The prior version of North American maps (USA, Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico) were 5,738 MB, and were dated December 2018. I updated my cards this morning, and verified that this latest version still fits on the 8 GB card, as it is has grown in size by only 60 MB (original size was 4,977 MB, almost 1 GB smaller).
If you are using macOS, we would like to inform you that after the latest macOS (Catalina) update, Fiat Toolbox won’t be operational anymore – you’ll need to delete the old version and reinstall the current version of the application.
This will probably be the last FREE 3-year map subscription* update for those of you that purchased their 2017 Fiat 124 Spiders in the Summer of 2016, like I did.
The map service is tied to your VIN, so don’t waste your money buying a new Nav card on eBay/Amazon, thinking you can restart the clock for another 3 years.
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It is my understanding, that starting with the February 2019 version of Europe maps (which is currently the most recent version, according to Stuart), if you want the Russia maps along with maps for United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Poland , Portugal, Turkey and Spain, you’ll need a 16 GB SD card to install them on now, instead of the 8 GB card. Mazda has a procedure for providing an official blank card to accommodate that, but I’m not aware if Fiat has done the same.
As far as I know, the ADR maps (Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, South Africa, Thailand, Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam and Oceania regions) also still fit on the 8 GB card.
Procedure for Updating (if you skip backup, should take about 30 minutes)
Step 1. Download & Install Fiat Toolbox via Fiat 124 Spider Connect site (Windows or OSX version).
Step 2. Open Fiat Toolbox and insert SD card into the computer.
Step 3. Create a backup of the information currently on your SD card following the Toolbox prompt.
Step 4. Log in to Fiat Toolbox using your email/password combination. If it is your first time, you’ll have to create a user profile.
Step 5. Once logged in, a button will appear labeled “Updates” if a map update is available or “Device” if there are no new updates. Click “Updates.”
Step 6. Create a new SD card backup. If you have an alternate Nav SD card, you can skip this step.
Step 7. Click INSTALL to begin map update. After “Download progress” has reached 100%, “Installation progress” will commence, eventually reaching 100% as well. You only need to download once, so if you have multiple SD cards, updating after the first card, is much quicker.
Step 8. Once the new backup is compete, eject your SD card and return it to your vehicle.
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* Starting this summer (July 2019), owners of 2017 124 Spiders will start losing their free map updates, as that only lasts 3 years. Unlike with some vehicle brands, at least the SD card will continue to function, so you could probably wait for a while before resuming map updates, but eventually you should expect to pay, unless you consider alternatives, like installing the retrofit USB hub, which will then allow you to navigate via Android Auto or CarPlay programs.
21ˢᵗ Century Fiat / Abarth 124 Spider 
It is unreal how completely useless FCA is for the US Fiat 124 Spider. Heaven forbid we want map updates or firmware updates or Car Play. Hey at least they did the recall. LOL
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To be fair, Mazda and Fiat have nothing to do with the Navigation maps, as the Naviextras Toolbox and all of the updates are run by NNG / Visteon, but I agree, the dealers only seem to know about uConnect.
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That’s why we get the updates then. 🙂 Because if it was FCA we’d never get them. They still haven’t even posted the toolbox on the US site to get a map update!
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My local dealer has always been up front about not having much info on the FiatConnect system. But when they have sent questions off to their national dealer tech support at FCA, turns out they don’t know anything there either. Good thing we have the very good DIY support found here.
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I’ve been doing some digging into how SD card map updates actually happen. As posted already, Naviextras Toolbox programs (for all car brands so equipped including Fiat/Abarth, Mazda, Jaguar, Toyota and Scion) are an NNG product. If you have set up an account with any brand’s toolbox, that username and password will be the same for all brands you might own. NNG’s own portal site will also accept that username and password and display all branded OEM systems you have registered including some system details you cannot read elsewhere. For example, the Fiat 124 Spider Fiat Connect system displays but its details read “Visteon Mazda Toyota Scion.” The NNG portal does not allow updating OEM system maps – that can only be done by each brand’s toolbox. I was able to break through a very tight automated menu at NNG and speak to a human. I was told that NNG does not supply the actual maps – they get them through the car manufacturers. Obviously car builders are not creating that data. I could not get a straight answer as to how that happens except that the car companies need to maintain some kind of support agreement. NNG told me very clearly that currently (March 2020), the Fiat Connect system is not on their supported list. And as of March 2020 going forward neither is Mazda. Neither is Jaguar for SD card systems. Jaguar replaced their SD card system after MY2018. Mazda dropped Miata SD card systems after MY2019 and MY2020 Miatas come with Carplay. MY2020 124 Spiders still have the SD card system from the factory.
