MELISSAB
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- Mar 8, 2019
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Sorry this is so long, we spent a lot of time driving, 42 hours over 4 days. We've been back for 2 weeks but are getting ready to sell the business I work for, so I've not been on the forum much at all. Lots to catch up on!
I drove about 2600 miles round trip with my kids from central Florida to the far north side of New Jersey in two days, then did the same in reverse with just a one day break in between. I spent more time and miles in my Telly than I ever had, so I have some observations.
Weather on radio: We haven’t had the issue with the weather not loading and I figured it was because we are near enough to a large city and the stations I usually listen to are HD radio. I found that as we drove, the weather continued to update from one larger city to the next even though we weren’t using the radio at all the entire trip. It would sometimes supply weather for a city we weren’t really near, like giving Atlanta while we were driving near the coast, but it kept weather displaying the whole time. So I don’t know what that means for how it finds the weather, but thought I’d add it here in case anyone needed more input.
Android Auto: This is just a mess. No way to know for sure if it is the car or the phone (Galaxy S8) but I was beyond aggravated by it. It would not connect or disconnect reliably, often requiring a reboot of the phone or waiting until we hit a stopping point to shut down the car. When it would misbehave it would sometimes lock up the screen and the phone both, sometimes just one or the other. It would sometimes display in day mode (white background) and sometimes in night, sometimes switching while driving. It didn’t matter if the headlights were on or off or if we were in a well-lit area or not, sun shining, clouds or full dark. While in day mode sometimes you could see the menu/search/time, sometimes you couldn’t. In dark mode it would often blur the text on the screen or just freeze. I wanted it more for using with Waze for traffic/hazard alerts than for navigation, so just audio would have been fine, but it would not reliably play alerts or navigation or even pass through music from Spotify reliably, it would not speak to us for an hour or more then just start up again all by itself. We ended up using the built in car navigation which works pretty well except that you can’t seem to choose an alternate route in advance, you just have to not take the turns it wants you to take until it recalculates to the route you do want. The built in nav is very useful for letting you know what services are available at upcoming interstate exits and indicating upcoming rest areas as long as you are looking at the route you are already on. We ended up just using my phone for Waze and Spotify sending the sound through Bluetooth and that worked without any problems. We tried different cables, phones (Galaxy S9) and tried changing options in developer mode but Android Auto was just a bust.
Adaptive Cruise: This is now my absolute favorite thing about this car. I had no idea what I was missing. I was never one to use cruise control in the past, it just seemed a bit dangerous, but I’ll use it every time I can now. I’d tried using it driving between home and Tampa or Orlando a couple of times, but couldn’t quite get it to work out right, I think I was just fighting it not really understanding it completely as I wasn’t in the car all that long each time. Between being able to rest and move my legs around while stretching or just shifting position to working with the lane keep assist and the auto distance follow whatever its called, it was just great. I will say however that it is easy to lose focus with all this assistance. We took a more rural route home, while still on interstates and I ended up having to get my kids into a challenging couple of hours of 20 questions to stay awake because the driving was just too easy. The collision avoidance part works very well, or did on the one occasion I needed it. All traffic was flowing quickly down the interstate in South Carolina when a pair of beautiful red dogs popped out of the trees and were standing right at the edge of the road. Lots of squealing brakes. We stopped and tried to call them but they couldn’t hear us over the road noise. I walked along the side of the interstate for several minutes hoping they’d turn around and come back to me but they seemed to be on a dangerous adventure and never looked back. We hope they lived very close by and would make their way back home. They had collars and tags we could see from a distance and we called animal control, but we’ll never know if they caught them.
Dashcam: Installed my dashcam the night before and it was super easy to hide the wiring. I used the USB cable since I’m new to this and wasn’t sure if it would work well enough to bother with hardwiring. I installed up to the right of the rear mirror, the cord tucked into the edge of the headliner, into a horizontal seam in the A pillar then into the trim all along that edge. I tucked it up under the glove box and you can just see about 6” or so if you look closely where it sneaks over the edge of the console into the USB port on the right. I would have liked to have put it closer to the mirror or on the plastic box housing the forward facing camera but between not sticking to the plastic and the cam being obscured by the dotted shading? I put it as close as I could and it worked out fine.
Cargo space: We were moving my oldest daughter and all her clothes and small furniture and everything else into her first place away from home. The back was completely filled with the 2nd and 3rd rows folded down. We had enough storage that we hardly had to put anything in her car and my vision wasn’t blocked at all. I didn’t notice the car driving any differently than it does when it is just me.
Ride: Never felt like I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough for super speeders and never felt like the car was loose or handling otherwise poorly when I was driving faster than I should. We had a ton of rain to go through and the drive was steady the entire time. We were on interstate almost the entire time, so I wasn’t really putting through anything difficult. I did find it amusing that the speedometer goes up to 160 mph, I hadn’t taken note of that before. I topped out at about 95 or so I think.
So that’s about it. I’d say it is just as comfortable as my 08 Odyssey that made many long distance road trips over the years. The tech just makes it that much nicer! The MPG was good too, avg 27.19, low was 24.47, high was 29.86. Not too bad, my van was happy at about 19.
