Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

GPS problem - my car is alledgedly off the coast of West Africa :)

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
I had the same problem & it ended up being a loose harness.

Problem started similar as yours. GPS would track a couple of miles off from where I actually was. Then sometimes these was no tracking at all that would eventually return.
Took it to the service center and they could not replicate and gave me the car back On the drive home it happened again so i started logging the problems and found the cause = Heat.

The GPS problem happened at the hottest time of year and every time it got really hot (over 105 F) I would intermittently loose GPS.

Service center again checked everything and could not find a cause. Everything checked out. So they setup 3 guys with heat guns on the roof of the car near the back and finally were able to replicate the issue. The GPS antenna is integrated into the rear windshield. There is a harness under the headliner that connects it to the main screen. Somehow that harness was not properly secured or became loose. When it got hot the harness would separate just enough to loose GPS.

Make sure your service center checks the Antenna & the cables to make sure everything is OK and properly seated. It may not be the cause for your but either way it would not hurt to make sure all the connections are properly connected & there is no break in the connection that extreme heat or cold would cause.
 
I no longer have GpS issue after updated to 17.11.10 but another bigger issue occurs:

Cruise and auto-pilot no longer works. :-(

Whenever pull the tab, it prompts:

Cruise is not available.

Anyone updated to 17.11.10 has the same issue?

Hi!

I just updated the car this morning and now have your exact same issues! :-( Autopilot no longer works and limit the speed to 50km/h in highways... navigator also it's crazy and summon did not work at all.

How do you fix it?
 
Hi!

I just updated the car this morning and now have your exact same issues! :-( Autopilot no longer works and limit the speed to 50km/h in highways... navigator also it's crazy and summon did not work at all.

How do you fix it?
Mine came back on its own suddenly mid drive but I am concerned it will re-appear so its still getting a thorough check out at the SC this friday.
 
Off the coast of Africa - judging from the map it seems like the GPS has a position of 0 degrees lat, 0 degrees long:

Google Maps

This is where 0 / 0 degrees is - the greenwich meridian meets equator.

GPS antenna problem seems plausible. Could be as simple as a plug not being properly connected.
 
  • Like
Reactions: NicB72
Thorough check at SC revealed nothing. Issue hasn't returned. SC thought it could be firmware related but I am not so sure as it came back without any firmware change - of course that doesn't mean it wasn't.

fingers crossed it doesn't happen again.
 
I had the same problem yesterday. I drove my daughter to lacrosse practice 12 miles from home. But the app showed my car still parked at home! Refreshed the app, closed and reopened...nope, still at home. Used a third party app. Still at home. Tried triggering the a/c and lights to see if I could get it to connect and update....still at home! Finally figured it out after 15 mins. I drove my daufghter to practice in my wife's car and my Tesla was......still at home. :)
 
  • Funny
Reactions: NicB72
It seems that I have this problem whenever I park underground. I suppose the gps signal is too weak there. But I never had this problem on older firmware. Only started occuring on 8.1

I have the problem when I am underground as well. The iphone app won't give me a location for the car now that it is parked in an underground garage (or gives me the 0,0 location in Africa). The car shows a location on the nav screen, but it may be off. When I was driving through Holland Tunnel in New York a few days ago, the GPS thought that I was on a surface street in Manhattan, even when I was in the middle of the tunnel, under the river. Both in the garage and in the tunnel Google Maps on my iphone shows the correct location (and so does the Tesla app for my location, but not for the car's location). On the way back, the car GPS worked correctly in the tunnel and communicated the correct location to the app, but then it failed when parked underground, in the same spot that had always worked for months.

I never had a problem before 8.1 so my guess is that what I am experiencing is a firmware issue for the way the car deals with location fixing in the absence of a good GPS signal.

X90D, AP2/FSD, currently on 17.11.10.
 
However, as we were driving, I described exactly what was happening to the technician, and he immediately said it is because of a faulty "Connectivity Board". I was surprised to see how confident he was, and asked him why he did not do that diagnosis earlier. He said something to the effect of misunderstanding the issue
Thank you for the post. My car has been in service for a few days, they told me they had to contact engineering as they weren't sure what's wrong with the GPS.

After 4 days of nothing, I literally emailed them your post, and asked if it's the same problem? 2 days later it turned out it is, they replaced my connectivity board.

Hopefully my GPS issue is fixed (first time I brought it in, they replaced the antenna I think, but that obviously didn't fix it).
 
  • Like
Reactions: iffatall