I woke up in NC and don't know how I got here

[jdchi]

I tried searching the threads for this, but didn't find one with quite the same problem...

I got into my car this morning and noticed the clock was displaying Eastern time instead of Central (I'm in Chicago). Then I noticed that the car thinks it's in Sims, NC. I have never been to Sims, NC. I tried resetting the center console and the instrument cluster multiple times. I've tried navigating to various Chicago locations to force a change but no dice. When I move through Chicago, it shows me moving through North Carolina. The app also shows me in North Carolina. However, when I got to my parking spot at work, the car remembered that the doors are set to open fully at this location.

I've found threads where the GPS was a mile or so off--but Sims is 800 miles from Chicago. Any thoughts?

 

[trm2]

I just had a flashback to when I was a teenager. I went to a party in college and lots of alcohol later I woke up in a different city, but that was only 22 miles away.

 

[muleferg]

You would feel better if you woke up in Climax NC

 

[ewoodrick]

Car just wants to be warmer

 

[Unpilot]

I tried searching the threads for this, but didn't find one with quite the same problem...

I got into my car this morning and noticed the clock was displaying Eastern time instead of Central (I'm in Chicago). Then I noticed that the car thinks it's in Sims, NC. I have never been to Sims, NC. I tried resetting the center console and the instrument cluster multiple times. I've tried navigating to various Chicago locations to force a change but no dice. When I move through Chicago, it shows me moving through North Carolina. The app also shows me in North Carolina. However, when I got to my parking spot at work, the car remembered that the doors are set to open fully at this location.

I've found threads where the GPS was a mile or so off--but Sims is 800 miles from Chicago. Any thoughts?

I had a similar episode once were maps was confused as to my location. It fixed itself after a day or so...can't remember for sure how long it lasted but I also tried rebooting center console to no effect.

 

[Sonic_78]

Not in my Tesla, but in my Benz I had a GPS antenna go on the fritz and it placed me in some other state. Dealer replaced the broken antenna, guess there are several, and back to normal.

 

[Fobble]

You were lucky. Hurricanes Florence and Michael already passed.

 

[dgatwood]

I tried searching the threads for this, but didn't find one with quite the same problem...

I got into my car this morning and noticed the clock was displaying Eastern time instead of Central (I'm in Chicago). Then I noticed that the car thinks it's in Sims, NC. I have never been to Sims, NC. I tried resetting the center console and the instrument cluster multiple times. I've tried navigating to various Chicago locations to force a change but no dice. When I move through Chicago, it shows me moving through North Carolina. The app also shows me in North Carolina. However, when I got to my parking spot at work, the car remembered that the doors are set to open fully at this location.

I've found threads where the GPS was a mile or so off--but Sims is 800 miles from Chicago. Any thoughts?

Are you sure you didn't fall asleep behind the wheel? Navigate-on-autopilot can do funny things.

Not in my Tesla, but in my Benz I had a GPS antenna go on the fritz and it placed me in some other state. Dealer replaced the broken antenna, guess there are several, and back to normal.

That's really weird, and shouldn't even be possible from an antenna problem. GPS determines location based on time stamps in the signals received from multiple satellites. Either it is getting enough signals to triangulate a location or it isn't. This sounds more like the GPS chip itself was completely fried or somehow failed to download a new almanac and proceeded to produce data anyway.

My guess on your Tesla is that they're using aGPS (assisted GPS) that starts with cell tower or Wi-Fi triangulation and uses that to get an approximate fix, then uses GPS to fine-tune the results. This approach is much faster, but also typically involves retrieving the almanac and ephemeris data over the Internet, rather than downloading it slowly over the course of about 30 seconds from the satellite (or a whopping 12.5 minutes for a completely cold start without almanac data). If the car company's software fails to validate that data correctly, then corrupted data can produce fascinatingly wrong results.

I'm not sure how to force it to reacquire ephemeris data, but in theory, it is only valid for four hours, so it should start working again by this evening.

Of course, if the almanac data is corrupt, well, it will be correct in half a year....

 

[thecloud]

This could be the plot of a Stephen King novel. Protagonist notices that his Tesla's map always shows an address in a town in North Carolina, hundreds of miles away. After receiving polite email responses from Tesla thanking him for his feedback, curiosity eventually takes over and he ends up making the journey there. When he arrives, he sees a house standing alone in the middle of a grassy field, surrounded by various other Teslas from all over the country. Each of the other owners had the same map glitch and have made similar journeys, which we learn about in a series of flashbacks. Unfortunately, they've realized too late that the nearest supercharger is now out of range. They decide to knock at the door. Inside is a kid who's hacked Tesla's servers to supply bogus map tiles, but it turns out he's lost control of the servers to a rogue AI which has used a fatally-flawed machine learning model to decide that all vehicles must converge at a single location, "home."

Title of this epic, obviously: "The Summoning".

 

[jdchi]

Are you sure you didn't fall asleep behind the wheel? Navigate-on-autopilot can do funny things.




That's really weird, and shouldn't even be possible from an antenna problem. GPS determines location based on time stamps in the signals received from multiple satellites. Either it is getting enough signals to triangulate a location or it isn't. This sounds more like the GPS chip itself was completely fried or somehow failed to download a new almanac and proceeded to produce data anyway.

My guess on your Tesla is that they're using aGPS (assisted GPS) that starts with cell tower or Wi-Fi triangulation and uses that to get an approximate fix, then uses GPS to fine-tune the results. This approach is much faster, but also typically involves retrieving the almanac and ephemeris data over the Internet, rather than downloading it slowly over the course of about 30 seconds from the satellite (or a whopping 12.5 minutes for a completely cold start without almanac data). If the car company's software fails to validate that data correctly, then corrupted data can produce fascinatingly wrong results.

I'm not sure how to force it to reacquire ephemeris data, but in theory, it is only valid for four hours, so it should start working again by this evening.

Of course, if the almanac data is corrupt, well, it will be correct in half a year....

I think you're probably correct. Just like Unpilot, mine corrected itself about a day later. While I was driving, the map refreshed and put me back in cold, snowy Chicago.

 

[jdchi]

This could be the plot of a Stephen King novel. Protagonist notices that his Tesla's map always shows an address in a town in North Carolina, hundreds of miles away. After receiving polite email responses from Tesla thanking him for his feedback, curiosity eventually takes over and he ends up making the journey there. When he arrives, he sees a house standing alone in the middle of a grassy field, surrounded by various other Teslas from all over the country. Each of the other owners had the same map glitch and have made similar journeys, which we learn about in a series of flashbacks. Unfortunately, they've realized too late that the nearest supercharger is now out of range. They decide to knock at the door. Inside is a kid who's hacked Tesla's servers to supply bogus map tiles, but it turns out he's lost control of the servers to a rogue AI which has used a fatally-flawed machine learning model to decide that all vehicles must converge at a single location, "home."

Title of this epic, obviously: "The Summoning".

So, the craziest part about all this is that while I was driving to work, it mostly just showed me driving through a bunch of farmland. But when I got to the parking garage at work, my car on the map ended up right at the end of a long driveway to a house in the middle of nowhere. I have a very strong urge to take a road trip to that house.