I drove about 2600 miles round trip with my kids from central Florida to the far north side of New Jersey in two days, then did the same in reverse with just a one day break in between. I spent more time and miles in my Telly than I ever had, so I have some observations.
Weather on radio: We haven’t had the issue with the weather not loading and I figured it was because we are near enough to a large city and the stations I usually listen to are HD radio. I found that as we drove, the weather continued to update from one larger city to the next even though we weren’t using the radio at all the entire trip. It would sometimes supply weather for a city we weren’t really near, like giving Atlanta while we were driving near the coast, but it kept weather displaying the whole time. So I don’t know what that means for how it finds the weather, but thought I’d add it here in case anyone needed more input.
Android Auto: This is just a mess. No way to know for sure if it is the car or the phone (Galaxy S8) but I was beyond aggravated by it. It would not connect or disconnect reliably, often requiring a reboot of the phone or waiting until we hit a stopping point to shut down the car. When it would misbehave it would sometimes lock up the screen and the phone both, sometimes just one or the other. It would sometimes display in day mode (white background) and sometimes in night, sometimes switching while driving. It didn’t matter if the headlights were on or off or if we were in a well-lit area or not, sun shining, clouds or full dark. While in day mode sometimes you could see the menu/search/time, sometimes you couldn’t. In dark mode it would often blur the text on the screen or just freeze. I wanted it more for using with Waze for traffic/hazard alerts than for navigation, so just audio would have been fine, but it would not reliably play alerts or navigation or even pass through music from Spotify reliably, it would not speak to us for an hour or more then just start up again all by itself. We ended up using the built in car navigation which works pretty well except that you can’t seem to choose an alternate route in advance, you just have to not take the turns it wants you to take until it recalculates to the route you do want. The built in nav is very useful for letting you know what services are available at upcoming interstate exits and indicating upcoming rest areas as long as you are looking at the route you are already on. We ended up just using my phone for Waze and Spotify sending the sound through Bluetooth and that worked without any problems. We tried different cables, phones (Galaxy S9) and tried changing options in developer mode but Android Auto was just a bust.
Adaptive Cruise: This is now my absolute favorite thing about this car. I had no idea what I was missing. I was never one to use cruise control in the past, it just seemed a bit dangerous, but I’ll use it every time I can now. I’d tried using it driving between home and Tampa or Orlando a couple of times, but couldn’t quite get it to work out right, I think I was just fighting it not really understanding it completely as I wasn’t in the car all that long each time. Between being able to rest and move my legs around while stretching or just shifting position to working with the lane keep assist and the auto distance follow whatever its called, it was just great. I will say however that it is easy to lose focus with all this assistance. We took a more rural route home, while still on interstates and I ended up having to get my kids into a challenging couple of hours of 20 questions to stay awake because the driving was just too easy. The collision avoidance part works very well, or did on the one occasion I needed it. All traffic was flowing quickly down the interstate in South Carolina when a pair of beautiful red dogs popped out of the trees and were standing right at the edge of the road. Lots of squealing brakes. We stopped and tried to call them but they couldn’t hear us over the road noise. I walked along the side of the interstate for several minutes hoping they’d turn around and come back to me but they seemed to be on a dangerous adventure and never looked back. We hope they lived very close by and would make their way back home. They had collars and tags we could see from a distance and we called animal control, but we’ll never know if they caught them.
Dashcam: Installed my dashcam the night before and it was super easy to hide the wiring. I used the USB cable since I’m new to this and wasn’t sure if it would work well enough to bother with hardwiring. I installed up to the right of the rear mirror, the cord tucked into the edge of the headliner, into a horizontal seam in the A pillar then into the trim all along that edge. I tucked it up under the glove box and you can just see about 6” or so if you look closely where it sneaks over the edge of the console into the USB port on the right. I would have liked to have put it closer to the mirror or on the plastic box housing the forward facing camera but between not sticking to the plastic and the cam being obscured by the dotted shading? I put it as close as I could and it worked out fine.
Cargo space: We were moving my oldest daughter and all her clothes and small furniture and everything else into her first place away from home. The back was completely filled with the 2nd and 3rd rows folded down. We had enough storage that we hardly had to put anything in her car and my vision wasn’t blocked at all. I didn’t notice the car driving any differently than it does when it is just me.
Ride: Never felt like I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough for super speeders and never felt like the car was loose or handling otherwise poorly when I was driving faster than I should. We had a ton of rain to go through and the drive was steady the entire time. We were on interstate almost the entire time, so I wasn’t really putting through anything difficult. I did find it amusing that the speedometer goes up to 160 mph, I hadn’t taken note of that before. I topped out at about 95 or so I think.
So that’s about it. I’d say it is just as comfortable as my 08 Odyssey that made many long distance road trips over the years. The tech just makes it that much nicer! The MPG was good too, avg 27.19, low was 24.47, high was 29.86. Not too bad, my van was happy at about 19.
