Tell me about map updates

[phxazcraig]

How does the car get map updates, and how often? I'm currently having an issue around my house due to a freeway closure 12 days ago. Basically, if I try to navigate home, instead of driving up the interstate to my exit, and then driving 1.5 miles to my house, I'm told I have to detour 4 miles south, exit and take backroads. There is no current road closure, and the last closure ended Monday before last.

During the freeway closure, which was southbound starting at 'my' freeway exit, I could still drive across the freeway, go about 1/2 mile, then go another mile south to a 2nd freeway. Indeed, this was the official detour route. Well, then entire time I was in this detour, my car nav kept insisting I u-turn, backtrack all the way past the freeway, head south on a backroad all the way to the 2nd freeway, then get on. This insistence on u-turning to get to the 2nd freeway persisted until I was 1 block from the freeway entrance, at which point the nav recalculated, finally.

The freeway where I live (I17), has been closed either northbound or southbound on a couple of weekends recently for diamond grinding. I'm not sure if there are going to be more closures, but there are none now.

How do I get the map to update back to normal?

 

[jrweiss98020]

It may not be due to a map update, but a traffic report carried on Google Maps.

Yesterday the navigation wanted me to take a 2-mile detour. I didn't take the first offered detour, because traffic was OK. I wound up taking a 3rd option because it persisted, and traffic got heavier. Turned out it was the site of a tree across the road from earlier in the day, that had been cleared.

 

[E90alex]

The map database updates like once or twice a year.

Temporary road closures and traffic etc should be updated in near realtime.

 

[ewoodrick]

How does the car get map updates, and how often? I'm currently having an issue around my house due to a freeway closure 12 days ago. Basically, if I try to navigate home, instead of driving up the interstate to my exit, and then driving 1.5 miles to my house, I'm told I have to detour 4 miles south, exit and take backroads. There is no current road closure, and the last closure ended Monday before last.

During the freeway closure, which was southbound starting at 'my' freeway exit, I could still drive across the freeway, go about 1/2 mile, then go another mile south to a 2nd freeway. Indeed, this was the official detour route. Well, then entire time I was in this detour, my car nav kept insisting I u-turn, backtrack all the way past the freeway, head south on a backroad all the way to the 2nd freeway, then get on. This insistence on u-turning to get to the 2nd freeway persisted until I was 1 block from the freeway entrance, at which point the nav recalculated, finally.

The freeway where I live (I17), has been closed either northbound or southbound on a couple of weekends recently for diamond grinding. I'm not sure if there are going to be more closures, but there are none now.

How do I get the map to update back to normal?

Let me modify your situation slightly.

How would YOU know which way to go, when?

Highway construction and maintenance it a PITA no matter what.

 

[E90alex]

But also whoever supplies Teslas map data isn’t exactly reliable as there’s several places around me where I’ve noticed it does some whacky routing and avoids certain roads or turns for no reason. And it’s persisted through many updates.

 

[phxazcraig]

Let me modify your situation slightly.

How would YOU know which way to go, when?

Highway construction and maintenance it a PITA no matter what.

Perhaps I don't understand the question. How do I know which way to go? I mean I've lived in this 6-block area since 2007, and there are very few roads to choose from. I can literally see the roads involved. It's pretty flat here, plus I spend a fair amount of time study ADOT maps when they announce a road closure of the interstates here. First off, only the southbound lanes of the interstate were closed recently. The northbound lanes had been closed a week before, and the week before that they closed the southbound lanes the first time. And when they closed those lanes, it was a complete mess in my area as all the interstate traffic in one direction was diverted onto the main north-south road I use to get to my house.

Yesterday I was coming home from Carefree, AZ, taking an east-west road about 12 miles back to my north-south road. As I approached the left turn onto Norterra Parkway (north-south road, parallel to the interstate and used as a main detour route), my nav was telling me I needed to go another mile to the interestate, go south on the interstate (I-17) for 5 miles, exit at Happy Valley Road, do a u-turn and get back onto the freeway northbound to my exit, then take my usual east-west road to my house. Except there were no road closures. All the closures were a week old, and I had just driven on these roads when I left the house. So I know they weren't blocked.

This initially confused me when the road closure started, but it accurately showed one detour when the closure was ongoing. I would have thought the closure mapping would have been updated the following day. Doesn't bother me much driving myself, but when FSD is active, it tries to take these ridiculous routes.

