Time to party like it's 2002: Acura and Honda car clocks knocked back 20 years by bug
- Reference: 1641503079
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/01/06/acura_honda_cars_software_bug/
- Source link:
With the onset of 2022, Acura and Honda customers began reporting on [1]various [2]online [3]forums that their dashboard display clocks reset to January 1, 2022 when they restarted their vehicles.
[4]@honda fix the clock issue all 2007-2011 CRV sold in America with nav system has a clock/date issue since 2022 [5]pic.twitter.com/F268Tfr4qG — Majd Jabbarin (@Mjabbarin) [6]January 3, 2022
A reader wrote in to alert The Register to the problem.
"Since New Year's Day my Honda CR-V has been unable to tell the time," the reader said. "When I start the car it just says it is 01:00 and though the time then continues from there, restarting the car resets back to 01:00 again."
"After a few moments searching I discovered it is a known issue with some Honda models with built-in sat nav. It seems that at midnight they switched from 2021 to 2002! Apparently there is no fix. :("
[7]
"I phoned my local Honda dealer and they told me the problem was with the satellites, not their nav, which seems to contradict what others have reported. They even suggested [British astronaut] Tim Peake may be called upon to do a little trip to fix the satellites. Umm. Yeah."
[8]
[9]
"The good news is that if they, or Tim, can't fix this I only have to wait seven months for it to fix itself. Magic."
"Maybe I should have bought a DeLorean."
[10]
Honda representatives, it's claimed, have acknowledged the clock errors and suggested the bug will resolve itself in seven months, at the end of August.
Auto-correct coming
"We have escalated the NAVI Clock Issue to our Engineering Team and they have informed us that you will experience issues from Jan 2022 thru August 2022 and then it will auto-correct," a company representative supposedly said in [11]a reply to online complaints. "Please be assured that we will continue to monitor this and will advise you if a fix is available before that time."
This however is not a statement Honda is willing to officially acknowledge at the moment. A company representative declined to confirm (but did not deny) the above statement as an official response, saying it may have been something a customer service representative said.
Honda, we were told, has not yet issued a formal advisory to owners at this point – in order words there are legal implications that follow from official declarations. In a statement email to The Register , a Honda US spokesperson confirmed the company is investigating the issue but could not provide further detail about the cause of the error.
[12]If your apps or gadgets break down on Sunday, this may be why: Gpsd bug to roll back clocks to 2002
[13]What a clock up: Brit TV-broadband giant Sky fails to pick up weekend's timezone change, fix due by Friday
[14]Orolia inks €70m deal to provide atomic clocks for second generation of EU's Galileo navigation satellites
[15]Honda to build reusable rockets to sling sats, but won't scare SpaceX
"American Honda is aware of a potential concern related to the clock display on certain older Acura and Honda models equipped with navigation systems," a company spokesperson said. "We are currently investigating this issue to determine possible countermeasures and have no additional details to share at this time."
Coincidentally, The Register recently wrote about [16]a bug in the open source gpsd software that [17]risked setting clocks back to 2002 if not patched. Gpsd translates navigation satellite data into a format that's usable by client applications.
We asked Honda whether affected vehicles may have used an unpatched version of gpsd to handle GPS data translation for displaying the time in car navigation units. A Honda spokesperson said he could not provide additional information until the company's investigation of the problem concludes.
Don't panic
Gary Miller, the maintainer of gpsd, told The Register in an email that this doesn't sound like the [18]GPS Week Roll Over (GWRO) bug that bit gpsd.
The GWRO subtracts exactly 1024 weeks (7168 days) from the current instant," he explained. "The hour and minute would be exactly the same, seconds off only by a few leap seconds."
[19]
Pointing to reports that clocks returned exactly to 1600, he said it sounded like a dead clock battery, a system reset, or perhaps a bad fix for the GWRO bug. He said he doesn't know when companies use gpsd because it's BSD 2-clause licensed and usage doesn't require disclosure.
"Corporate users of gpsd are loath to admit they use it," he said. "But this does not sound like any gpsd bug I heard of. The 4pm thing, if true, is a big clue. Bad GPS math would not always return to 4pm."
