2009 Nissan 370Z Touring: Non-Syncro TimeMatch

Why even bother with the clock in the navigation system?

One of the uses of GPS is the signal provides you with very accurate time-of-day from an atomic clock, so its handy to automatically set the vehicle clock. You can also determine time zone from vehicle position, and update it automatically on road trips. Not syncing the vehicle clock with the navigation system is just engineering laziness and/or cost-cutting. Toyota/Lexus has this same problem, they have a 21st century nav system with a 1980s LED clock.

The clock on the GPS system uses the incoming signal to automatically synchronize itself, just like a cell phone. The LED clock is a completely different piece of hardware, its just a normal LED clock that you must set by hand, it has no connection to the GPS system at all. There is no reason to create a costly system of synchronizing the two clocks, since non GPS Z cars would not benefit.

You could simply set the LED clock by hand while looking at the GPS clock and waiting for it to change time. I do the same thing for alarm clocks in my house with my cellphone.

@eblock2 : some people like me prefer to have the clock 10 minutes fast.

@OP: because some people like me prefer to have the clock 10 minutes fast. The clock on the nav system is likely the 'official' time. Useful I guess if you want to know the time back home too on a road trip?

@nitrous638
True but I don't think it's unfeasible to connect the two, or that costly. For example, many Hondas/Acuras with navigation have an extra LCD sub-display containing a clock and radio/climate settings, and the clock is indeed synchronized to the navigation system.

See, electronics in modern cars are all connected to a common communications bus, usually CAN or some proprietary setup. This greatly reduces wiring and enables the engineers to easily link different components making something like this feasible. It can be done with just software.

@mikeolan
I think it would be lazy to not provide an option to let the driver manually set the time or offset it by a number of minutes.

I too set my clock 10 minutes fast.

I'm horribly late when somebody jacks up my clock and sets it to actual time.
I hate them.
I hate you.
Now change it back to 10 minutes fast.

For those who set their timepieces 10 minutes fast: WHY?!?!? My girl and I have had a few breif talks regarding this and I've yet to hear a reasonable answer from her.

YOU know that it's 10 minutes fast. People that ride with will look at your clock, check their watch and notice that it's 10 minutes fast. Excuse the digression from the blog but can someone please explain this?

^^ ya, please explain this. I'm also having a difficult time grasping the concept of setting the clock for the wrong time. What's the point?

because slow molasses like us need 10 minutes extra to travel and dress and do dental hygienes.

So instead of looking at the clock and groggily morning mentally add 10 minutes to the current time to see if I'm on time, I just have the time (current + 10) already calculated for me to see.
I can't do math when I'm sleepy yo.

Can you???
Do you have to be on time for your job???
Do you make sure you're already standing at your location in the office to do your work the moment the clock hits the hour???