscoColin said:
Off on a tangent though - I trust that we still don't know whether the PCM iPod integration (universal audio) will work with the forthcoming adaptor for the iPhone 5 to old style 30 pin connector do we? Anyone?
[All I have seen confirmed so far is that rather ironically it won't work properly with the BMW iDrive setup]
Umm well we have a new style Ipod plugged in with a USB to to new style connector and it works fine. If this works don't know why the iPhone 5 wouldn't work.[All I have seen confirmed so far is that rather ironically it won't work properly with the BMW iDrive setup]
Oi U said:
Picked up my 981 from the factory in Stuttgart a couple of months ago. It's a great car but:
On the subsequent drive across northern France, I noticed that the sat nav was plotting my track across a void on the screen. While I admit that this detour may have been fairly new, this upgraded national road was old enough to be shown on a 2012 Michelin map. Having rejoined the sat nav's track, another newish detour took me into another blank area of the screen. I was not impressed that a new car did not appear to have the latest national road updates on its sat nav database. On a more recent maiden drive down to Italy, I found several more major (national) roads in France which appear on Michelin maps yet do not feature.
When I queried my observations with my OPC and Porsche Customer Assistance I was told that I have the latest data that is available and it will cost me c£135 next year to get the next sat nav update. Somehow I fail to understand how Michelin, who print their 2012 maps in 2011, can get things so right while Porsche struggle and anyway, why should I spend c£135 in 2013 to get 2012 map data?
My next observation concerns the accuracy of information on roadworks. Again, on my recent drive across France, roadworks were shown on the sat nav when they didn't exist, or they existed but were not shown on screen. Now I realise that roadworks are fluid in nature, so difficult to highlight accurately; however, I was being given sat nav re-routes in order to avoid non-existent problems, some of which could be long detours. Eventually I decided that these were best ignored, rather like my chocolate watch.
Driving across France can be very pleasant, especially if one is not in a hurry and can avoid using autoroutes. If one attempts to programme the sat nav with the option to avoid tolls, the unit responds by saying: "A route with all the selected settings cannot be calculated". However, it does produce time and distance information, plus it will route you in accordance with your selection. If the same destination is selected using toll roads, times and distances are re-calculated which I assume are correct.
Postcodes: My PCM software is v3.41. There seems to be some confusion about whether this version will accept full UK postcodes, though I note that my unit will only take 5 digits.
I notice that here: www.boxa.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=54534 another customer says that his v3.41 PCM has full postcode entry. However, in one of the threads below, there is a suggestion that a software upgrade is available at a cost of £500! What is going on?
So should one tick the PCM box when buying a new Porsche? If one is just buying it for the sat nav, the answer must surely be no; it is an expensive option which now costs c£2.5k and one that does not reflect the quality of its host. For now, my TomTom works very well thank you.
So if you haven't already, other threads that may be worth reading are:
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=119...
and maybe even more relevant is:
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
How odd - my Boxster was built in in early May, so before yours, and yet has the full 7 character input capability ... On the subsequent drive across northern France, I noticed that the sat nav was plotting my track across a void on the screen. While I admit that this detour may have been fairly new, this upgraded national road was old enough to be shown on a 2012 Michelin map. Having rejoined the sat nav's track, another newish detour took me into another blank area of the screen. I was not impressed that a new car did not appear to have the latest national road updates on its sat nav database. On a more recent maiden drive down to Italy, I found several more major (national) roads in France which appear on Michelin maps yet do not feature.
When I queried my observations with my OPC and Porsche Customer Assistance I was told that I have the latest data that is available and it will cost me c£135 next year to get the next sat nav update. Somehow I fail to understand how Michelin, who print their 2012 maps in 2011, can get things so right while Porsche struggle and anyway, why should I spend c£135 in 2013 to get 2012 map data?
My next observation concerns the accuracy of information on roadworks. Again, on my recent drive across France, roadworks were shown on the sat nav when they didn't exist, or they existed but were not shown on screen. Now I realise that roadworks are fluid in nature, so difficult to highlight accurately; however, I was being given sat nav re-routes in order to avoid non-existent problems, some of which could be long detours. Eventually I decided that these were best ignored, rather like my chocolate watch.
Driving across France can be very pleasant, especially if one is not in a hurry and can avoid using autoroutes. If one attempts to programme the sat nav with the option to avoid tolls, the unit responds by saying: "A route with all the selected settings cannot be calculated". However, it does produce time and distance information, plus it will route you in accordance with your selection. If the same destination is selected using toll roads, times and distances are re-calculated which I assume are correct.
Postcodes: My PCM software is v3.41. There seems to be some confusion about whether this version will accept full UK postcodes, though I note that my unit will only take 5 digits.
I notice that here: www.boxa.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=54534 another customer says that his v3.41 PCM has full postcode entry. However, in one of the threads below, there is a suggestion that a software upgrade is available at a cost of £500! What is going on?
So should one tick the PCM box when buying a new Porsche? If one is just buying it for the sat nav, the answer must surely be no; it is an expensive option which now costs c£2.5k and one that does not reflect the quality of its host. For now, my TomTom works very well thank you.
So if you haven't already, other threads that may be worth reading are:
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=119...
and maybe even more relevant is:
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
Edited by Oi U on Friday 21st September 19:22
I've also had no problems at all in the UK.I like it's look and integrated feel - but the new TomTom that we use in the other halfs car is faster to do everything, especially recalculalting routes etc. The main reason I bought PCM was for reasale, beacuse it seems that if you haven't got it - nobody wants your car (or wants a large chunk off the price)!
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