The most egregious mapping issue was that one where I was on the official detour, heading south about 1 mile to get onto a freeway (303), there were no closures, and yet the car wanted me to u-turn (with the unblocked freeway entrance literally only 1 block away) and do a 10-mile detour to get onto the 303. It did not update its routing until a few yards before I got on the 303 entrance ramp.

 

[ewoodrick]

Perhaps I don't understand the question. How do I know which way to go? I mean I've lived in this 6-block area since 2007, and there are very few roads to choose from. I can literally see the roads involved. It's pretty flat here, plus I spend a fair amount of time study ADOT maps when they announce a road closure of the interstates here. First off, only the southbound lanes of the interstate were closed recently. The northbound lanes had been closed a week before, and the week before that they closed the southbound lanes the first time. And when they closed those lanes, it was a complete mess in my area as all the interstate traffic in one direction was diverted onto the main north-south road I use to get to my house.

Yesterday I was coming home from Carefree, AZ, taking an east-west road about 12 miles back to my north-south road. As I approached the left turn onto Norterra Parkway (north-south road, parallel to the interstate and used as a main detour route), my nav was telling me I needed to go another mile to the interestate, go south on the interstate (I-17) for 5 miles, exit at Happy Valley Road, do a u-turn and get back onto the freeway northbound to my exit, then take my usual east-west road to my house. Except there were no road closures. All the closures were a week old, and I had just driven on these roads when I left the house. So I know they weren't blocked.

This initially confused me when the road closure started, but it accurately showed one detour when the closure was ongoing. I would have thought the closure mapping would have been updated the following day. Doesn't bother me much driving myself, but when FSD is active, it tries to take these ridiculous routes.

The most egregious mapping issue was that one where I was on the official detour, heading south about 1 mile to get onto a freeway (303), there were no closures, and yet the car wanted me to u-turn (with the unblocked freeway entrance literally only 1 block away) and do a 10-mile detour to get onto the 303. It did not update its routing until a few yards before I got on the 303 entrance ramp.

You seem to be assuming that the car should know the exact details of when the road it open and closed. It simply doesn't.
(and rarely does even the DOT know)

Did you look at any other routing applications? What did they say?

The job of the nav system is to get you there. There will be times at which it may be far from the fastest.

 

[cmaster]

I've stopped using the car's navigation system because I find that it doesn't update as quickly as my phone, which seems to work better for me.

 

[phxazcraig]

Last night while coming home from taekwondo class, I once again was routed away from the normal exit. In fact the nav will not let me use the exit I live off of nor the exit on either side of mine. None of those exits or roads are closed. I used turn signals within FSD to try to exit where I should, but FSD insisted on yanking me back out of the exit lane, and I had to disengage.

DOT (ADOT here) certainly knows when the closures happen as they post all of them. What we have here is an ongoing situation where a 7 mile stretch of I-17 is being closed each weekend in either the northbound or southbound directions to work on the pavement. They have closed either northbound or southbound entrances to the freeway in this region. Starts Friday at midnight and goes until midnight or so on Sunday.

Basically the nav mapping is screwed up and I want to fix it somehow. Is there a method to do that?

 

[ewoodrick]

I've stopped using the car's navigation system because I find that it doesn't update as quickly as my phone, which seems to work better for me.

Big mistake, especially on trips.

 

[ewoodrick]

Last night while coming home from taekwondo class, I once again was routed away from the normal exit. In fact the nav will not let me use the exit I live off of nor the exit on either side of mine. None of those exits or roads are closed. I used turn signals within FSD to try to exit where I should, but FSD insisted on yanking me back out of the exit lane, and I had to disengage.

DOT (ADOT here) certainly knows when the closures happen as they post all of them. What we have here is an ongoing situation where a 7 mile stretch of I-17 is being closed each weekend in either the northbound or southbound directions to work on the pavement. They have closed either northbound or southbound entrances to the freeway in this region. Starts Friday at midnight and goes until midnight or so on Sunday.

Basically the nav mapping is screwed up and I want to fix it somehow. Is there a method to do that?

Try adding waypoints.

Or the much simpler, when you want to exit, turn the wheel, exit and then enable FSD when the route corrects.

 

[cmaster]

Big mistake, especially on trips.

