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This morning, I got one of those "System Update Available" alerts which as always turned out to be a "just kidding" thing (no update needed).
But then a couple of trips later, the infotainment screen started dimming/brighting intermittently every second, and at the bottom of the screen a message saying "Drive mode change unavailable" would keep appearing and disappearing (about every 10 sec or so).
I don't know if restarting the car will help yet, but if it doesn't, how do I reset the system?
If all else fails, you could disconnect the battery for a few seconds.
From the other thread, it looks like this is a common issue and resetting doesn’t help. The only thing that seems to help is leaving the car sitting overnight.
Each time that happened to me, it did not happen the next time I started the car after it sat.
However, I recall that it happened after I had remote started the car. Did you remote start it?
I don't have AcuraLink, so don't have the capability to remote start it. Just a routine trip from the gas station to home when this started happening.
Anyway, it appears to have resolved itself -- hasn't happened on the 3 short trips this evening. However, I did get another "system update available" alert, even though there was nothing when I attempted to update.
It's not actually new, there are a couple of threads on it. It almost always cures itself when the car has been off for several hours. My suggestion would be not to make a special trip to the dealer over it. They don't have a fix. It may or may not reoccur, but it will almost certainly be a while if it does.
Just a random thought - how can anyone defend Acura after they've designed such a piece of smelly horsemanure?
Every car has some glitches, but which current car has so many significant infotainment issues that essentially shut down the system - and in some cases take out the entire instrument cluster - and the resolution is to disconnect the battery? Even the Yugo had a working radio..
Right now, my Auto stop-start has stopped working andmis basically never available. And my gas mileage reset with each fill up has also stopped working, despite my changing it to manual and then back to auto. Both software issues, and both kind of random errors. Iknow if I try to take it to the dealer, they will have no answers.
Just a random thought - how can anyone defend Acura after they've designed such a piece of smelly horsemanure?
Every car has some glitches, but which current car has so many significant infotainment issues that essentially shut down the system - and in some cases take out the entire instrument cluster - and the resolution is to disconnect the battery? Even the Yugo had a working radio..
Common excuses are:
1) The rest of the car is great!
2) It's not Acura's fault, it's whoever they outsourced it to
3) Mine works fine, it must just be a very small number like with all manufacturers
4) It's a software issue, Acura will release a fix soon
5) Just do a reset every once in a while, it's fine
6) German competitors are too expensive and unreliable, it's worth the tradeoff
7) Use a $50 cable if your CarPlay isn't working
8) It's Google's fault theres no Android Auto yet
9) Still better than an Infiniti, just look at the sales numbers
10) Oooo shiny new commercial and tagline
11) My 1996 Acura was great, so this car is great. Acura is great! Best cars ever!!!!
1) The rest of the car is great!
2) It's not Acura's fault, it's whoever they outsourced it to
3) Mine works fine, it must just be a very small number like with all manufacturers
4) It's a software issue, Acura will release a fix soon
5) Just do a reset every once in a while, it's fine
6) German competitors are too expensive and unreliable, it's worth the tradeoff
7) Use a $50 cable if your CarPlay isn't working
8) It's Google's fault theres no Android Auto yet
9) Still better than an Infiniti, just look at the sales numbers
10) Oooo shiny new commercial and tagline
11) My 1996 Acura was great, so this car is great. Acura is great! Best cars ever!!!!
Am I missing any other ones?
12)You're doing it wrong, follow my very specific method where you unlock the car with the keyfob, not by touching the door handle (very important!), and don't ever even think about using remote start, then start the car using your right ring finger. Wait for the car and infotainment to completely start up, don't plug your phone in until the RPMs are below 1,000. Then plug your phone in, start music BEFORE any navigation/maps apps, and if the moon is in retrograde and its later than 5pm in the pacific time zone your phone will only stutter after an hour.
