reinhard

No doubt, if the system works, it might be nice. Mine doesn't. The problem has been getting progressively worse ... radio functions become unusable when nav is engaged, nav suddenly cannot find anything in the city, etc. Early on, I rarely used the nav, so I never noticed the problems; but then started a job which involved DFW-Austin commutes, and I noticed it being flaky. I was just over 36k miles, i.e. warranty. My biggest complaint is that I have always worked with dealers/manf that believe in good service ... I have never had a dealer / manufacturer screw me the way Toyota has. If we were talking about a 'wear-n-tear' item, I would not complain, but this is the steenkeen radio! It is not like they can say that I did something to it! What really irks me is that it makes no sense at all, if Toyota went to the radio manf and said they need to replace this piece of garbage, they would literally do it without a sniff. Instead, they are trying to soak me for $2k+, which I absolutely refuse to pay. We just shopped for a new car, Toyota was not even on the list. Nor will they ever be. Regardless ... the Bluetooth is flaky at best, on several different phones the outgoing sound made it impossible to have a conversation. The nav disks are out of date when punched ... the '2007' disk was missing roads in DFW that were 3+ years old (George Bush toll road, et al) at the time, and update disks (which are still out of date) are priced about the same as a very good portable system. I believe you are mistaken on 'holds value' ... the information I have received on various forums indicates that the nav systems do not have any value exactly because the DVDs are so expensive and out of date. I have not bothered to check what Edmunds reports.

Being in Texas, I do not really see much difference any time of year. The only impact of A/C that I have seen is that it will force the synergy drive to kick on the gas motor more often ... so I will turn up the temp or turn off the A/C if it is tolerable (again, this is Texas!). re: Toyota quality ... I have experienced a rather radical departure from the typical "Toyota Quality" song. My radio/navigation system started giving me problems at slightly (and I mean slightly) over 36000 miles, literally rendering the navigation useless. Neither my dealer nor the regional guy would give any consolation, so the repair would be upwards of $2k. I was livid in that I would expect the extremely high cost system should last more than a couple of years, but apparently Toyota doesn't think so or does not care. The navigation system is the biggest waste of money, as you get completely out of date disks to start with and the upgrades cost as much as a high end portable system (about $300). To anybody willing to listen, do NOT buy the built in Nav system. Toyota does NOT stand behind this system. If you are dumb enough to pay the extra, at least negotiate yourself free DVD updates for as long as you can as part of the original deal.

Doing mostly highway now, in TX so AC always on. Generally hitting in mid-high 30s. When I do more 'country' driving (I do not live in city) where I can keep the motor off, I get closer to 40. My 'turnover' ... where the gas motor always turns on ... is about 44 mph ... would give anything if that were about 4-5 miles faster (i.e. turnover at >49 mph) I have not been able to get the gas/electric combo to stay on together with any consistency ... it happens in the 45-55 mph range and although the gas engine is running, the meter indicates the mpg > 50. I try to 'bounce' the accelerator to get both engines to turn on, but once both engines are on, any little twitch in my foot or even a slight incline in the road causes it to kick to gas power mode. I think I could see a dramatic improvement if I could get it to leave that electric motor on.

BTW ... I have seen a couple of aftermarket units that seem to fit in the same space ... and one that seems to be the original equipment (but nowhere near the $3k the dealer was talking about). Anybody that has any comments on replacement radios would be welcome to comment. Here are the issues: 1) fit and function ... want radio, CD, and nav. Anything more (like maintenance, etc)? Any special hardware to install? 2) bluetooth ... does it have it (complete, like not requiring mic, et al), how well does it work, does it disable music to handle calls, etc. 3) do the remote controls (steering wheel controls) work? 4) does the rest of the stuff work ... particularly the different controls / monitors on the speedometer LED screen Thanks!

I have a 2007 Camry Hybrid, about 2.5 years old with 49k miles. The car came with the factory radio/nav unit. For most of its life the car was used for daily job commute, no long rides since long rides (family stuff) was reserved for the mini-van (more room, particularly for baggage since trunk in hybrid is limited). Daily commute was about 30 miles one way ... so never was really in the car for much more than 45 minutes. About the only thing I noticed was that the ASL didn't seem to work, but I was not all that sure, didn't really care, so I did not do anything about it ... BIG STEENKEEN MISTAKE!!!! Got a new job that involves driving all over the state (Texas, basically a country in and of itself! :P) On my first trip I noticed some oddities in the radio, particularly *extremely* slow response to the command controls (up/down volume, change station, etc) ... both on the steering controls and the radio button controls. The nav unit also began to 'white out' ... displaying the current position icon on an empty white screen, generally with some of the command and info icons remaining (like miles/time to destination, etc), but I would often lose the icons as well. The slow response was something like "click the volume button, and about 20, 30, 40 seconds later ... it would change. The behavior has been relatively intermittent, particularly the onset time (from when I turn the car on to the time the malfunctions begin). Once it starts to malfunction, it continues (even when powering the car off, like gas stops) pretty much until I park the car for an extended length of time. My guess is that it is somehow tied to heating up of the unit. Would be interested to hear if anybody else has had this problem. When I found the problem, I was just barely beyond the 36k warranty, so I appealed to Toyota that basically told me TOUGH CRAP BUDDY! (OK, they didn't use those words, but it is all the same, right?) The dealer told me the replacement is *extremely* expensive, on the order of $2-3k, depending on whether or not I get a brand new one vs. a refurbished unit. At this point I am pissed beyond compare. I have had decades old vehicles with hundreds of thousands of miles on them where about the only thing that did work was the radio ... of course those radios didn't cost several thousands of dollars. I had no option to be able to get this car without the most expensive unit, hybrids were in high demand and you took what you got (rumour had it that Toyota did not even bother to ship anything that was not completely decked out), I suppose the better part of that is that I don't have to kick myself for buying this garbage since I HAD NO CHOICE! The disk I received was at least 3 years out of date when I received it, and I almost lost my mind to find out that a new disk was $300 ... incredible rip-off ... and also 3 years out of date. It is a big problem because I live on the outside edge of the DFW complex and everything around me is < 5 years old, so about 50% of the side roads are missing on even the newest versioned disks. I would tell anybody that is looking at buying this to think again.

Everything that I have seen indicates that the override switch has been removed altogether from the system on disks v6.1 and beyond. There is a website out there dedicated to trying to encourage folks to start up a class action lawsuit against toyota's "big mother" tactics ... not sure how effective it is but I would think an appropriate response would be "get a life!". I am all about getting the limit removed, but just don't know where people have all that time. I have a disk that is the 6.1 data with the old loading file ... seems to work fine although once in awhile the unit has a problem reading it ... generally fixed by pulling it out and putting it back in again. Probably more an issue with the DVD than anything else.