Map orientation totally wrong

[ss71]

Left the office today and my car automatically set a route home. As I begin driving I notice the map doing crazy rotations. I then realized that it was not orienting correctly, as in North was being displayed as South/South East.

I did a two button reset while at a stoplight but to my surprise the problem continued.

Two examples below where I was driving straight north. The compass reads S/SE and the car arrow is in the wrong direction and it was jumping around trying to remap a route.

3-4 miles into the drive it suddenly found its bearings and North was North again.

Anyone else experience something like this? 2021 M3LR on 2023.12.9.

 

[ewoodrick]

See that little compass rose in the upper right, hit it. You are currently in the "car direction up mode." It sounds as if you want "North Up"

 

[ss71]

See that little compass rose in the upper right, hit it. You are currently in the "car direction up mode." It sounds as if you want "North Up"

I wish that was the case but no. That was the first thing I tried. North Up is not what you see in these photos. It’s an arrow icon (like the car) pointing up with an N.

 

[ewoodrick]

I see a compass rose pointing South, Southeast. That's definitely heading up mode not North up. It also has the red arrow representing your pointing up. That's car/heading up.

When it is North Up, I believe all you see is a N.

With the car in heading up mode, the map will always show what is in front of you above the red icon. If the car changes direction, the map will change orientation so that the roads in front of you are above the arrow. Your explanation of the map spinning is exactly what happens in heading up mode. I personally don't like it, but others don't like North up.

 

[Soul Surfer]

We can always count on strange things happening with this platform. I’ve often thought of it as driving a smartphone. Sometime unexplanable things happen regardless of how we try and retrace our steps. And then they sometimes correct themselves for no reason. Go figure?

I have found that the best thing to do is to keep a record of dates and times for the incidents. This way, we you share that through a service request, they can focus better on the diagnostic logs.

 

[ss71]

I see a compass rose pointing South, Southeast. That's definitely heading up mode not North up. It also has the red arrow representing your pointing up. That's car/heading up.

When it is North Up, I believe all you see is a N.

With the car in heading up mode, the map will always show what is in front of you above the red icon. If the car changes direction, the map will change orientation so that the roads in front of you are above the arrow. Your explanation of the map spinning is exactly what happens in heading up mode. I personally don't like it, but others don't like North up.

I think I understand what you’re saying so I’m clearly not describing well what happened.
Look at the first photo and where the red arrow is indicating where it thinks my car is. In reality, I am headed due North on the road leading down to the bottom of the image, near the Dunkin Donuts.
In the second photo, I am actually located further North, off the map at the bottom. Here’s a map view of that second photo. The red triangle in the middle pointed down (S/SE) is where it shows me on the Tesla map and the red triangle at the top is where I was when I took the photo.
Either way, I’ve logged the incident location and time so if it reoccurs, I can have them check the logs.

 

[ewoodrick]

So I think that I'm seeing two problems.
The first is that you are in heading up mode. Touch the compass rose until it says N and see if the maps spin anymore. In North up mode, the maps shouldn't spin.

The second problem, is that it appears that the car isn't showing you in the right location. It appears that you are on the main road, where the car shows you in a parking lot. This could be not great GPS signal. Before you left, did you happen to be in a parking garage?

How is it working today? Make sure that map is showing N and what happens.

 

[ss71]

Again I have done a poor job of communicating. I do not use North up mode. I use heading up mode so the map does move as one would expect. What I should have said is the map flips around because it can't orient where the cars is and what direction I was heading in. Like GPS was drunk.

You are correct in that is was not showing my car in the proper location. I park outside, not near tall buildings. Same work parking location since I got the car nearly 2 years ago.

No issues since it suddenly corrected itself 3-4 miles into the drive home yesterday so hopefully a one time fluke.

 

[ewoodrick]

Again I have done a poor job of communicating. I do not use North up mode. I use heading up mode so the map does move as one would expect. What I should have said is the map flips around because it can't orient where the cars is and what direction I was heading in. Like GPS was drunk.

You are correct in that is was not showing my car in the proper location. I park outside, not near tall buildings. Same work parking location since I got the car nearly 2 years ago.

No issues since it suddenly corrected itself 3-4 miles into the drive home yesterday so hopefully a one time fluke.

Good to see it got fixed. Possibly an example of the great and ubiquitous GPS constellation not being quite as reliable as some think.

Most people don't realize the amount of "faking it" that GPSs actually do, especially GPSs for cars. I've got a few GPSs that aren't for mobiles and if you leave them on for a few days and let then draw your trail, they can take some pretty long trips (I've seen nearly a mile) overnight because of varying inaccuracies.
GPSs for car tend to snap to roads, which is why then always seem accurate.

When I saw that yours wasn't snapping to a road, that was definitely an indication of bad lock. And the extra spinning that you saw was the GPS meandering around.

 

[ss71]

Happened again to me today. Was parked at home in our garage and the car orientation was off. Arrow had me pointing E/SE when in reality I was headed SW. So the arrow was about 90° off. Because of this is could not track me smoothly along the road. Two button reset and everything was back to normal. Mostly posting here for my reference later if needed.

 

[ewoodrick]

See the compass rose in upper right? The thing with the "E SE"? Touch it and rotate to the map view that you want. I'm guessing that it is currently in Car Direction up mode and you may want the North Up, represented by a N.

 

[ss71]

No, I don’t want/use North up. I use car direction up. It’s a GPS issue.

 

[MaartenD]

Yes, it's a GPS issue. Either you have bad coverage in your area, maybe combined with parking indoors where there is no coverage, or your GPS receiver is defective.
Idk, is there a screen in the maintenance mode that shows GPS coverage? Like how many satellites it sees and with what signal strength? You could check your coverage with a smarthpone app.

 

[ss71]

I’m beginning to suspect a faulty GPS unit. Left my house today and my route had me starting several blocks away. Sorted itself out pretty quickly but is still strange behavior. I had never experienced any issues until this last month.

 

[Gasaraki]

Left the office today and my car automatically set a route home. As I begin driving I notice the map doing crazy rotations. I then realized that it was not orienting correctly, as in North was being displayed as South/South East.

I did a two button reset while at a stoplight but to my surprise the problem continued.

Two examples below where I was driving straight north. The compass reads S/SE and the car arrow is in the wrong direction and it was jumping around trying to remap a route.

3-4 miles into the drive it suddenly found its bearings and North was North again.

Anyone else experience something like this? 2021 M3LR on 2023.12.9.

It's rare, happened to me once maybe twice in the time i've owned my car. Yes, driving and making a few turns will calibrate the compass. This usually happens after an update?

 

[dnguyen401]

Happened to me twice this month and it’s so annoying! I feel like it’s a GPS issue as many have said. It’s never happened to me before since owning the car in early 2020.