Technically inclined folk discussing the issue online [20]have [21]suggested Honda's software may have tried to store the date in a 32-bit signed integer, which has a maximum value of 2147483647 and wouldn't properly handle a larger numeric value like 2201010001 (as one would represent the date using digits in YYMMDDHHMM format).
In any event, Miller said, it's up to Honda to fix things because their system is closed source. ®
Get our [22]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Acura/comments/rv4cj1/digital_clock_issue/
[2] https://www.crvownersclub.com/threads/clock-fault-year-2022-note-this-is-not-a-gps-related-issue-merged-master-thread.224326/
[3] https://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/threads/time-date-issues-beginning-january-1-2022-latest-update-in-first-post.230330/
[4] https://twitter.com/Honda?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[5] https://t.co/F268Tfr4qG
[6] https://twitter.com/Mjabbarin/status/1477874266330775555?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Ydd0mqgW7Vvg4xkEFkNPQAAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Ydd0mqgW7Vvg4xkEFkNPQAAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Ydd0mqgW7Vvg4xkEFkNPQAAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Ydd0mqgW7Vvg4xkEFkNPQAAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.crvownersclub.com/threads/2022-clock-fault-official-honda-responses-all-models.224397/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/19/gpsd_bug_reset/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/02/sky_plus_clock/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/09/orolia_galileo_atomic_clocks/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/01/honda_rockets_and_bots/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/19/gpsd_bug_reset/
[17] https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/current-activity/2021/10/21/gps-daemon-gpsd-rollover-bug
[18] https://www.gps.gov/support/user/rollover/
[19] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Ydd0mqgW7Vvg4xkEFkNPQAAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[20] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29823562
[21] https://twitter.com/_______shushing/status/1478460556478533632?s=20
[22] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Satellites?
How can this possibly be a problem with the satellites? Were that the case then every system relying on those satellites would have the same problem.
Maybe they used the same programmers as MicroSoft: https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/04/microsoft_date_comparison_tweet/
Re: Satellites?
Yep this is definitely a Honda-side problem.
To steal an XKCD joke, if I may: Epoch Fail!
Re: Satellites?
Upvoted for such a groanworthy play on words.
Re: Satellites?
You’re too kind. But give Randall Munroe the credit, not me.
Re: Satellites?
I think they're just using the Microsoft-style "baffle 'em with bullshit" strategy.
At least I don't have that problem with my car clock. It just runs a little slow. Tens of £k for a car and they fit a clock that's less accurate than a cheap wristwatch.
I have to say that the digital clock in my 1993 Nissan farm truck keeps perfect time. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking, as the old advertising slogan had it.
Are you sure that it isn't that the world is wrong and your car has the 'correct' time?
Ah, the Wonko the Sane approach?
Customer disservice...
Yeah we will fix it in 7 months... meanwhile don't waste our time
Ford C-Max
My 2008 Ford C-Max seems to follow the Mayan calendar. It doesn't let you manually set any date after 2012, as it just wraps back round to 2000. Ford evidently didn't think this car would last longer than 5 years! You can work around it by setting the time and date to just before midnight on December 31st and letting it naturally roll over a few times, but you have to be really careful not to touch the year. Bloody annoying.
I remember in a previous role one day all the touchscreens on our customers' machines failed. After a bit of decompiling I found that the mouse driver scanned through the BIOS looking for a specific pattern of byte values, which it then used as an offset to read the serial port settings. Of course on that particular day the date matched the pattern, and just happened to be located a few bytes before the pattern the driver was looking for. We told the customers that we would push out a fix overnight, although we might have omitted to tell them it would happen again in 20-odd years...
Always date and time
There are always problems with date and time in computers. It is one of the most difficult things to get right. And when you get it right, you probably got it wrong anyway, somewhere.
More errors pop up with more fancy stuff you want. And then, not appreciating the date/time complexity is the real mother. Also, management does not appreciate the complexity of date/time and cannot fathom why it takes so long to program that damned clock, which results in forced coding shortcuts. Not taking the junior programmer into account, that is.
The company not acknowledging the problem, despite ample evidence, is a problem in and of itself. Then, after the 7 month self-repair timeout, you will get a car that skips the third gear. August in 2022 is the month where it has been determined that the third gear is no longer necessary and it is so programmed into the car software. After 5 months you will get the third gear back while Mondays will skip second gear on odd seconds. Management has declined any comment on that feature.