Lexus Drivers

Before hosting a dinner party, Lexus automotive editor Clark Heideger explains how Lexus drivers can make eDestination an essential part of the recipe.

By Clark Heideger | Photography by KARLA THOMAS

RECENTLY, RIGHT AROUND New Years, my wife made an announcement. “I want to throw a French-themed dinner party for Jeff and Karla.”

This was a bigger challenge than it sounds. Jeff and Karla are long-time travel companions of ours. Together we went on a self-guided gourmet tour of France’s Perigord Noir a few years back. Jeff is a serious food enthusiast, the kind of guy who grows his own herbs and makes sausage from ingredients he personally picked up at the farm.

A French dinner party for Jeff was a serious undertaking, requiring exquisite ingredients sourced from all manner of specialty shops in and around Seattle.

In short, a perfect opportunity to take advantage of eDestination[1].

Researching Destinations and Building Folders
eDestination is a feature offered on the available Lexus Enform[2]that lets you search for and organize destinations—such as a list of specialty food shops—and send them wirelessly to your vehicle’s available navigation system[3]. Once downloaded to your vehicle, it’s a snap to access them as you program route guidance.

eDestination is a huge time saver, because you can research and identify just about any destination you want using tools on the Lexus Drivers site, all in the comfort of your home or office.

To get started, Lisa and I sat down together at her computer and logged into the Lexus Driver’s site. The link for eDestination is found under the MY LEXUS tab.

Using the tools on the EDESTINATION SEARCH page, it was a simple matter to identify all the shops we wanted to visit. Lisa had already researched some, and the online tool was able to find them based solely on their name and city/state location. We also found a few additional destinations using the tool’s search feature.

Incidentally, eDestination was able to identify every destination we sought. But if it hadn't, we would have been able to create a custom destination simply by inputting the address.

Each time we identified a destination, we put it into a folder that we’d created titled, French Dinner Party. eDestination lets you create up to 20 folders at any given time, holding a maximum of 200 destinations total. After you reach the limit, you can delete unneeded ones to free up space.

Sending destinations to your vehicle
Once our folder contained all the destinations we wanted to visit, it was ready to be sent wirelessly to our vehicle’s navigation system. This is done on the EDESTINATION SEARCH page; simply click SEND CHANGES NOW to make it happen. A little icon next to the folder turns green, indicating that the information has been queued up and is now waiting for you to download the next time you’re in your vehicle.

Completing the wireless transfer is easy. In your vehicle’s navigation system, select DESTINATION, then select the Point of Interest icon, touch eDestination, and then Download. The wireless transfer generally takes less than a minute, after which you’ll see your folders displayed on the screen.

Smartphone app
Although Lisa and I researched our trip at her computer, that's not the only way of accessing eDestination. I also use it on my iPhone^®. It's included in the Enform app that Lexus has made available for iPhone^®, Android^™, or Blackberry^®[4]. I downloaded mine for free from the App Store.

The great thing about the app is that it lets me create destinations anytime, anywhere. For example, I keep a running Recommended Restaurants folder; whenever somebody tells me about a new restaurant, I immediately send it to my car so I can quickly find it when the mood strikes. And on my last visit to the doctor, I actually plotted out the itinerary of my next fishing trip to Montana while I was waiting. Now the destinations have all been downloaded into my car, and all I have to do is load my gear when it’s time to go (which, between you and me, won’t be until after I’ve broached the subject with Lisa).

But I digress...let’s get back to the party.

Creating and following a route using eDestination folders
When it came time to go shopping, we got in our car and used our eDestination information to plot our route. This was done in essentially the same way as you would program any route guidance into the navigation system: which is to say, I created a route to a single destination, and then added additional destinations to the route one at a time.

The only difference was that instead of searching for and identifying destinations using the navigation system, I simply selected DESTINATION, then touched Point of Interest, and then touched eDestination. This gave me access to all the destinations I previously downloaded.

In short order, I had created a route to the five shops we wanted to visit, and had used the map to sort them (Reorder) into the most efficient and logical order.

And we were off!

First stop, University Seafood & Poultry for oysters. It was New Years, after all, and that time of year in France, oysters on the half shell are as de rigueur as Champagne. Next stop, Le Fournil bakery for bread and dessert. After that, it was off to Paris Grocery, a new little spot hidden away behind our city’s public market. This was a real test for the navigation system, and it passed with flying colors—as did the duck confit we purchased there, a key ingredient for our cassoulet.

It was right about this time we realized we’d been a little optimistic about how much we could get done in a morning.

“We should have included plans for lunch when we made this route,” said Lisa.

Hey, no problem.

Adding a new destination while en route
Anytime you’re using route guidance in your Lexus, you can add an additional destination while on the fly. I’ve done it so many times I was able to talk Lisa through the operation without having to pull over.

“Select Add Route, then touch Add, now touch Point of Interest, and then touch eDestination,” I told her. “Now you’re looking at all my custom folders. Select the one that says Recommended Restaurants, and you’ll see a list of choices. You can choose any of them to get more details.”

“This is easy,” said Lisa. “Here’s one called Carnegie’s—the note says Jeff recommended it. Oh, I get it, the restaurant is in a former Carnegie Library. How about we eat there?”

“Sounds good. All you have to do now is select Add to Route, and then indicate that we want to go there now.”

Like I said, a snap. I had my onion soup inside half an hour.

After lunch, we resumed our route. We made a stop at A&J Meats for lamb sausage and ham hocks, and then a last call at the Vineyard Wine Shop.

“C’est trés facile!” said Lisa as we headed home. “That eDestination is pretty cool.”

“Oui!” I replied.

“I’ve just got one question,” she continued. “What’s up with that folder labeled Montana Fishing Trip?”

“Oh, yeah, about that...”