Canadian ASpec 2021. Downloaded and installed successfully new map update: 2022.08.14

 

Showed in the US earier, now I just see the 2022.12.04 showing, wonder if they rolled back or rolled out in error.

 

Just checked, no new map

 

The 2022-08-14 update was there for awhile. I started downloading the update, but it never finished. It must have been pulled while I was downloading the update.

 

I downloaded 22/08/14 yesterday, and successfully installed it this morning. It took almost exactly an hour, during which time I was driving.

When I returned home, I checked the web site, and I also found that it was no longer listed as being available,

I hope that this doesn't cause problems in the future. For example some software apps will not allow updates unless they first see the official earlier version already installed.

 

So there is a new map or not?

 

As of a few minutes ago, the Acura website (Canadian) shows the most recent map is the 22/04/12 version.

Yet at the time of my earlier post, I had installed the 22/08/14 version, which seems to have been pulled.

I don't believe that this is specific to Canada though, because after clicking on the navigation link on Acura.ca, I am redirected to Acura.com.

 

So I just read through the instructions to update my map for the first time and...

...you have to run the car for an hour to install it?!?

I'm going to do it on my commute home from work, but it will still mean idling the car for 30 minutes.Given how little power it takes to run a computer (compared to starting a car) I don't understand why it couldn't have been designed to run in the background while the car is off...

 

No, the vehicle does not need to be running for the map update. Here is what I found in the installation guide: "In a well-ventilated area – turn the vehicle On or to ‘Accessory Mode/Run’ during installation • The vehicle engine doesn’t have to be FULLY running". There is a link to the guide on the Here map download page.

One important item that was added to the installation instructions is to make sure you have "Connected Features" enabled. See the installation instructions for details on how to do that.

This is how I do my update:

• When I update mine in my garage, I get in, put the car in the ON mode and put the front windows down. This allows me to go back out to the garage and see the screen easily to check on the progress. More on "progress" in a moment.
• Next, I turn the vehicle off and close and shut the driver's door. May not be necessary, but that is my routine.
• Then I push the Start/Stop button once to put the vehicle into Accessory mode.
• Next I bring up the Navigation screen and insert the USB drive. The navigation system should detect the new maps and briefly display an "Updating navigation map..." message. When the update is finished, the system will display a "Map Update Complete" with an "OK" option. This message remains on the screen until you click OK. The message also states that you should "Restart the vehicle for the update to take effect." After restarting you can go into the navigation "menu" and click "Help" and "About" to confirm the map date.

For me, the update process typically takes about an hour, so I go in the house and come back out on occasion to look for the "Complete" message on the screen.

Regarding the map update "Progress", there is none. You only know it is finished when it displays the "Map Update Complete" on the screen. However, I do two things that help me know the system is still "working" on the update.
First, the USB drive I use has a flashing LED whenever there is drive activity. If the light is flashing, I know the update is still going.
Second, if you select "Home" on the screen and then go back into Navigation, the "Updating navigation map..." message is display briefly again, so you know things are still updating.

That's it. Hope this helps.

Ron

 

Yikes....in case you didn't know (2019 RDX...and no more update for me)
1) IF your subscription is expired, renewals are:
-1 year: U.S. $119 (CAD 150)
-3 years: U.S. $169 (CAD 215)

 

Thanks, that's very helpful!

 

These prices are ridiculous. I'm glad I caught this in my third year because I had no idea there was a deadline!

The maps are provided by Garmin. You can buy a Garmin 5" GPS unit with unlimited map updates for USD99. How do they justify charging more than a UNIT WITH MAP UPDATES for just the map updates?

I want to say that the build-in nav is superfluous, since basically everyone has CarPlay or Android Auto and a wide choice of navigation apps. But the frustrating part is that the speed limits displayed are based on the maps. There is no way to turn off the display of speed limits (at least on the HUD version). Where I live, there has been a push over the past two years to reduce pedestrian fatalities and so the majority of streets have had their speed limits reduced. I am constantly being shown incorrect speed limits! Makes the whole thing feel sort of cheap and cheesy that they are going to try to exploit money from people to avoid having incorrect speed limits shown.

