[JakiChan]

I've got a fun business/road trip coming up that I'm really looking forward to. Leave the Bay Area, drive down to the coast to San Diego (with a stop along the way), and then Palm Springs, then back to LA, and then back up. But of course on all of the legs we're looking to take the proverbial road less traveled.

Given that we're going to be out of cell coverage some of the time I wanted to use the PCM Nav. Is there any way to program a route and send it to the car? Or some better way to set up a trip like this?

 

[aeronca65tl]

First, let me say that my car does not have navigation so I can't speak specifically to how it works in a 718. But here's how I do it in my GMC cargo van when we tow our race car around the country (we use our phones plus a simple Garmin GPS that cost about $80).

Honestly, I would first look at Google Maps and play around with it (as you may know, you can "drag" the routes around).

Sometimes the Street View in Google Maps can reveal some intersting stuff that you may want to visit along the way.

Once you are happy with the overall Google Maps route, figure out "waypoints" that will force the GPS to take you to that point (even if it's off the best path from the overall start to the overall end).

Then just setup a series of short trips from one waypoint to the next waypoint in your GPS. When one trip is complete (from start to first waypoint) then start the next trip (from first waypoint to second waypoint). And so forth.

You can always re-route on-the-fly if your phone sees heavy traffic problems.

We always print out the Goggle Map for the overall trip too (in case satellite service is weak). And bring a regular map, just in case.

 

[OhRichman]

I wanted to program in custom routes in the PCM Nav and you cannot do it beyond inputting up to 10 points of interest along the route, so that the Nav will calculate the route to include the POIs. There also is no way to transfer a route directly to the PCM. You can only transfer destinations and then the Nav calculates from there. This is a huge oversight on Porsche’s part. After all, we bought these cars to have fun on the back roads, yet the Nav unit wants to calculate the fastest route between point A to point B. I even called Porsche Customer Service to discuss this issue and all of my points above were confirmed.

I now use the Tourstart app on my iPhone and create custom routes on the desktop site that can then be accessed and downloaded to the iPhone app. The app then gives turn by turn directions but occasionally messes up. I originally wanted to just use Google maps, but you couldn’t send a specific route to the iPhone app, only the destination comes over and then the iPhone app recalculates the route.

 

[JazzCatGab]

I have Apple CarPlay in my Cayman and I use Google Maps for the back roads because there is a way to save maps to the Google Maps program on your iPhone (under the top left menu, go to Offline Maps). I created about 12 offline maps of my city and surrounding areas. I need to upload a few more because I've neglected parts of the state above me. Then, out on the road, it accesses the needed map without downloading it, saving cell data connection time along with being present when I'm out of my carrier's area.

 

[OhRichman]

Can you give the step by step directions on how to create a specific custom route and save it to the Offline Maps? I thought Offline Maps only allowed you to download a specific area to the app, so it doesn’t use data.

 

[JazzCatGab]

Can you give the step by step directions on how to create a specific custom route and save it to the Offline Maps? I thought Offline Maps only allowed you to download a specific area to the app, so it doesn’t use data.

That's exactly what I mean. If you have the map sections for your trip downloaded, when you get ready to go and tell it to chart the way to your destination, all your offline maps already will be there as you go on your trip. So the map storage is the first step, and then you create the route when you are ready to leave on the trip. As you drive along, the phone doesn't have to download new map sections because they are already stored on the phone. Hope that makes sense.