GPS location off sometimes?

[mdd]

I took delivery of my Model S last Friday. The one weird thing I've noticed so far is that sometimes the GPS location will be off by a bit -- say, between 100 and 500 feet. Usually it's dead on, but when it's off, it appears to just get stuck with some fixed offset from the real location -- just enough to basically always be on the wrong street when trying to use navigation. I haven't figured out any pattern to when it's right vs wrong. I've seen it in both states in the same physical locations.

Anyone else seen this? Should I just call ownership and see what they say?

Other than the GPS issue, the car has been great. So much fun to drive. :smile:

 

[bsd]

This just happened to me yesterday. I was just off a ferry and the Nav screen thought I was 5–10 meters west of the actual road, which would have put me into the water! It corrected itself after a couple of minutes.

I wondered if the local cell towers could be a bit off... Assuming the MS uses a similar type of AGPS solution.

 

[Sparrow]

It happened to me once too a couple of months ago. Started at my home so I now have another erroneous charging location in my list. At the time I had also programmed a destination so all the turns it was telling me to make were wrong. Problem went away on its own at the very next startup of the car and hasn't happened again.

 

[T B]

That is something GPS do sometimes. Its not a Tesla thing. I have experienced stuff like that with both handheld dedicated GPS devices and my Android phone. Usually a couple of meters - but once it thought I was in Denmark.

 

[JakeP]

I notice that all my charging locations are incorrect...the street address is off by 10 digits in every case, even if that street address doesn't really exist. For example, 1018 Chestnut St will appear as 1028 Chestnut St in the Saved Charging Locations. But the GPS shows the correct geophysical location.

Does anyone else see this?

 

[dsm363]

I notice that all my charging locations are incorrect...the street address is off by 10 digits in every case, even if that street address doesn't really exist. For example, 1018 Chestnut St will appear as 1028 Chestnut St in the Saved Charging Locations. But the GPS shows the correct geophysical location.

Does anyone else see this?

This is a Garmin issue. A lot of times to makes things easier the mapping companies take a street and march along with evenly spaced lots for the address. If the lots are variable width this can throw things off a little. That's what Garmln said when I emailed them about something similar before.

 

[Sparrow]

In my case, my house sits 1/3 off the road. The street address listed in my charging location section is for a house in a nearby subdivision, but the dot does appear to be on my home. Conversely, if I program my address to navigate to, it takes me to this very same house and then would need me to go off road to get to my house where the dot is also located. The one day that my GPS location was off it picked another address to show as my charging location, but this time the dot is actually on that house. With my old Garmin portable GPS units when I program my address into them, they actually take me to my driveway entrance and don't try to get me all the way to my house. The problem seems to occur when they try to get to the dot that is my house. The closest street to my house is actually in the subdivision next door so the GPS apparently tries to go that way instead of going to my driveway which is on a different street.

 

[Todd Burch]

Personally, I've never seen my GPS marker off by more than a few feet in my 9 months of driving.

 

[Rbarry]

I picked my car up on Friday (so it has 5.0) and it is wrong in terms of GPS about 20% of the time. This morning (as I took car in to get windows tinted and C.Quartz Finest applied) the nav system after putting the address in COULD NOT get me to my location. It had me on surface streets about 1/4 mile away from the freeway I was on. I am hoping software issue with 5.0 -- but going to call Service Center to discuss it later this morning.

 

[arg]

I picked my car up on Friday (so it has 5.0) and it is wrong in terms of GPS about 20% of the time. This morning (as I took car in to get windows tinted and C.Quartz Finest applied) the nav system after putting the address in COULD NOT get me to my location. It had me on surface streets about 1/4 mile away from the freeway I was on. I am hoping software issue with 5.0 -- but going to call Service Center to discuss it later this morning.

I don't think we have any firm information about the GPS implementation in the Model S (cellphone integration?/hardware compass?/dead-reckoning support?), but that much error sounds like no GPS at all and just getting coarse position by cell tower triangulation. Possibly your GPS antenna has fallen off, or its LNA is broken such that you only get a GPS position under ideal signal conditions. Whichever way, this sounds like a completely different problem to the one cited in other posts

 

[Vidio]

I picked my car up on Friday (so it has 5.0) and it is wrong in terms of GPS about 20% of the time. This morning (as I took car in to get windows tinted and C.Quartz Finest applied) the nav system after putting the address in COULD NOT get me to my location. It had me on surface streets about 1/4 mile away from the freeway I was on. I am hoping software issue with 5.0 -- but going to call Service Center to discuss it later this morning.

I also picked my car up last Friday and it has the same problem. I would say mine is off at least 20% of the time if not more. It just randomly shows me two streets over or in the middle of a field. Then after a while it gets me back on track. I called Tesla but they seem completely unaware of any issues. But the GPS is basically unusable as it is.

 

[Denarius]

My GPS has never been off. Maybe Tesla got a bad batch of GPS chips or antennas.

 

[JakeP]

This is a Garmin issue. A lot of times to makes things easier the mapping companies take a street and march along with evenly spaced lots for the address. If the lots are variable width this can throw things off a little. That's what Garmln said when I emailed them about something similar before.

I dunno about this, as it is isolated to the Visited Chargers application. It knows the correct addresses from navigating to them just fine, and they are stored correctly in Recent Places...but the Visited Chargers is off by ten digits. Though maybe that is the difference between being parked in my garage vs. the front of my house?

 

[bonnie]

GPS errors are common, with many contributing factors. Here's an article that explains some of the reasons GPS explained: Error sources ... it's likely not the car or bad hardware or implementation. It's more likely just the random inherent limitations of the GPS technology.

 

[texex91]

I also picked my car up last Friday and it has the same problem. I would say mine is off at least 20% of the time if not more. It just randomly shows me two streets over or in the middle of a field. Then after a while it gets me back on track. I called Tesla but they seem completely unaware of any issues. But the GPS is basically unusable as it is.

I would have them check it--I've never owned a car of any kind where the GPS is off 20% of the time.

 

[Vidio]

GPS errors are common, with many contributing factors. Here's an article that explains some of the reasons GPS explained: Error sources ... it's likely not the car or bad hardware or implementation. It's more likely just the random inherent limitations of the GPS technology.

This is definitely not just the limitations of GPS units. I've had at least 5 GPS units in various cars and none have ever been so far off. Either Tesla has developed the worst GPS unit ever (which I highly doubt) or there is a systemic hardware or software problem in many of the recent cars. I'm hoping its software related to version 5.0 but perhaps there was a bad batch as suggested.

 

[Rbarry]

@Bonnie: Thanks for the article, but unfortunately my GPS error is not at all a "common" error. Every car I've owned has had GPS and this error is entirely "new" and not at all something that is within the 10 or so meters of that 2009 report. We are talking about a few hundred yards off! I am hoping it might be a 5.0 issue with my new car rather than hardware. I am going to see how it does tomorrow with a few navigation exercises and then take it in to service.

 

[jak]

There's a private thread running in the other forum about this same problem. It sounds like VP of Service has been notified.

After reading a couple of threads about this problem, it almost seems as if this problem came about with the current/recent release of cars with v5.0 firmware. That's just me guessing. I don't own a Model S yet.

 

[dc_transformer]

Same problem here as well. I picked up my car on Sept. 28. The navigation system is frequently placing the car about a block away from the actual location.

 

[dc_transformer]

Spoke with Tesla Service today. They're aware of the GPS issue and expect a software upgrade within a few weeks.