 

I find that carPlay is more useful

 

I'm in the same situation as you. The subscription for my 2019 Acura RDX has expired. I'm sticking with my 10 year old Garmin 50LM. It has FREE lifetime map updates. I also use Waze on my Iphone 12 Mini for backup and redundancy. Both work for me.

 

Yes, I still as well have my old, bigger screen Garmin. What I like about them is they use GPS, whereas the phone, thus car play, is using cell service which in NV is not always that robust. Yes to free lifetime updates...well...as long as Garmin supports these things. If Acura had a superior product with Nav then maybe, but in a lot of ways it really pales compared to Carplay, etc. Not sure if the car Nav uses GPS or that ATT thing in it or what, but regardless....too much for an update.

 

I just checked the Here site and the 2022.08.14 map is now available for download.

Ron

 

Short of being in an area with poor cell coverage, nobody really uses the Acura nav right? Or any factory nav for that matter?

 

HERE site shows the latest version is 2022.08.14. I installed it last night, but my car shows the installed version of 2022.04.12. What's going on? I have a Canadian 2020 RDX A-Spec

 

This is in the Installation Guide:

6. Remove the USB flash drive. Turn off the car and wait 15 minutes for the map update to be
ready. The update will finish in the background and at the next ignition cycle the vehicle
map will be of the newest version.

Not sure if you did this final step before checking the map version.

You could also try reinserting the USB drive with the latest map update. I would expect the navigation system would let you know that the version is already installed or do the update if it thinks the maps on the USB are newer than what is currently in the car.

Ron

 

Did anyone else find that this download took a lot longer than the previous updates. I started the process at 5:30 last evening and it wasn't completed until 10:20. Part 1359 of 1006 seemed to install in slow motion, it took nearly an hour and a half for that one part. I haven't tried installing it in the car yet.

 

Weird that it says part 1359 of 1006. Wouldn't it normally be (as an example) part 1 of 2?

 

I don't remember it going past 1006 in the past but it might have. Everything seemed to go as normal except for that slow as sin part 1359.
I'm not sure if I should go ahead and install this in the car or try downloading it to the drive again.

 

Check the properties of the HereMapsV1 folder in your download. If your numbers match these, you should be good to proceed. This is on a Windows system.



Ron

 

I experience similar problems every time I download a new map. I watch the progress advance for several minutes before I walk away. When I return hours later, it appears the download has hung up.

I press the "pause" button, with the hopes that when I un-pause it, that it will wake up and resume the download. As soon as I press the "pause" button, it reports "download complete". Afterwards it always installs into the RDX without any problems.

 

Thanks Ron, this is what it looks like on my Mac, the size is similar but not exactly the same. I have no idea why it says that it was created in Dec. 1969?
I think I'm going to try and erase the whole thing and start over and see if it stays the same.

 

I've never seen that, I always see the download progressing right up to the complete message. This last one was the same except that it took nearly 5 hours to complete instead of the normal 2 or 2.5.

 

Is RDX MAPS the folder that contains all of the NavDB.* folders? If not, get the properties of the folder containing the NavDB folders. That is the equivalent of my HereMapsV1 folder that I captured. I assume our navigation systems will require a specific folder structure regardless of the origin, i.e., Mac vs Windows, so I would assume you will have an equivalent HereMapsV1 folder.

In particular, I was looking for the number of files and the number of folders (1007 and 119, respectively, on mine) to gauge if you had a complete download.
I am Mac illiterate, but I assume you can determine that information. By the way, the 119 folders in my capture are not all in the HereMapsV1 folder. Some are subfolders.

I hope this helps.

Ron

 

Depends. On my last road trip to the States I used the Acura nav exclusively during the long out-and-back travel legs. I had an SSD full of 5.1 FLACs occupying the USB port, had a fairly obvious and straightforward route, and wanted to minimize the international data roaming on my phone. For these parts of the trip, the factory nav was perfectly cromulent.

That said, I did revert to my preferred phone app via CarPlay while visiting (and trying to locate) various destinations around SoCal during my stay.

 

Thanks again for trying to help Ron, unfortunately I erased the drive right after I posted this morning. Now I'm beginning to think that the update gods are trying to tell me something. When I went to the Acura site to try the download again I couldn't log in, it seemed like the site was down. It was a couple of hours before I got in and then the download was twice as slow as yesterday, after 3 hours it was only up to 30% complete. We then tried the drive on my wife's PC and it was about the same, 20% after 2 hours.

