GPS Position Stuck??!

[rnortman]

If they can remote into the car, and the car sees satellites and is "using" a large number of them for position, and the position on the map doesn't move, that tells you that it's a hardware failure? He said "look, it's just the way GPS works".

In my experience, tech support and the folks at the service center really like to replace hardware. Because that's a thing they can do. Software problems are something they (a) can't understand, and (b) have a really hard time doing something about. For software problems they have a lot of bureaucracy to deal with (I imagine) to get the software engineers involve, prove to them there's a problem, and get the problem prioritized and on their schedule to fix.

I tried at one point to demonstrate a software bug in the climate control. Because I have no direct line to software engineering, I had to work with tech support and the service center. They had my car in the shop for a week replacing different parts of the climate control system that they claimed were broken (all under warranty, but still). And in the end the problem was still there, because it was (very obviously to me) a software problem. And in the end, they shrugged and said "that's how it's supposed to work, everything is fine."

I think it is way, way too much trouble for these folks to report software bugs. And the "bug report' button does not get the job done either. Tesla has no real way to deal with software bug reports from customers. Unless you are a YouTube or Twitter star -- then you can get bugs fixed super quickly.

 

[stevem]

My problem is my car is now just out of warranty. So parts replacing without knowing that's the problem is going to be an expensive proposition for me. I wish they would try wiping and reloading the software.

 

[stevem]

Still waiting to hear from the engineering team and from my local SC. Still drifting around and the GPS is still getting stuck. At least it gets stuck in odd locations sometimes.

 

[scottycs]

Most likely they will need to replace the GPS antenna which is in the rear window.

 

[Max*]

Most likely they will need to replace the GPS antenna which is in the rear window.

That's the first thing the do, and isn't always right. Depending on the GPS drift, it could very likely be the gyro and "connectivity board", which requires replacing the MCU.

 

[scottycs]

Actually they do the gyro and connectivity board first, which doesn't require replacement of the MCU. They did this twice on mine before replacing the GPS antenna, Window and MCU.

 

[GasKilla]

After my original problem I had this problem and did a center screen reboot and the problem went away ... hopefully you’ve tried that already

 

[Max*]

Actually they do the gyro and connectivity board first, which doesn't require replacement of the MCU. They did this twice on mine before replacing the GPS antenna, Window and MCU.

That's new, when they did mine a couple years ago it required a new MCU.

 

[bmah]

I've had a vaguely similar-sounding problem a few times over the past several days. It seems that if I reboot my MCU (or when it wakes up?), the car thinks it's in a different place about 30-ish miles away (it was in that place about a week ago but I don't remember anything particularly interesting happening there). When I roll the car out of my garage, it seems to figure out where it is (maybe because it can then see GPS satellites?). GPS position and heading appear to be correct as I'm driving around. Note that this problem appears after reboots, and repeated reboots don't help.

I've also had some intermittent LTE connectivity issues, which seem to have resolved themselves (more or less) before I could figure out anything.

Still gathering information, but does this sound familiar to anyone? April 2015 build S85D (AP1, MCU1, LTE upgrade), with software 2018.48.12.1. I haven't tried calling Tesla technical support yet (can't deal with long hold times right now).

Thanks for any thoughts,

Bruce.

 

[rnortman]

I've had a vaguely similar-sounding problem a few times over the past several days. It seems that if I reboot my MCU (or when it wakes up?), the car thinks it's in a different place about 30-ish miles away (it was in that place about a week ago but I don't remember anything particularly interesting happening there). When I roll the car out of my garage, it seems to figure out where it is (maybe because it can then see GPS satellites?). GPS position and heading appear to be correct as I'm driving around. Note that this problem appears after reboots, and repeated reboots don't help.

This is not the same symptom that I and others have experienced. FWIW my problems were finally solved a while back with a software update. In my case, the GPS would freeze in the last location I parked and never update until the car went into deep sleep (regular reboot not good enough). This was despite the fact that the car was seeing strong signal from enough satellites to get a lock (confirmed with Tesla support live on the phone while it was happening).

Yours probably sounds like a signal reception issue -- probably it is not getting a strong enough signal or a signal from enough satellites while sitting in your garage. That is not unusual for GPS, though if it has recently gotten worse it may be that there is a new problem with your antenna.

 

[bmah]

This is not the same symptom that I and others have experienced. FWIW my problems were finally solved a while back with a software update. In my case, the GPS would freeze in the last location I parked and never update until the car went into deep sleep (regular reboot not good enough). This was despite the fact that the car was seeing strong signal from enough satellites to get a lock (confirmed with Tesla support live on the phone while it was happening).

Yours probably sounds like a signal reception issue -- probably it is not getting a strong enough signal or a signal from enough satellites while sitting in your garage. That is not unusual for GPS, though if it has recently gotten worse it may be that there is a new problem with your antenna.

You're right it's a different problem...after another couple resets the CID is now black and non-responsive (but the car is driveable and on-line so they can look into it remotely). Definitely not the same thing.

Bruce.

 

[DriveMe]

It seems that if I reboot my MCU (or when it wakes up?), the car thinks it's in a different place about 30-ish miles away (it was in that place about a week ago but I don't remember anything particularly interesting happening there). When I roll the car out of my garage, it seems to figure out where it is (maybe because it can then see GPS satellites?).

That might explain a strange event we had this morning when the garage door suddenly started closing on its own when we were about to leave the garage in our Model 3. I didn't check the location on the map, but if it was off, that could explain it!

 

[rsg123]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I’m having the same problem. GPS location is stuck, of course on an undivided road so I have to keep my foot on the accelerator while using AP.
My issue is that I just got the MCU upgrade to the 32GB chip. Will they need to replace the MCU completely to fix this issue?
I’ve tried all the different soft resets and finally a factory reset.
Also what are the out of warranty costs for these repairs?

 

[rsg123]

I called Tesla support (and surprisingly got through immediately). They had me do a reboot and concluded that I need a service center visit. The car is not seeing any satellites