According to NNG, and other owners, and my own testing with a small collection of valid SD cards, the most recent North American SD card maps for our Fiat Connect system are dated June 2019. Even if your 3 free years has expired your toolbox will show that update available if you did not already get it. If you did already get the June 2019 update, your toolbox will say you have the latest update and that you have nothing available to purchase. According to NNG there is nothing in the works to change that, ever. At least not at this time. For Miatas, the most recent NA SD card maps are dated January 2020.
After taking a very long time, the Fiat USA Fiat Connect support site does now have a working download link for the Naviextras Toolbox but still only lists for MY2017.
For myself, I’m now mostly using an alternative nav system that includes traffic condition updates but I find this OEM confusion interesting as a sort of puzzle. If you have newer or better information on this particular OEM system – please contribute.
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I’m not sure what you were told is 100% correct. It’s definitely NNG who provide the map updates (I believe they mostly use Here maps now) – you were probably told a similar line to that which mobile phone manufacturers like to pretend about firmware updates (i.e. they come from the operators) as a good way for the person you spoke to to avoid telling you the “latest version”.
As has since been proven further down this comments thread, NA received a map updates in December 2019 and EU / RUS got one in January 2020.
There’s no reason to think that NNG are going to stop releasing updates for existing systems (especially if paid by us, their end customers) just because they may not be integrating their software into newer Mazda or Fiat cars
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As to today’s reply comment that it has been proven here (in earlier posts) that North America received a map update in December 2019, all I read is an advance statement that an NA update “should be” available in Dec 2019 or January 2020. The Fiat Naviextras Toolbox does not show that availability for North American Spiders. All specific feedback I’ve had from NA owners is that there have been no NA updates for their Spiders since June 2019. The Mazda website does say they have a January 2020 NA map update available for Miatas of MY2019 and earlier. The same information was received from NNG in separate contacts with different reps regarding both Fiat and Jaguar systems (which are having a similar experience). Availability may be different for other regions of the world. Please bear in mind that when an earlier issue update is installed later than the issue date, some files on the updated card will identify with the download date. If a North American owner using the OEM Fiat Connect system has actually had success locating and installing an NA map update originally issued in or after December 2019 I would very much appreciate learning how that was done. That would be very appreciated news.
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I live in Canada. Bought a 2019 and wrote to FCA about the update that was released in October ’20. It does not work. FCA mentioned the mapping software is by HERE (Nokia maps?)
Anyway, there is great discussion about this issue on 124spider.org [link added] to the point where we are seeking class action option as many people have update issues that were promised/sold as an option for thoughts who purchased it. Have a read on the forum there as well.
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Thanks Warren. I’ve been following (and contributing to) that thread closely. The updates appear to work properly for everyone but North America, and I’m very disappointed in FCA’s lack of support in getting this resolved, especially since they won’t involve themselves with a CarPlay/Android Auto update, even though Mazda has fully developed the solution.
It’s too bad that this can’t be deemed a safety related issue (resulting in a forced recall), like Tesla is going through now with their failing touchscreens that prevent drivers from being able to operate window defog/defrost functions.
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absolutely. If it wasn’t for AmeriDan’s blog, and the user forums, my car wouldn’t have the cool stuff it has today!
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I never expected too much support (on maps or other features) from my dealer so I’m very grateful to have found this blog!
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I was looking at my blog stats, and thought I’d share the composition of the 14,306 views for May 2019:
I guess my audience is pretty much what I expected 😉
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Indeed the Toolbox program would ask you if you want to update EU or RUS maps due to size constraints back in February but this seems to only be a bug.
I chose to update the EU maps (for obvious reasons 😉 ) but after completion it would also allow me to update the Russian maps.
Nevertheless there isn’t much space left on the SD card and without wanting to rely on FCA I had a look around if there is a more hands-on approach on solving this.
And there is. I only tried this on a Windows 10 PC; From what i have read MacOS will work similar (the tools have different names and you have to do manually remove some files that Spotlight will save on the SD card)
1. Get yourself a shiny new 16GB SD card
I bought a Sandisk Extreme (so shiny indeed), others have recommended Transcend Class 10. Personally I’ll use Transcends for my DSLRs and they work there just fine, but a Raspi 1 didn’t like them very much. Never had an issue with Sandisks. Only make sure that what you get is a somehow fast card. Class 10 should be more then sufficient.
