what does this actually do?

does it expire?

will I eventually have to pay for it?

 

It shows traffic flow (more delayed than Google maps) on the nav screen. I think it's free forever.

 

Hi all, I have a 2016 RX 350. I have been using a lot GPS Navigation in the past 5 years, but I noticed a significant degradation on the quality of the traffic information in the past year. I drive to NYC and the traffic information is very important when planning the route. Just the other day the car thought that it can cross Manhattan from west to east passing through Times Square in 15 minutes. It caused a 2 hrs delay for a 1.5 hrs road. Sometimes I am on a highway stuck in a traffic jam, when I look at the map I can see that the road is marked green. Only maybe an hour later it updates to red. This is also true for the other way around where the congestion disappeared an hour ago, but the car still thinks that there is a jam.

It wasn't always like this. It got worse and worse over the course of 2019 and now I definitely cannot rely on it. It is a shame to not being able to use the big screen for navigation.

Does anybody have a similar issue or know any remedy that I can try?

Thanks a lot

 

Like others have mentioned, you could disconnect the battery for about 15 minutes. This will force the HD tuner to reacquire it's info. And I'm 99% sure there are 2 separate HD tuners, 1 for radio, 1 for traffic/weather.
It is free forever.
If you aren't around an HD radio station, run the Lexus Enform App Suite (not the 2.0 version) as a backup data source for traffic/weather.

 

I did disconnect the battery but it didn't improve the traffic. I'm sure there are many HD radio stations around NYC; also I always have the HD traffic icon displayed on the map.