Apple CarPlay GPS wrong location issue

Update: With CarPlay in my 2023 VW Taos, the GPS will suddenly and unexpectedly show me to be in the wrong location. The error is several hundred feet to several miles. This is very dangerous when you are on a highlway and it suddenly tells you to turn on a road that does not exist. I updated my iPhone to iOS 17.0.2. It did not help. I have rebooted both the car system and the phone. It does not help. Most recently, this happened when I was parked in my driveway. I was connected to CarPlay. The map in the car AND on my phone showed the same WRONG location. I simply turned off Wi-Fi on my phone and immediately as the iphone disconnected from the car, the map on my phone switched to the correct location. Incidentally, my phone works fine with CarPlay in my Bolt.

Have a similar issue with my 2021 Atlas. Started a month ago. I can reset my radio by holding for 10 seconds and it’ll provide a temporary fix but doesn’t last long. Have you had a chance to talk to anyone at VW yet? I’m not wanting to take my car in unless VW has a fix for the issue.

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.

Update Kenwood media player in VW T6 

- Apple CarPlay GPS wrong location issue 

Kenwood instructed me to re locate Kenwood GPS antenna on top of the dashboard near windscreen on passenger side. (Current location was on top of unit, under the dashboard)

This has worked and my CarPlay navigation is now working correctly. 

It seems the issue was the GPS antenna was losing accuracy due to poor signal. Kenwood also believe it was made worse by T6 heated windscreen. 

Hope this is helpful 

I have been battling this with a professionally installed Pioneer DMH-WT7600NEX for years and multiple iPhone 13s and a iPhone14s with "precision GPS" chip. Nothing works. The head unit has a GPS sensor that was mounted just under the center speaker in the upper dashboard, where there was only a bit of plastic between the sensor and the top of the dash, and otherwise was below the windshield. As a last hope, I relocated the GPS sensor to the top of the dashboard and near the defrost vent, so now there are no obstructions between the sensor and the windshield.

If this doesn't work, the final test might be to remove the head unit's GPS completely, as I don't think it serves any meaningful purpose.

Not sure you scenario. I do know that the quality data cable to iPhone is key for certain phones. My location was miles off while using a cord or usb settings

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.

Same here. I tested with three different apps and took screenshots. the GPS accuracy isn’t different, +/- 16 feet. When I do a delta between the readings I get 100 ft off.

What I did to test:

1. Fire up maps app, note my position and coordinates.
2. Step into my vehicle and fire it up, within a minute or two, I’m 100’ NE of where ever I am.

I am able to reproduce this with multiple GPS apps, Apple Maps, Google Maps, Tomtom and Gaia GPS.

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

Just bought a 2023 VW Taos with Car Play. At first maps worked fine. Then it became glitchy - the location was off by 100 feet. Now it says I am 3 miles from where I actually am located and prompts me with a route to get to to where I really am! Same problem with G maps and Apple maps. I rebooted the Infotainment system - no change. My phone navigates fine when disconnected from the Infotainment system. IOS 16.6.1.

Yeah, I guess you might be completely up to date then. In which case you might have this problem until their next software update ☹️. With wired systems you can usually work around the issue by disconnecting your phone from the car when the nav screws up (and continuing on your phone which should now show the correct position). But I don't know how difficult it is to disconnect on the move with wireless systems.

Yes it absolutely needs to be fixed. I checked to see if Android Auto users were having the same issue, which of course they were. However at the end of this thread I was interested to see an Android Auto team member say:

A software update has been released to fix this issue with GPS. Please reach out to the car dealership for the updates.

So it looks like Android were able to work with the car manufacturer and get a fix out. One can only assume Apple is doing the same. Although it is worth noting that this Android fix still took well over a year to arrive.

VW installed a software update for me over a month ago. As you said, my location was wrong right out of the dealer. The next day, it seemed to work ok and worked ok for a week or so. Then it started randomly putting me in the wrong location. It seems that if I turn on navigation, drive, and then park somewhere and go into the store, and then come out and start driving, it gets confused and thinks I am still located where I parked. Then, when it tries to catch up it gets all confused and puts me blocks or even miles from where I actually am located.

Other times when I am on the highway and it is working, it will suddenly tell me to turn on a street that is somewhere I am not. Very dangerous! When it is wrong, it is wrong on both the phone and the car monitor. If I turn off wifi on my phone and disconnect from CarPlay, the phone immediately shows me the correct location. Usually when I reconnect to CarPlay, the location on both phone and car are again wrong.

That's bad. If your car is still under warranty then they should offer to replace the hardware, as software updates don't seem to be fixing the issue. That's what my dealer did when they thought the software updates hadn't worked. However for me the software updates actually had worked, but the car just needed to be driven a bit. So I ended up getting them to cancel the order for the new hardware unit.