2. You may want to run some extra checks on the SD card to make sure they haven’t sold you a fake one. H2Testw is a good tool to do this. This step is optional and only necessary if you bought the card from not-so-trustworthy sources.
3. Insert the OEM SD card into your PC and create an image of it with a tool like Win32DiskImager (select desired the path of your image file and click the Read button). No need to close the tool yet.
4. Safely remove the OEM SD card and insert your new card. Make sure that the card shows up with the same drive letter and that the path to your image file is still there (if not, adjust the fields accordingly) and click the Write button.
After completion Map Update Toolbox should already recognize the card but due to the nature of the process the file partition is still only 8GB big.
5. To correct this I used a tool called MiniToolPartitionWizard, but any other partitioning software will do (they all work more or less similar). Once it has loaded you right-click on the drive representing your SD card and click on Extent. Pull the slider all the way to the right and click OK. In the main window click on Apply and wait a few seconds for it to do its magic.
After this you can check if Map Update Toolbox still recognizes the card but more importantly if your SatNav loads up data from the new card.
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That’s great that you have a larger prepared card ready. The next experiment will be updating the map folders on the cards (from the Mazda HiDrive), when our subscriptions run out. Seems to me, as long as the license folder stays intact, the cards should continue to work fine. If you didn’t update the Russia map data yet, Tobias, you could try out this approach (and even add some ADR maps 😉 )
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Unfortunately i already updated them back in February, but I will try to keep that in mind for the next update. At the latest once my subscription runs out, but that won’t happen until April.
I got the impression that duplicating the card via imaging is only necessary if you want it to work with Map Update Toolbox. The SatNav might also work if you just copy&paste all files to the new card (still have to watch out for filesystem and card compatibility). I haven’t tried that though, since this makes updating inconvenient once the OEM 8GB isn’t large enough anymore.
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I’ve never worried about imaging or any special procedures for updating. I bought a new official Fiat card from a dealer in August 2016 (not many alternate sources that early). Installed the toolbox from the Euro site as suggested on this blog. I’ve never actually updated that original card. I used simple copy and paste to duplicate the contents in a desktop folder I named “Original” and then use copy and paste again to copy those contents to a brand new card which I used in the car. For each additional update I did the same thing – copied the original 2016 content from my desktop folder to a brand new card and then updated that copy using the toolbox. Which means I still have a working copy of every map version since 2016. I did try updating directly to one of my copies early on and that didn’t go perfectly so I’ve stayed with making copies of the original Fiat card/content to use for each update. Toolbox has no trouble leapfrogging from that to the most current update. A couple of updates back I didn’t have an 8gb card available so I used a new 16gb with no problems. (The Toolbox displays the used and free space correctly for the 16s.)
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Word in the German Mazda message boards is that there are different hardware versions of the SD card and that copies of newer cards sometimes didn’t work with Toolbox if you had used copy&paste. Some stated that this might have been fixed with newer Toolbox versions though.
Also using an image is faster than copy&paste since you are only working with one large file compared to several smaller ones. Mainly due to less filesystem overhead and flash memory’s general dislike of small files.
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I checked over the weekend, and there are currently no European updates available after the Feb ’19 ones.
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The “March” 2019 maps are now available for download in Europe. I believe this is the same version that NA got in June.
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Part of me wants to update them, but now I have to pay. And I retrofitted for CarPlay, so I guess I really don’t need it… LOL
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EUREKA. I am super curious ( and scared at the same time) , to check if the 300Mb left in my (“our”, I suppose) 8Gb SD Nav card will be enough to upload the update…
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I’m afraid to say I completely failed to check how big the update was.
Based purely on guess work though, in suspect less than 100MB, pesky as it was quite quick to process.
I also haven’t had a chance to actually test them out in the car yet 😥
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claudio19, I don’t have any experience with the EU version. If you haven’t already, check out Tobias‘ comment though. My understanding is that unless you want the Russia maps too, 8GB should be adequate.
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Hi Dan,
that is a bit of a mystery to me. When i updated my 8GB card with the February’19 release i was asked to choose between EU or RUS maps. For obvious reasons i chose EU but afterwards it also allowed me to update the RUS maps.
According to my file explorer I still have both regions on my 8GB card. I might have to check if the RUS maps are the most recent or older ones that Toolbox just left on the card.
