I use the built-in GPS about 99% of the time. I keep a mount in the car just in case I need to use my phone for navigation, but that almost never happens.
The built-in navigation isn't great. It lacks some pretty obvious options (it doesn't offer multiple routes, and you can't give it intermediate waypoints) and its routing is occasionally stupid. Although the big screen shows Google Maps, the actual routing is done using an onboard database which is not as good as Google is. But it's good enough that the convenience of just using the big screen in the car outweighs the superior results I get from my phone.
It is getting better, which is one thing most cars can't say. We recently got the ability to have it avoid toll roads, for example, and while that really should have been there from the beginning, it's pretty cool that it can be added after the fact.
Navigation is one of the top complaints from Tesla owners in my experience, and I agree with a lot of those complaints, but it's not bad enough to have me going for my phone except in rare cases.
Out of curiosity, does the Tesla system pay any attention to the number of people in the vehicle? For example in the sf bay area, there are some places where going from one highway to another (eg 101 to 85) is a left exit for carpools and right exit for solo occupant.
Most gps let you pick to include or exclude car pools, but it is such a pain to change the setting that it is usually left on excluding car pools. But Tesla could know exactly how many people are in the car, and do the right thing automatically. It would also affect journey times since car pool lanes are often quicker.
Interesting question. No such option is exposed, and I don't think it's doing anything clever with seat occupancy sensors. I'm not sure how aware it is of HOV restrictions in the first place. I think that for routes which are only restricted at certain times of day, it will freely use them, and for routes which are always HOV it will never use them.
There are also some HOT lanes around here (where you can either drive for free with 3+ people, or pay a toll with less) and it never routes me onto those, even though it happily routes me onto other toll roads. Not sure what's up with that.
The built-in navigation isn't great. It lacks some pretty obvious options (it doesn't offer multiple routes, and you can't give it intermediate waypoints) and its routing is occasionally stupid. Although the big screen shows Google Maps, the actual routing is done using an onboard database which is not as good as Google is. But it's good enough that the convenience of just using the big screen in the car outweighs the superior results I get from my phone.
It is getting better, which is one thing most cars can't say. We recently got the ability to have it avoid toll roads, for example, and while that really should have been there from the beginning, it's pretty cool that it can be added after the fact.
Navigation is one of the top complaints from Tesla owners in my experience, and I agree with a lot of those complaints, but it's not bad enough to have me going for my phone except in rare cases.