Not really. The phone responds faster, it has traffic data collected from other phones nearby. Also, it's 5G

 

[ewoodrick]

Not really. The phone responds faster, it has traffic data collected from other phones nearby. Also, it's 5G

But the car can't watch over you. It can't tell you that the Supercharger that you are headed to is out of service. It can't tell you that you may not make it to the stop and need to slow down. It can't put the car battery into preconditioning for charging.

Navigation is FAR from the only thing that it does.

 

[phxazcraig]

It can't tell you that the Supercharger that you are headed to is out of service.

It will, however, tell you that the site is temporarily closed. But if you navigate to a closed site (like Stapley in Mesa or Bethany Home in Phoenix), the car still insists on preconditioning the battery.

 

[Tronguy]

Summarizing, more or less in order:

• The main map database gets updated roughly twice a year. Last main update for North America was in December. There's some thinking that stuff gets added to the database from time to time: Whether a turn is right on red or not, for example.
• Those of us who play in FSD(S) land have some fairly decent evidence that, depending upon routing, micro-updates are sometimes downloaded when a route is set up. (The evidence has to do with those who count bytes going into/out of the car.) Not clear how well this all works, but it's been observed that driving around locally with a new FSDS release improves markedly after the first half-dozen drives or so.
• I've personally encountered roads under construction, where that construction was started after 1/1/2024, where the appropriate lanes one would get into in order to pass on through are rigged up properly. This may have something to do with the second bullet.
• I'm also one of the maniacs who subscribes to the $10/month or $100/year online connectivity program. No question: If there's a traffic jam or accident up ahead, the NoA will attempt to route around such a spot, and that includes wandering around local roads for a time. There will be colored overlays on the jammed traffic, you betcha.

Having said all that: Before diving deeply into Teslas in 2018, I was a tried-and-true Waze user. I kind of liked Waze: One could report accidents, road blockages, and other such fun more-or-less in real time. Waze didn't always send other people out of their way (there's always trolls out there), but I do remember noting this one closed-off road a half a dozen times over a week, and the cell phone software eventually popped up a query box of, "When do you expect this intersection to have construction finished?" After which, it stopped trying to send me down that road..

Finally: One year, when going from Boston to New Jersey, the SO and I ran into a traffic jam approaching the Hudson like you all would not believe. The Tappen Zee, George Washington Bridge, Lincoln Tunnel, Holland Tunnel, and the Verrizano Bridge all had huge traffic jams on them with hour-long waits to get over the water. I dunno, war broke out in Maine or something?

At one point, we had Tesla's NoA, Waze, Google Maps, and I think one other tool all competing to see which would get us home in NJ in the least time. I think we ended up taking some two-lane bridge across the Hudson near Bear Mountain. Fun. Might have been faster to find a ferry.

 

[ewoodrick]

It will, however, tell you that the site is temporarily closed. But if you navigate to a closed site (like Stapley in Mesa or Bethany Home in Phoenix), the car still insists on preconditioning the battery.

Maybe it assumes that you know something that it doesn't. If you don't want it to condition, don't route there.

 

[tekkie_m3]

Lets be honest Tesla maps are total garbage.

 

[ewoodrick]

Lets be honest Tesla maps are total garbage.

Are you talking about Google maps, you know, the one that the nav system shows?

 

[Usher]

Are you talking about Google maps, you know, the one that the nav system shows?

I wouldn't call it garbage, but Google really messed up their mapping data in my area a little over a year ago. They lost almost all driveway location information - Tesla and Android phones think my driveway is on a different road now. I'm pretty sure that's the same time all the speed limit information got messed up, too. Most roads around me don't have speed limit signs since they're all 55 mph. My current Model S picks a speed anywhere between 25 mph and 50 mph on the various roads, which I assume it is getting from the Google map data since it is always the same speed limit for each road.

 

[ewoodrick]

I wouldn't call it garbage, but Google really messed up their mapping data in my area a little over a year ago. They lost almost all driveway location information - Tesla and Android phones think my driveway is on a different road now. I'm pretty sure that's the same time all the speed limit information got messed up, too. Most roads around me don't have speed limit signs since they're all 55 mph. My current Model S picks a speed anywhere between 25 mph and 50 mph on the various roads, which I assume it is getting from the Google map data since it is always the same speed limit for each road.

Have you looked at your counties GIS system?