Wrong location on GPS and not able to do a soft reset, should I be concerned?

[joebruin77]

Last night, something weird happened. I went to a concert and parked about 6 levels down in an underground parking garage. After the concert, when we emerged from the parking, the navigation went "caflouey" - the map showed my car in the completely wrong location and was giving me inaccurate directions. Luckily I was able to find my way to the freeway and get home. I figured that the car, while underground, lost contact with the GPS satellite signal. But I figured it would "reconnect" after a few minutes of driving. It eventually did show the correct location, but did not recalibrate to the correct location until the next morning.

Once I got home, I tried a "soft reset" by placing my foot on the brake pedal and holding down both steering wheel buttons. The screen went dark as expected, but instead of the usual Tesla emblem being displayed eventually, the screen just came back on. It was like the soft reset did not go through or work.

The fact that the navigation location took so long to come back to the correct position and the fact that I could I not do a soft reset, should I be concerned and make a service appointment to have these checked out?

 

[KenC]

When I got my car, it had Zero SOC, and the only other oddity was that it had lost GPS lock. It said I was about two hours west of where I was. Maybe, that's where it lost GPS lock? Anyhow, it took until the next day, before the GPS corrected. I assumed the car needed to sleep for that to happen. No, issues since.

 

[btownalset]

Something similar happened to me the other day. I was pulling out of my garage and navigation showed I was in a different locatiion (a few miles away in a parking lot of a shopping center). Obviously I thought it was strange so I set the navigation to home to see if it could figure out it was already here. Nav showed the correct route back to my house. I was in a bit of a hurry and didn’t have time to trouble shoot so I just backed out of my driveway. When I went into drive and the backup cameras view went away, nav showed the appropriate location. It hasn’t happened again and I haven’t thought about it until this post. I’m not going to worry about unless it happens more.

 

[EVRider-FL]

Once I got home, I tried a "soft reset" by placing my foot on the brake pedal and holding down both steering wheel buttons. The screen went dark as expected, but instead of the usual Tesla emblem being displayed eventually, the screen just came back on. It was like the soft reset did not go through or work.

How old is your Model 3? Wondering if you're seeing symptoms of a failing 12V battery. Mine died today.

Note that pressing the brake doesn't do anything during a reset. It might have at the some point.

 

[jjrandorin]

How old is your Model 3? Wondering if you're seeing symptoms of a failing 12V battery. Mine died today.

Note that pressing the brake doesn't do anything during a reset. It might have at the some point.

@EVRider-FL , It sounds like there was only a day or two between you getting the 12v notice and it dying, is that right? That aligns with what I have seen other model 3 owners report, but just wondering if yours aligned with that, and how you chose to resolve it.

 

[EVRider-FL]

It sounds like there was only a day or two between you getting the 12v notice and it dying, is that right? That aligns with what I have seen other model 3 owners report, but just wondering if yours aligned with that, and how you chose to resolve it.

That's right, got the warning yesterday, and the car's dead in the garage today. I contacted Roadside Assistance today and hopefully I'll get mobile service (preferably) or a tow tomorrow. Can't be towed from its current position, so it will have to be jump started first.

 

[joebruin77]

How old is your Model 3? Wondering if you're seeing symptoms of a failing 12V battery. Mine died today.

Note that pressing the brake doesn't do anything during a reset. It might have at the some point.

Thanks for the suggestion (and sorry to hear about your 12v battery) , but I don't think it is the 12v battery. I had mine replaced in June 2021, so the battery is only about 6 months old.

 

[JBailey895]

Interesting, I have a similar situation. I noticed my GPS was incorrect the other day, and the car didn't adjust for night (it was in daylight mode. Backup cameras do not work. I did several "soft" resets. I just did a factory reset, and the GPS is showing the Norcal factory. Are we having 12v issues? No warning indicator. I have a 2019 3P. Service appt set is about 10 days out. Did OP's GPS eventually re-set correctly?

 

[Ptheven]

Interesting, I have a similar situation. I noticed my GPS was incorrect the other day, and the car didn't adjust for night (it was in daylight mode. Backup cameras do not work. I did several "soft" resets. I just did a factory reset, and the GPS is showing the Norcal factory. Are we having 12v issues? No warning indicator. I have a 2019 3P. Service appt set is about 10 days out. Did OP's GPS eventually re-set correctly?

How'd this end up? Having the same issue.

 

[bahree]

So I am starting to see more of this; my car sits in a garage and now almost on a daily basis when I head out (or the days I head out) - I see the GPS off - its not miles off but a few streets. When driving in a few mins it locks on and corrects itself. I have had the car for 4 years and not seen so much of this until lately. The only time this happened in the past when it has no online connectivity (e.g. in an underground garage for days).

Is this some module failing? Is it the 12v battery starting to go? How do I know the 12v battery is starting to go and should get it changed?

Thanks in advance.

 

[RayK]

Don't know about your GPS problems. I don't remember mine own system being off unless the car was parked in a multi-level garage (or underground).

