For the second time the satnav in my ND was failing to load, but this time I think I know the cause. On both occasions I used a public car-park which is situated beside the terminal at the end of the London Underground District Line. There the trains wait before going back into service, also there are rows of transformers and other electrical units. My satnav was working when I park but refused to load when I start up and leave and it didn’t reset on the return journey, however it did load after being home for an hour or so. My thoughts are than the EM field from the transformers etc. affects the car’s satnav systems/sensors. Anyone with any knowledge of, or thoughts on the subject because if that is a cause it might make us more wary of where we park.
Having left the car park and reached a safe distance, say a quarter mile away, park up and switch off the car for a minute, then try switching on again. You might need to take the key for a walk, because the car and key talk to each other when close enough (hence the mere ~18 month life on the surprisingly big battery in the key.)
If it is the EM field then I’m surprised the satnav doesn’t recover, perhaps it had a hissy fit and went into a protective shut-down because of overload and needed a full power-on reset.
My Mazda3 has the same system, and gives up looking after about ten or twenty seconds in a tunnel (never thought to time it), but always recovers within a couple of seconds on emergence. My Garmin Nuvi does the same.
Turning off the ignition and starting up after a minute or so won’t actually reboot it completely, it’s more of a standby mode. You can disconnect the battery but that’s s bit over the top. There is a simple way of rebooting that I don’t think is in the manual. With the unit working press three buttons on the central commander at the same time. These are Nav, the back arrow button and mute. Nothing happens straight away but hold them down for 10 seconds and the screen will go black and then it will reboot. You won’t lose anything from the memories and I did it while playing music from the USB and it carried on playing from the same spot after reboot.
When you consider that the satnav uses very low power signals from satellites thousands of miles away it’s not surprising that nearby high level electromagnetic interference can cause it to throw it’s teddies out of the pram.