<-- Holding back a snarky comment.

You're welcome.

 

GPS is, of course, originally a US military system. The guidance for using GPS units in military manuals states that the GPS signal can be blocked by dense foliage.

I'm pretty sure that a car's roof and chassis is better a blocking RF signals than some leaves. This is why car GPS units have always either had an antenna outside the car or was mounted to a window.

In order to get an accurate position, at least 3 satellites must be in line of sight of the receiver. That's certainly easy enough when you're not inside a Faraday cage.

Just sayin'.

 

No modern systems are completely reliant on GPS alone, they also use cell tower triangulation and wifi to assist with geolocation which have no problem with going through a window.

There's something wrong with the software. I have had the exact same problem and I had it 2 days ago. I was driving with a friend and both Apple and Google Maps had me 100-200 meters off the road so it looked like I was going through the yards. I joked to my friend that Google is gonna start serving me ads for ATVs.

When my friend opened Google Maps on his phone while in my car, it was spot on, no issues with the signal.

 

I experienced this issue recently in my dealers demo i4…. I haven’t noticed it in my M50, yet…. But I’ve only driven it about 10 miles, from the PC to the detailer. Will see how it goes on the 500 mile trip home on Saturday.

 

Location of the phone itself can impact this. In the charger bay, there's a booster for GPS reception, but in other parts of the car, the GPS reception can be impacted and so it can go wonky. Same is true in my 330.

 

My i4 is about 10d old and I have the same '100 feet away' on the CarPlay Map. Crazy because the car is being shown on the road next to the road I am driving on. I will try putting the phone in the charging slot.

 

This is happening to me with CarPlay on the i4 as well. Haven’t found a way to fix it yet…

My gps location always shows me about 3 blocks away from my actual location. Kind of funny to see it show that I’m driving over buildings

As mentioned earlier in the thread, the idrive gps location works fine, but the incorrect location only appears in CarPlay.

I’ve tried rebooting the phone, rebooting the car’s infotainment, with no success.

Sometimes it decides to work just fine, though…

This never happened in my 330i which also had wireless CarPlay. Hopefully this gets fixed with a software update

 

Thanks for the replies. CarPlay actually uses the car's GPS, not the phone's, when connected wirelessly. It's in the specs for CarPlay. They did this because the car's antenna should work better than the phone's as its exposed on top of the car.

The strange thing is that the car's navigation works properly.

 

Thanks for the replies. CarPlay actually uses the car's GPS, not the phone's, when connected wirelessly. It's in the specs for CarPlay. They did this because the car's antenna should work better than the phone's as its exposed on top of the car.

The strange thing is that the car's navigation works properly.

Being 100 feet off is still within the GPS specifications for the C/A code for civil signals vs military. The cell phones use assisted GPS, they rely on wifi cellphone signal gps time for initial position acquisition.

 

Is/was the phone in the charger in the console, or in your pocket? I had some screwy GPS things happen with Apple maps until I took the phone out of my pocket and put it in the charger. Remember when using Carplay it's the GPS in the PHONE that has to get the satellite signals. With the HUD I will typically use the built in nav as it shows the graphical road map during turns. With Carplay you only get arrows and text.

 

CarPlay doesn’t use the car’s GPS. It wouldn’t work with cars without navigation. If you have the phone in the charging tray the accuracy will probably drop, especially if you are driving in areas with high rises that might block the phone’s GPS antenna signal.

 

As far as I understand, this is not correct, it is an Apple requirement for Developers that wireless CarPlay must use the Car provided GPS. You can see the WDC documentation from Apple that states this here and the reasons why (primarily assumption that wireless CarPlay may mean the phone is in a bag or a pocket and suffer poor GPS reception):

Developing CarPlay Systems, Part 1 - WWDC16 - Videos - Apple Developer

CarPlay is a smarter, safer way to use your iPhone in the car. Learn how CarPlay works and how to design your car's infotainment system...

developer.apple.com