2020 Ford F250 - AUS Street & Offroad Map Integration

We had a chance to work on another F250 truck - this time the car was delivered to the owner already after vehicle was imported and complianced.

This F250 is a MY20 model with Sync III - converted to RHD before It arrived Australia - originally from Canada.

For those of you own recent / new Ford models, most of those vehicles came with a Sync III since 2018, and they do have a built in Apple CarPlay & Android Auto. So when you are on the street / town area you don't really need a conservative Sat Nav.

But the purpose of these trucks aren't just for town cruising - lots of these trucks are coming into Australia for offroad activities.

Consider the CarPlay and Android auto will become useless once there's no solid internet data network / reception, a Sat Nav becomes a must - especially if you drive to remote / bush area. And those truck owners - whether It's Ford 250, RAM 2500, GMC Denali or Silverado know that well.

But then, as these trucks are designed for North America only - although they slowly considering to do a proper export their cars to Australia - the car doesn't have a built in NAV for AUS, as you can see the map screen above shows a blank window.

In order to add Sat Nav into Ford F150 / 250 / 350, regardless of Sync audio version , It has to be done 'outside' of the audio. Meaning that there's no way we can activate nor install AUS map designed by Ford.

Certain customers tried to implement the NAV setup extracted from local Ford Ranger / Territory . But the fact is that Sync audio between US and AUS market is completely different. They still have a same hardware, but the software and coded OS is different, and modification / alteration on those isn't really available either - as far as we know that is.

What we do is, we install a hardware device that piggybacks to the native Sync III audio - somewhat similar to installing HDD to a PC if you will - without any modiffication on the dash nor cutting wires etc. If you have one of these trucks in AUS you probably paid at least $160k arleady and certainly do not want any damage in your vehicle - not that It's ok to expect a damage on any valued cars.

Once It's fitted, It uses the one of the button to trigger the 'screen mode' to be changed.