Hi All

Can I ask about the satnav?

Yesterday I successfully navigated to a destination 87 miles distant but five hours later when I wanted to return home it offered a route 15 miles longer and with no explanation why. Despite we messed about trying to enter a new destination it got locked into some software loop such that we couldn't do so. Eventually I retraced our original route as best remembered and then stopped to play around again. I do not know what we did but somehow we were able to get home but the route offered wasn't that sensible. This is not the first time I've had trouble. At Christmas I navigated north to Cambridge without problems but when wanting to return home it directed me north and not south. I tried many times to enter my home address but with no success. Since I know the route from memory I ignored the satnav and eventually got home. I do not think this is finger trouble or that I have made an obvious mistake.

As one who worked in software and firmware development I recognise the classic symptoms of multiple software bugs that have not been ironed out. This car is still under warranty but since I don't know what triggers the faults I can't demonstrate them to the dealer. Also such troubles don't happen every time, so that makes things even more difficult. Whatever, there are many posts going back years saying this satnav is very clunky, I agree, I have no idea what to do except perhaps use my smartphone and google maps navigation, I get the feeling this Scala satnav is a bag of worms and could absorb untold amounts of my time with little hope of finding a solution. I cannot recommend this Scala satnav.

I have a 2024 Kamiq so similar sat nav I presume. Have you checked preferences as you may have ticked to avoid certain road types, also if you select quickest route it will divert you round road works, traffic jams etc so may take less obvious routes.

Is your map software the latest, believe mine is now on 26.1 so must have updated recently OTA.

Also must add I’ve never experienced the problems you seem to be having.

Edited 29 January29 Jan by Kenny R

Thanks Kenny, I'll check the things you mentioned. The Skoda dealer suggests that the next time it happens I should take a smartphone film of the Infotainment screen so as to have some evidence. I don't use this car much so it may be some time before I next use the satnav, but when I do I'll also note down all the touch screen key strokes sequence. If it then goes wrong I will at least have a record of how the situation arose, rather tedious, but maybe my only option.

This sounds pretty normal to me.

If your preference is set to Fastest then the Sat Nav will route you to avoid traffic congestion.

If your preference is set to Shortest then it'll route you to do that.

Note shortest is more than often also the longest duration.

It's easy to confuse the Sat Nav. Essential that you halt route guidance before programming a new route or changing preference. Best thing is to have the destinations stored as favourites, then you can just select the one you want.

Note if you don't follow the sat nav directions exactly it'll re-calculate as you drive with the intention of getting you where you said you wanted to go. So in your case if you retraced your steps it would have been fine and would have figured out what was happening eventually. (OK, it's annoying when it keeps telling you to "turn around when possible" but just press on and it'll catch up eventually.)

Thanks for your reply. Now I think what happened is that on the outbound journey I never cancelled navigation when I arrived. So hours later when I wanted to return home it probably still thought I was on the outbound journey.

I now notice that if I navigate to a destination then this navigation is automatically cancelled when it decides I have arrived. But since I wasn't following the navigation instructions near the end of the outbound journey it could be it thought I'd never arrived, the post code used covers a number of properties and once near I knew where to go, so I didn't need final directions or even check the sat nav at all. If I had things might have been more obvious. So I appreciate you taking the time to explain.