Some Honda car owners have recently found themselves in a kind of time loop. Since the beginning of the year, the automaker’s forums have been awash with reports of people complaining that their vehicles’ clocks and calendars are locked in the year 2002.
The question seems to be generalized. is affecting Honda and The cure models with GPS navigation systems manufactured between 2004 and 2012, and there are reports of people encountering the problem in the US, Canada and the UK. What’s more, it doesn’t seem like a fix at the moment. Every time someone starts the car, the clock is reset – even if it was manually set before.
“Honda is aware of a possible concern regarding the display of the watch on certain older Acura and Honda models equipped with navigation systems,” said a spokesperson for the automaker. . “We are currently investigating this issue to determine possible countermeasures and do not have additional details to share at this time.”
The problem appears to result from a coding oversight. When a GPS satellite transmits the date, it does so using a 10-digit binary number that includes a reference to the week. A single GPS epoch includes 1023 weeks, with the system rolling in the 1024 week. After the first GPS systems started counting time in 1980, they rolled in 1999 and again in 2019. If a system isn’t properly coded to account for these rollovers, what can happen is exactly what we’re seeing here with the ones. Honda. vehicles: they go back to when the calendar started.
In a good mood, this isn’t the first time Honda car owners have encountered this problem. Back , Honda and Acura 1999 to 2004 models with navigation systems had their watches reset for 1998. The same problem arose more recently in . In both cases, the clocks went back exactly 1,024 weeks. Time knows how to make fun of everyone, but it seems to have a special place for Honda’s software developers.
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