The issue to me is....not the 'issues'. 'Issues' are going to happen. Whats going wrong here is Acuras complete ignorance to the issues. What kind of a company, especially when it's your shiny new toy (2019 RDX's infotainment system, and of course Acuras new RDX) isn't all over everything, aggressively, to make sure there is no bad press on your shiny new toy. It just seems reasonable to me that you would have a team assigned, kind of a 'all hands on deck' to resolve issues on a new model. I still say say I enjoy driving the car, a lot. Infotainment...no. I can't even get Pandora to work now. I'd take it to the dealer but I'm afraid I'd hear.....that's normal. It's been an experience. I know this is all getting repetitive, but I am one of those people that keeps cars for 10-12 years....so I know I am stuck with it for a long time. I just don't have the cash to go flipping cars around at will.
Common excuses are:
...
3) Mine works fine, it must just be a very small number like with all manufacturers
...
I think this is the reason for most of the other excuses. As long as someone doesn't face any significant problems that impact them, they will defend Acura. The moment someone experiences something that impacts them enough to have to visit the dealer, possibly multiple times, the tune will change.
What is considered to be of impact is very individual--for some people lack of AA is a big impact, and for some as long as the car starts all is good. For me, as long as the car starts and it isn't throwing errors that require me to take it in I'm OK with it (I'm a bit older now, I had much higher expectations when I was younger). I'm borderline at the point where I'm upset with the car especially with the most recent fault. I can live with reduced functionality and not using features that I've paid for. I don't like the idea of errors where I'm not sure if the vehicle needs to be taken in for service.
A lot of manufacturers do have buggy infotainment systems -- most forums are littered with complaints, but that is still no excuse for Acura or any other manufacturer to release poor quality product.
Acurazine is a great resource at least to learn if I need to worry about taking the car in.
12)You're doing it wrong, follow my very specific method where you unlock the car with the keyfob, not by touching the door handle (very important!), and don't ever even think about using remote start, then start the car using your right ring finger. Wait for the car and infotainment to completely start up, don't plug your phone in until the RPMs are below 1,000. Then plug your phone in, start music BEFORE any navigation/maps apps, and if the moon is in retrograde and its later than 5pm in the pacific time zone your phone will only stutter after an hour.
1) The rest of the car is great!
2) It's not Acura's fault, it's whoever they outsourced it to
3) Mine works fine, it must just be a very small number like with all manufacturers
4) It's a software issue, Acura will release a fix soon
5) Just do a reset every once in a while, it's fine
6) German competitors are too expensive and unreliable, it's worth the tradeoff
7) Use a $50 cable if your CarPlay isn't working
8) It's Google's fault theres no Android Auto yet
9) Still better than an Infiniti, just look at the sales numbers
10) Oooo shiny new commercial and tagline
11) My 1996 Acura was great, so this car is great. Acura is great! Best cars ever!!!!
Am I missing any other ones?
1) The rest of the car IS great, so that is not an 'excuse'.
2) It is Acura's fault/responsibility
3) My car works fine, even if the infotainment has a lot of shortcomings
4) It appears to be a software issue, could also be a hardware issue, it is on Acura to make the car work as advertised.
5)
6) German competitors are measurably more expensive, and sometimes cannot be found with the same basic features. What is worth an amount of money depends on each person.
7) The quality of the cable matters. I never came across anywhere near $50 for a cable.
8) It is Acura's responsibility to resolve
9) Still better than an Infiniti, just drive them back to back for similarly priced cars.
If you don't want this car, don't buy it. If you bought the car and can't live with it, get rid of it. Simple solution.
I bet somewhere in the Dealer Diagnostic mode is information about the hardware. I'd be curious to know it. Maybe I'll poke around in there tomorrow. I don't want to poke the bear though - my system has been running fine so far. :fingers crossed:
Are there hardware changes in the 2020? OTA updates are different depending on the year. I've not experience any major problems in my 2020 you guys have described. Any other 2020 owners wanna chime in?
Are there hardware changes in the 2020? OTA updates are different depending on the year. I've not experience any major problems in my 2020 you guys have described. Any other 2020 owners wanna chime in?
So on my first day when I got 2020, system froze, had to disconnect the battery. I was however heavily changing settings. After restart, I was streaming blue tooth audio from phone and using waze through apple car play for 1 week, put 400 miles, no issues. Hopefully it was one off because I tried to chase touchpad sensetivity from low to high, thats when it froze. I am afraid to try it again.
My view is both. I think the computing power of the RDX is not up to the task, AND the software is poorly implemented.
