Rat
Well-known member
There was a learning curve at the beginning, but I have come to love the navigation software in the Leaf. By far the easiest way to enter a destination I know about before leaving is to go to Google Maps, search the address, and when the map came up, I click the little envelope icon in the upper right corner which then gives a popup menu to send to email, car, etc. I choose car, of course, and click send. In the car I then go to Carwings/All Information Feeds/Google Maps/Send to car. This sequence then causes the car to "connect to information center," download the destination(s) there and read it in the computerized voice, during which I press the pause button and then select set as new destination. This works great and takes only seconds at the computer and maybe a minute in the car, depending on how fast the connection is. Now that I've done it several times, it only takes a few seconds of attention time in the car.
The one irritant with this, though, was the way the voice read the destinations, especially when I had entered several into Google Maps. If I wanted to find my boyhood home (now a Greek Church) at 1290 Davis St. in San Jose, for example, it would read something like this:
It does this because the default format in Google Maps is the full address with state and zip code, and the numbers are always read using a standard algorithm designed for other uses, such as mathematics or business, not addresses. Today I experimented. I had to go to the DMV in Santa Clara to pick up my new plates so I searched for the address and sent it the normal way, then decided to see if I could change it. I went through the same sequence as described, but after clicking the link on the Send screen for the car, the window changes to show a Name field, populated by this default format. I changed the street address from the one shown simply to "D M V Santa Clara". When I downloaded in the car it read it exactly right! I put in the spaces because I wasn't sure if it would read DMV right or as a phonetic "dmff". I'll bet I could enter the address above as "12 90 Davis" so it would be pronounced "twelve ninety" the way addresses normally are, instead of "one thousand" etc. Of course in that case you could also just enter "Greek church."
I highly recommend this method as it only takes an extra five or ten seconds on the computer to edit that field and it is much easier to understand while driving. Since the destinations are usually repeated and all are read off in sequence it is often hard to tell the end of the zip code of one address from the beginning of the street number of the next one. If you had the above address followed by a general location of 19220-19230 Long Ranch road, Gilroy, for example (which might be a trailhead for a hike, say) the voice just reads "ninety-five thousand one hundred twenty-six nineteen thousand two hundred twenty nineteen thousand two hundred thirty..." etc. It's really hard to know which trailhead it is and at what point the voice changed from the one destination's zip code to the other, which you need to know to push the pause button.
The one irritant with this, though, was the way the voice read the destinations, especially when I had entered several into Google Maps. If I wanted to find my boyhood home (now a Greek Church) at 1290 Davis St. in San Jose, for example, it would read something like this:
It does this because the default format in Google Maps is the full address with state and zip code, and the numbers are always read using a standard algorithm designed for other uses, such as mathematics or business, not addresses. Today I experimented. I had to go to the DMV in Santa Clara to pick up my new plates so I searched for the address and sent it the normal way, then decided to see if I could change it. I went through the same sequence as described, but after clicking the link on the Send screen for the car, the window changes to show a Name field, populated by this default format. I changed the street address from the one shown simply to "D M V Santa Clara". When I downloaded in the car it read it exactly right! I put in the spaces because I wasn't sure if it would read DMV right or as a phonetic "dmff". I'll bet I could enter the address above as "12 90 Davis" so it would be pronounced "twelve ninety" the way addresses normally are, instead of "one thousand" etc. Of course in that case you could also just enter "Greek church."
I highly recommend this method as it only takes an extra five or ten seconds on the computer to edit that field and it is much easier to understand while driving. Since the destinations are usually repeated and all are read off in sequence it is often hard to tell the end of the zip code of one address from the beginning of the street number of the next one. If you had the above address followed by a general location of 19220-19230 Long Ranch road, Gilroy, for example (which might be a trailhead for a hike, say) the voice just reads "ninety-five thousand one hundred twenty-six nineteen thousand two hundred twenty nineteen thousand two hundred thirty..." etc. It's really hard to know which trailhead it is and at what point the voice changed from the one destination's zip code to the other, which you need to know to push the pause button.