Another explanation would be that there actually is enough space on a 8GB card for both EU and RUS maps but somehow the update process itself requires some extra space that might not be available while it is running.
Just guesswork though.
One more thing @Stuart:
After reading your comment i tried updating my cards 2 days ago, but Toolbox only offered me the February’19 release. You’re sure that you have a March’19 update? If find it a bit odd that they’d release a ‘one-month-newer’ update with a 6 months delay.
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Hello ameridian and Stuart, I have just checked for the update but I have been prompted -after having logged in -that no map update are available. keep waiting.
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My subscription has expired, so I am not able to verify, but I’m reading that map updates, dated either December 2019, or January 2020, should be available.
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Yes , I have written somewhere here that January map update is available. It is +300Mb . Haven’ t seen major differences. Few new roads/ roundabouts of my town made in 2018 are still not included . Nav is not the best feature of this car.
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Yes, I can confirm there’s a new map update (dated December 2019).
Can anyone who’s map update subscription has ended confirm whether or not they’re able to buy any further map updates?
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I updated maps for the final 3yr/free time last July. My 3 years expired Aug 31 2019. Since then, including yesterday, the “toolbox” tells me (1) my card with proper VIN showing is up to date with no new updates available (2) My subscription expired 8/31/2019 (3) my SD card (updated 7/19 and working in my car) is invalid due to invalid system license (the page also says that a Visteon system license “never expires”). It will not allow me access to purchase anything.
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I should have mentioned that my SD card now being called invalid by the toolbox was checked out as valid by the same toolbox last August.
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That’s a bit random! I find it incredible that it’s not possible to purchase further map updates.
BMW are still offering updates for their nav systems that are almost 20 years old (E39 etc. systems)
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When the toolbox is working properly, you should be offered the opportunity to purchase updates.
Hopefully, future attempts on John’s part will prove successful.
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Since besides telling me my working card is invalid, the toolbox is also telling me my card has the latest update – which I installed in July 2019 – the obvious place to start figuring this out is: What is the issue date of the most recent North American map update as of right now (February 2020)?
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As to today’s comment reply that it has been proven here (in earlier posts) that North America received a map update in December 2019, all I read is an advance statement that an NA update “should be” available in Dec 2019 or January 2020. The Fiat Naviextras Toolbox does not show that availability for North American Spiders. All specific feedback I’ve had from NA owners is that there have been no NA updates for their Spiders since June 2019. The Mazda website does say they have a January 2020 NA map update available for Miatas of MY2019 and earlier. The same information was received from NNG in separate contacts with different reps regarding both Fiat and Jaguar systems (which are having a similar experience). Availability appears to possibly be different in other regions of the world. Please bear in mind that when an earlier issue update is installed later than the issue date, some files on the updated card will identify with the download date. If a North American owner using the OEM Fiat Connect system has actually had success locating and installing an NA map update originally issued in or after December 2019 I would very much appreciate learning how that was done. That would be very appreciated news.
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I just tried updating as I took mine out of storage. I have “there is no map update available for your device, or all available updates have already been installed. ”
I don’t have an option to renew my subscription, either (I was a summer 2016 buyer)
I also upgraded to Carplay anyway, but I like to keep it current just in case.
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This is what I have asked to Fiat customer service in February this year .When my update terms will end ( June 2020), how will I be able to renew it ? They called me back a couple of weeks later ( took their time ) and told me that when the 3 year period expires, we will have the opportunity to renew the maps via internet by paying each time for that renewal . I was happy with that till you write this. it confirms me what I basically think of the Fiat CS which I prefer not to write in clear letters .
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I’m practically in shock. The October 2020 NA map update is working now. Which lines up well with Mazda’s most recent Sept 2020 map update post.
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How much is the upgrade and how long is it good for? I have CarPlay but I like having it updated just in case.
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Last time I looked…
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Thanks!
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Hi, there is now a March 2022 map update available, just an FYI
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Yes, I posted that last week – it went very smoothly. Thanks though 😉
https://21stcenturyfiat124spider.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/navigation/comment-page-2/#comment-15028
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A new map update (at least for North America) – dated August 2022 was released on the 18th.
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⭐️ The last map updates that will forever be available, are dated August 2022. You have until the end of December 2023 to update your Nav SD card using the Fiat Map Update Toolbox, as NNG has announced the end-of-life for our version of that app.
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