As far as the 12V battery goes, in an ideal world you would get some sort of warning message indicating a problem with the car. I did a proactive replacement of my 12V battery a couple of months ago when it was almost 4 years old (2018 LR RWD w/24K miles). I never had any strange problems nor did I see any service warnings. I simply made the decision to replace it prior to a long trip based upon the discussions I've seen in this forum. My advice would be for you to also replace yours as 4 years is about average to see problems. It costs about $120 for them to swap it out ($85 for the battery and the rest labor and maybe taxes).

Or, you can take a chance and hope you get a warning in time to take care of the failing battery. If you don't then with a dead 12V battery you'll basically be locked out of your car until you can pop open the tow hook cover in the front bumper, put a 12V battery on the leads inside to open the frunk, then you need to pull off the cowl cover, under which is the 12V battery so you can jump it. That should wake up the car enough so you can drive it to the service center. As I didn't want to do any of that in case it happened during my trip, I replaced it

 

[bahree]

Thanks, that is good advice on preemptively changing out the 12v battery. Mine is similar to yours - 4 year LR RWD w/ 30K miles.

 

[Darmie]

Old thread back to life. Surly hope the OP has resolved his concerns. Same issue back on the 2017 Model S. Next morning it was resolved. 2018 Model X had similar issue, did a power off for <10mins and GPS updated.

 

[KenC]

GPS location is time-based, so if your car's internal clock is a second slow, it might show you to be a block away from where you are. The clock could drift if the frequency is low, perhaps the 12V is low, or maybe it went into deep sleep. Either way, yours is a 2018 and any flaky possibly electrical behavior, the first thing I'd do is change the 12v.

 

[Dopey44]

Same issue. Was totally fine yesterday. Check the app this morning and the location shows my car being 30 km away. Feeling a bit rattled and thinking my car was stolen, I go down to the garage to check and it's there - hasn't moved.

I got into the car and look at the location on the map and it's completely off. I drive out of the garage to see if it would help with calibrating the GPS, but to no avail.

Car is 22 MYLR and I just picked it up in October.

 

[DanNJ732]

Same issue. Was totally fine yesterday. Check the app this morning and the location shows my car being 30 km away. Feeling a bit rattled and thinking my car was stolen, I go down to the garage to check and it's there - hasn't moved.

I got into the car and look at the location on the map and it's completely off. I drive out of the garage to see if it would help with calibrating the GPS, but to no avail.

Car is 22 MYLR and I just picked it up in October.

Check the 12V battery.

 

[Ptheven]

The way I ended up fixing this was disconnecting the HV battery, the 12v battery, and letting it sit overnight.

 

[kmmatney]

I'm having the same issue - Model Y, 2 months old. Problems first appeared after last update, near Nov 7th, 2023.

1) GPS is stuck at a location I navigated to yesterday morning 9 AM. When driving home 2 hours later, the position was stuck at where I parked, and is still there the next day, Called customer service, and the problem was not solved by the call. The guy on the phone was "first level" level support, so could not dig too deep. We did try the 2-button reset, and a power reset from the safety menu.

2) I noticed that the display did not automatically go to night mode last night, while driving it a few miles to try and reset the GPS.

3) I hit the "power off" button in the Safety menu, and let it sit overnight - did not solve the issue when I woke the car the the next morning. The car woke up fast.. not sure if it truly power cycled anything.

Any ideas? I'll look into the 12V battery reset...

 

[Zirak]

I'm having the same issue - Model Y, 2 months old. Problems first appeared after last update, near Nov 7th, 2023.

1) GPS is stuck at a location I navigated to yesterday morning 9 AM. When driving home 2 hours later, the position was stuck at where I parked, and is still there the next day, Called customer service, and the problem was not solved by the call. The guy on the phone was "first level" level support, so could not dig too deep. We did try the 2-button reset, and a power reset from the safety menu.

2) I noticed that the display did not automatically go to night mode last night, while driving it a few miles to try and reset the GPS.

3) I hit the "power off" button in the Safety menu, and let it sit overnight - did not solve the issue when I woke the car the the next morning. The car woke up fast.. not sure if it truly power cycled anything.

Any ideas? I'll look into the 12V battery reset...

I had this exact issue in July. My symptoms were:
1. GPS would show me parked at home and would never update
2. Auto High Beams, Auto Wipers, Screen Dimming would not work
3. None of the cameras could be viewed in either the app or the service -> cameras option (and wouldn't record footage either)
4. FSD/AutoPilot features were all completely unavailable

I've also tried doing a full reboot, and even disconnected and reconnected the 12V but that didn't fix the issue.

Since my LR M3 2018 was out of warranty, they had to replace the FSD HW3 computer which ended up costing me nearly $3k CAD, they couldn't diagnose and repair my original computer for some reason, they also had my car for nearly two weeks...

I don't think the issue was with the side repeater, even though they replaced it. I always got alerts from that camera since I drive on unlit rural roads and generally would get alerts all the time on that repeater. (It does this even on the new repeater they installed)

 

[Sklith]

I used to have a 2019 Model 3 Performance that would have an inaccurate GPS for 2 minutes after leaving my garage at home, and then would be fine after that each morning. Never really bothered me enough to find out why it did that. Sold it in January.