Apple CarPlay GPS wrong location issue

Not quite but… my current hypothesis: this really happens when we have bad air quality. I have noticed this is horrible during the bad air quality days. Yesterday it took a while to report GPS accuracy +/- ~ 15ft. It was 350-500 +/- for a while then eventually settled down. I ‘believe’ that when your iPhone does Car play, it must leverage whatever GPS the car has plus it’s dead reconning capabilities where the phone by itself combines a bunch of other things to nail down the location. e.g. when not in carplay, use iphone goodies to determine position, when in car play, only use the car.

Having said all of that:

• I have an aftermarket receiver with Carplay support. Are you in the same boat? I would guess not
• My vehicle did it with either wireless or wired car play
• I also recently did a firmware upgrade on my head unit. Any software updates on your side?
• I also tried on another car with wired car play and that one did not do it

J-Apple324 "Unacceptable solution" I was going to say the same thing.

I spent 4 hours on the phone with Apple Tech support yesterday and they have no clue... 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Absolutely pathetic...

Cip - does not work for me. I have the issue both wired and wireless.

You have to wait for CarPlay to connect via WiFi and after that to connect the cable, the connection remains on Wifi. For me it does work, that’s strange.

My Issue seems to involve the speed sensor giving data to the radio and the radio is acting like it’s offline and using that data from the 3D Calibration status screen which is causing maps to glitch. Going to disconnect the speed sensor wire next week. This issue does not happen with an android.

We were able to convince our dealer that it was a problem with the infotainment system and they replaced the system. New one works.

I'm guessing the GPS chip that is in these units is susceptible to manufacturing defects / variations that can make affected units unusuable.

There are post on reddit about this. See https://www.reddit.com/r/rav4club/comments/10bvex4/2023_rav4_carplay_navigation_issues/

I made a printout of the redditt post and brought it into my dealer so I could show this wasn't a "my phone" issue. I didn't get any push-back from the dealer (I was concerned I'd get a "its your phone" response, so before showing up at the dealer, I tested with multiple phones and had the reddit printout to show this wasn't a "me" issue - I went in prepared for some resistance, but my dealer was really good about the whole thing. I've read others weren't so lucky.). Consider doing the same - i.e., showing up with the reddit printout as it explaines the issue..

I hope you never get this problem again but I do wonder if this might just be a temp fix ? … I had taken my Fabia 2022 model in for a software update to fix the issue and that got rid of the problem for some time, probably a couple of months, but then after an ios update it broke again and this time neither wired or wireless would work correctly. It’s been a couple of months since that happened and carplay over cable suddenly works again but who knows when it will decide to stop working again…

Yes it is extremely annoying (and sometimes dangerous), but it's a car problem, not an Apple problem. Both Apple & Android use the car's positional data when connected because the car has a stronger antenna than the phone. Unfortunately car software sometimes screws up and misreports the position, which can be seen by checking the car's inbuilt navigation. Take the car to a dealer and get a system software update and a maps update. This may have no immediate effect in the workshop, but once you drive the car it will pickup the satellites again and correct itself. On the rare occasions that this doesn't work, you might need a new hardware unit or antenna.

I spent 4 hours on the phone with Apple Tech support yesterday and they have no clue... 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Absolutely pathetic...

it was showing my location off by a little over a HALF a MILE! while they were on the phone with me trying to help but not helping.

RE: Wombat & Hch...

I'm experiencing similar in that when I totally disconnect from CarPlay, the location on my phone is correct, and (sometimes) when I'm connected to CarPlay it's wrong. I can connect wirelessly (WiFi) or wired (USB) (2023 VW GTI). I disconnect from WiFi CarPlay by turning off iPhone WiFi.

I made a change that seems to have helped and so I have a theory about the cause....

I changed my car's WiFi and Bluetooth name from the default of "My VW 1234" to something else. [note: your phone will attempt to use nearby WiFi and Bluetooth signals/network names to assist (cheat) with the location.]

One hypothesis is that the phone is using and confusing multiple same/repeated names of car WiFi hotspots or Bluetooth names. For example: if Google/Apple (some compiled and shared database) have picked up 10 or 100 different "My VW 1234" WiFi networks all with different locations, it may be that sometimes you are near one of those and so it is getting confused about the real location of that network.

After I changed the Bluetooth and WiFi car network names, I have not experienced this issue. I drove around through some locations where I had trouble previously and it was working very well.

The other day I was really having trouble and it was putting me over 1/2 miles away from actual location. Guess what was near the wrong location?? .... A VW dealer!! hmmm....

I have not called a VW dealer yet but I'm planning to do that if I notice this happening again.

Apple Tech Support also collected a lot of debugging logs from my phone too so maybe they will figure something out.

I no longer think that's the real problem/solution (what I had previously said about the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth names).

Today I noticed the inaccurate location issue and I switched my phone to Airplane mode so that it wasn't connected to the car at all. I brought up the VW native Navigation maps and it was showing the same inaccurate location as when it was connected a minute before.

So now I believe my real issue is with the vehicle's native GPS location getting distorted. Likely due to various obstructions like trees, clouds, smoke, etc.

While using CarPlay, the vehicle's own GPS location is used in the CarPlay maps (both Google, Apple maps, Waze etc.) and not the location originating from the phone. This location propagates back to the apps on the phone itself. So, even if the phone would have provided a more accurate location, it doesn't matter and CarPlay (in my case at least with a VW) uses the vehicle's location.

I'm not sure if this is realistically fixable... I saw that some folks had gone to a dealer for a Infotainment software or hardware updates. I tend to think that won't make much difference.

May I suggest that everyone posting here submits a feedback report to Apple? I understand that Apple does not monitor these forums but does read feedback.

The address is something like apple.com/feedback but you can easily search for it.

Same issue here. I bought a 2023 Rav4 XLE Premium in September. The GPS worked the first week I had car and then next trip went afoul to the point it showed me driving in the middle of a river. Luckily my google search landed me here and I took the car back to dealership armed with intel from posts with same problem. Turns out it is a faulty Head Unit. They were able to recreate the problem on the test drive and with several technician's phone in the shop. Ruled out it is NOT the phone as the customer service rep has exact same model of phone and vehicle and his works fine. 10 days ago they told me part was ordered. Called today since no word and found out the part is "ordered" but they have no definitive ETA. Meanwhile i have brand new car which basically has no functionality. I have a severe handicap (it's almost embarrassing) when it comes to directions and rely on my GPS for even ridiculously easy routes so connecting my phone is not practical. The dealership states they have done all they can do since this is a supply issue with Denso. They apparrently have had issues with them in the past. I have very little confidence this will be resolved in a timely manner so I asked if I could return the car and they basically said they would only give me trade in value and I would eat the taxes and tags. My other option is to contact corporate engagement services which I will do before I look into legal implications of the lemon laws. I was a 20+ year Nissan owner and regret jumping ship.

DavidSat, If the vehicles have built-in navigation that works without CarPlay, disconnect CarPlay while you're experiencing the problem and take a picture of the maps with the incorrect location to show the dealer(s).

From my experience with a VW system, while CarPlay is active the car's incorrect GPS location is used by both the car and the iPhone and neither use the iPhone's correct location. When you disable/disconnect CarPlay you should see the location on the phone correct itself, while the vehicle's location remains incorrect.

Let me know what you find.