I bought a 2005 ES330 a couple of months ago with the new navigation system. I am happy with it except for one thing: (apparently due to safety/legal issues) most of the nav system features are unavailable unless the vehicle is stopped. My wife and I frequently take cross-country trips of thousands miles across the US. In the past we have used a Garmin StreetPilot III GPS system. It boots up with a warning that one should not use it while driving, but it also lets you bypass this feature so that a passenger can use the advanced features. We quite frequently used this system to locate restaurants, road side parks, and lodging while enroute. This made it quite handy to call ahead and see if there was a vacancy for the night,for instance, and then change the route to that destination. Lexus, it seems, wants to require that the vehicle pull over and stop to do the same thing. This is extremely inconvenient and inefficient, especially when several calls to different hotels must be made. I'd like the ability for the passenger to use the Lexus nav system while moving. The way to do this would be to keep the nav system from knowing that the vehicle is moving. Obviously, the GPS info can detect movement, but this system also uses "dead-reckoning" so that it can give a less accurate guidance if the GPS signal is lost. This makes me think that perhaps, just perhaps, the movement detection that turns of selected functions is somehow tied to speedometer input. Does anyone know if this is true? If so, then a workaround would involve disabling this input. If not, then it seems that a software hack is the only route. Anyone know anything about a software hack? Yes, I know it would void my warranty.
TIA, mdh