We're going to get another usb drive next time we're out and see if that makes any difference.

 

I went and purchased a 64GB Samsung USB 3.1 flash drive and formatted it to MS-DOS FAT. I then downloaded the map update to the drive. It took 22 minutes to download. On older USB 2.0 and 3.0 flash drives that I have used, the download would take about an hour. It still took nearly an hour to upload it to my RDX, as the USB connection is 2.0.

 

"Happy" to report that this update messed up the speed limit information for the streets around me that are 25 or 30mph, they now all show as 35 mph on the navi, which is wrong! They used to all show the correct mph limit prior to the most current navi update.

 

I took delivery in February 2019. It tells me my subscription expires on December 31, 2022. You buy a $50,000 vehicle, you'd think they could throw in lifetime updates. My Garmin Nuvi came with it for $99. What's more, they don't guarantee updates or how often. Originally, they promised quarterly updates but they have never rolled them out that frequent. It was more than a year before I got my first update.

So, I'm downloading my last update now.

 

I didn't get anything like that. In the past, it always had 1005 parts, IIRC. This download took about 35 minutes which is typical.

 

I did the update and I just want to say that was the most unpolished update procedure I think I've ever done outside of a development environment. You get a brief message when you plug it in then ... nothing ... for an hour. Then, it says its finished, but I had it on accessory mode and the car turned itself off when I opened the door. It seems the update took anyway, but how much work would it be to have a status indicator of some sort?

It's not the only element of the RDX that feels like it is still in beta... The trip computer screen looks like a first draft coding effort, too.

 

Well I finally got this last update downloaded and installed. What a pain!
We purchased a new usb but it didn't work any better than the one we had always used. It would begin to download rapidly but slow to a crawl after a few minutes. Hitting pause and then resume would cause it to return to normal speed but I had to do that continuously. It eventually showed complete but then it wouldn't install in the car.
After a few days I decided to try the download again (I'm retired and had nothing better to do) and it worked perfectly on both usb's. It also installed in the car like always.

I never had a problem with any of the previous updates so I don't know what the problem was this time. A friend suggested that it might have been a problem on Acura's end I guess it could well have been.

 

I tried to update maps today as the prior update never completed in my vehicle (2019). Screen showed the $119 price for 1 year (or a real "steal" at $169 for 3 years!). I went ahead and downloaded the installer (new PC) and started the update. Never asked for payment so I'm wondering if the Renewal notice is bogus. I suppose they might lock the file once it is downloaded but we'll see. Definitely not paying for navi as one response noted the errors in speed limits. Mine would have me drive into farmland as it doesn't know that the expressway ends...
Will update about paying when the download finishes.

 

Will be interested to hear the payment update if there is one. I generally like to keep things updated...but for free when I can. We continue to hope to be RDX free one of these days, if new inventory ever starts showing up on lots. There does seem to be a little change lately, as well as seeing offers like $1,000 factory savings, various low interest rate offers, and other assorted incentives. You really think in this day, map updates would have evolved on cars to a no charge model, only because of the free nav app choices. Certainly not opposed to paying if there is some unique value or offering, but the the Acura nav is not much of a product.

 

I guess my "subscription" expires on 1/14/23 even though I purchased the car in June of 2018. So I'm not sure how the 3 years works. Just upload the 2022.08.14 update, guess that will be my last. I'll take a look in early January and see what the versions and expiration dates are.
I did this update with a new 32gb 3.2 flash drive, it actually worked a little better than the prior update.

 

I guess people will soon be making a difficult decision on what to do when their free updates expire?

Pay $119 every year for as long as they own their RDX, OR purchase an AAWireless dongle ($90 USD) or a Motorola MA1 dongle ($100 USD) (and use Google maps or Waze for navigation)

What makes the decision even harder is that purchasing a dongle is a one time expense. Even when you get rid of the RDX, you can use the dongle in the next car.

I have been debating the decision in my head, since the free updates will soon be expiring on my 2020 RDX.

 

I have two Motorola MA1 dongle it works great in my other (non Acura) cars. Also bought one for two of our "kids" . Highly recommend.