Apple CarPlay problem with 2019 Acura RDX and iPhone X

The update for Canada owners will probably come a little later. Acura Client Relations tech support can hopefully give you a more definitive answer. For now keep checking when you’re connected via WiFi.

Since the factory reset back on 7/18/19, I’ve had no music dropouts (this was my number 1 complaint). However, the frozen left screens came back after about 2 weeks. Last week I updated to D.1.1.4 and seems to be more stable. So far so good. My only issue so far is frozen menu screen using Amazon music within CarPlay. The one method to rectify this dozen screen is to shut down/restart iPhone. But overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the performance of latest update. Oh I’m using XS Max running 12.4.1.

If I say much about the Class Action, Apple will delete the post.

If you do a Google search for class action against Acura infotainment center, you'll find the mid-west law firm that's filed the suit.

According to Apple, the new iOS and CarPlay, has a much more sophisticated handling of the windows/screens and allows auto manufacturers a lot more flexibility. How that plays out in the long run, I'm not sure.

One HUGE improvement that I've seen (& released to the public by Apple ;-), is that the CarPlay will no longer immediately default to whatever you're doing on your phone. For example: In the current version, if you try to take a Screenshot with your phone, while connected to CarPlay, you essentially get "2 photos" ... one of your iPhone and one of your infotainment center. I suspect this will change, although I haven't tried it. As the blurb I posted pointed out, you can use using CarPlay and someone else in the car could be doing a manual search on the phone, without interrupting what's on your infotainment screen.

Update 10/29- I tried something else I found on Applebox which had some tips I never tried. I turned off the Bluetooth from my phone. Removed the device from Acuralink. Restarted my phone. Plugged in cable to my car and phone and CarPlay opened right up. I reestablished my Bluetooth and all of my settings. I don’t know how long Carplay will remain active but for now It’s fixed.

Acura has sold something like 30,000 RDX’s so far this year.

There has been 20-30 people on this site over the last year or so, looking for a “solution”. I’ve seen some random posts on other sites, regarding CarPlay. If the problem is systemic, why aren’t the other 29,000+ owners complaining and looking for solutions?

i personally know 3 other RDX Owners, none of whom are having any significant problems.

it’s easy to point fingers and blame Acura, but unless they created special software for some of us, the system works fairly well.

BTW, a few people who were using this site for info and support, no longer post here. Perhaps their system is working well, since the last update?

Most iPhone users do not post on this forum, and I would venture to estimate that a substantial number of 2019 Acura users do not use CarPlay. So the fact that the complainers here only numbersin a few tens is dispositive of absolutely nothing. If you do a Google search, you find this issue appearing on a number of other websites, bulletin boards and user sites. (e.g., acurazine.com, arstechnica.com, to name two). According to a number of posters and to company statements I've seen online (see the RDXreview on arstechnica) Acura has admitted that there are issues with the GPS/infotainment system in general, including CarPlay, and is promising a fix. It wouldn't have said that if it didn't have to. For the first five months that I owned my car, I thought it was perfect, too.

So, after 9 days, my dealer was able to extract information from my car, apparently they can retrieve some logs from the infotainment, and the information was sent to Acura Engineers. I will pick my car up this week.

I was told that now, we have to wait the engineers analyze this information, and if problem is from car, a new software update will likely be released.

I told him that I have been having no problems with the RDX that dealer gave it to me, I noticed that the car they gave me doesn't have Navigation, I was wondering if all of ours are the Technology Package or higher (with navigation), or if some of us with the disconnecting problem do have the more basic version without the navigation.

Anyway, I don't see much hope coming out of this, I will likely just sell the car and forget about it in a few months, I tried.

Thank you so much for all the wonderful information in this post. Sadly my 2019 RDX has the same problem with disconnecting and reconnecting constantly. Mine too, like a previous poster, goes out at the 4-6 minute mark, reconnects after about 30-60 seconds and then continues to disconnect and reconnect a handful of times. On a long road trip, which I don't take many, it does eventually stick.

Very annoying. We were literally sold on this car b/c of the apple carplay. Jokes on us! I did email Acura client support and I have an appointment with dealership next week. Just wanted to post and say thank you and to follow for more info!

I took my RDX into the dealership on Friday evening. They stated they were aware of the issues. The issue isn't one-sided, it is on both parties (Acura and Apple). They did reset my infotainment system to factory defaults. That action seems to have changed the symptoms I experience.

Before resetting the infotainment system:

Start car, wait until infotainment fully loaded. Plug in iPhone X using a genuine Apple cable. After driving ~1-3 minutes, CarPlay would disconnect (the phone would continue charging). Waiting another 1-3 minutes, the phone would reconnect automatically. If driving for sufficient amount of time, this would happen several times before it would eventually remain connected.

After resetting the infotainment system:

Start car, wait until infotainment fully loaded. Plug in iPhone X using a genuine Apple cable. After driving 2-5 minutes, the Acura CarPlay app would stop responding (error message displayed on the infotainment screen, not on iPhone). It would take significantly longer to reconnect.

I have not driven very far since Friday, so more testing will take place over the next week or two.

The caching explanation makes sense to me and would explain why many of us did not start having the CarPlay disconnect problem till after we had the car for a number of months. We bought our cars at different times but eventually we started experiencing the problem.

If this is what is going on I suppose you could do full system reset several times a year.

It sure would be nice if Acura would get that portion of the Infotainment software rewritten to fix the problem, but given Acura’s long history of denial about the problem it seems unlikely they will do that. They just do not seem to care about their customers. I have called them many times about this, but it is hard to get them to admit this is a real issue despite all the evidence to the contrary.

I was able to fix this on my iPhone X by going to settings in the Acura RDX ->, connection->, CarPlay, finding my phone, then “enabling” my phone on the Acura RDX system.

So far, mine has only worked fine in months without an R at the end.