Agreed. The lack of computing power/memory in addition to the new touchpad falls flat because the software is in Alpha test stage and the customers are the guinea pigs.
Agreed. The lack of computing power/memory in addition to the new touchpad falls flat because the software is in Alpha test stage and the customers are the guinea pigs.
Easiest is the parts number, and it doesn't appear to have changed.
Where did you see 2020 parts? Last time I checked oemacuraparts.com and curry acura did not even have 2020 parts. Also, I would not be surprised if part number is not updated, they simply change some internal component (some micro chip or etc
Different OTA updates for 2019 and 2020 means hardware changes between the 2 years no? Why cant acura acknowledged this? Instead we're all private investigators.
Different OTA updates for 2019 and 2020 means hardware changes between the 2 years no? Why cant acura acknowledged this? Instead we're all private investigators.
Definitely if different software. There might also be a hw version somewhere deep in the settings (3 button).
part number might not change if they simply updated one of the internal chips in the unit. Plus they know if they publish new part number, many people will try to make a case that they need a new part because other is broken, too expensive for them
Today I encountered my first glitch; startup screen froze when I got in the car and it seemed to be unresponsive. I gave it a minute to clear its throat and it started up and seemed fine. Needless to say, not the kind of thing I expect from a $40k car. Not the kind of thing I expect from a $20k car, for that matter.
Anyway, since it was glitching anyway, I decided to go into the diagnostics system just to check what was there. Here's what I found; the system runs on an ARMv7 Rev 2 processor, 2 cores 32 bit. I'm no techie but from my limited research this appears to be a very old processor, used in a lot of phones and tablets from maybe 10 years ago. The system runs 4 GB of RAM (not shown in pic because you have to scroll down).
ArmV7 is actually just the instruction set architecture, not the hardware. The SoC is actually TI's Jacinto 6 EX (aka DRA75x). Interestingly, it uses the ARM Cortex-A15 microprocessor, which is actually also used in the Nvidia Tegra 4 that powers Audi's latest MMI systems. However, the Tegra 4 uses 4 of those cores, while this Jacinto only uses 2. They're both roughly of the same vintage (circa 2014), and while yes the Tegra is objectively better and higher-end, Audi's MMI is far more advanced, powerful, and thus more demanding (consider that it has to power up to 3 screens including a virtual cockpit). In theory the less powerful and lower-end Jacinto should still be more than enough for what Acura is trying to do with one single screen.
One interesting thing to the note; the older version of Audi's MMI (still with the virtual cockpit) used the older Tegra 3, which is actually slower than the Jacinto 6.
In other words, I don't think it's a matter of an underpowered processor, and probably something with the software implementation.
GW208 (10-22-2019),kebel87 (10-22-2019),RDX2O2O (10-23-2019),subin (10-23-2019),Waetherman (10-22-2019),Wander (10-22-2019) and 1 others liked this post. (Show less...)
Speed of processor has nothing to do with system stability. Its either faulty software, or bad circuit design, or both
A faster processor can mask software issues, even if the core issue is still bad software. For instance, if you run a processor at 100% utilization for too long, you could wind up triggering an overheat condition that causes it to throttle things back. If the software is poorly written in a way that isn't able to correctly handle the queued jobs, exceptions, or timeouts caused by throttling back, that could lead to a crash. With a faster processor, you may never encounter these edge/failure cases, so while yes the core issue is the software, processor speed can definitely impact overall system stability.
A faster processor can mask software issues, even if the core issue is still bad software. For instance, if you run a processor at 100% utilization for too long, you could wind up triggering an overheat condition that causes it to throttle things back. If the software is poorly written in a way that isn't able to correctly handle the queued jobs, exceptions, or timeouts caused by throttling back, that could lead to a crash. With a faster processor, you may never encounter these edge/failure cases, so while yes the core issue is the software, processor speed can definitely impact overall system stability.
If faster processor masks software defects, the culprit is still the software. Its likely outsourced development.
If faster processor masks software defects, the culprit is still the software. Its likely outsourced development.
And I agree, the core culprit is software. Still, my point is that the hardware speed contributes to system stability by virtue of making up for less-than-stellar software.