Tesla navigation system bug: crashes if you mention “this” fish soup restaurant in Taiwan
A Tesla owner in Taiwan recently claimed that his car’s navigation system immediately crashed when he input the name and address of a particular fish soup restaurant in Tainan City, and other owners have confirmed the bug.
Well-known tech and car bloggers also tested the bug and have uploaded video to social media sites to demonstrate the glitch.
The videos show Tesla’s voice-activated navigation system crashing when asked to navigate to the Kaiyuan Road mackerel fish soup restaurant (開元路土魠魚羹) in Tainan City. A few seconds later, the system automatically reboots.
Tests showed that either the name of the road, or the name of the restaurant alone, resulted in successful navigation, but combining the two caused the system to crash.
The bug has been confirmed on Model S, Model 3, and Model X Tesla cars.
People reading the posts on social media speculated on the cause of the crash, with one theory being that a Tesla engineer may have been dissatisfied with the quality of the food or service at the establishment.
However, others disagreed, saying the food there was delicious. Thousands of reviews on Google and a 4.1 star rating, also weaken the disgruntled engineer theory.
Indeed, the wide publicity caused by the story has resulted in a boon for business according to data on Google, who’s live report on numbers at the restaurant reads “Way more people than usual,” today, Sunday, February 21.”
According to a report from “ETtoday Car Cloud,” Tesla officially stated that the problem is likely to be a bug in the voice recognition code. The relevant engineering team has been contacted to debug the code, and this problem will be fixed through online updates in the future. The bug will not affect driving safety, so car owners can still drive with confidence.
Tech blogger “Computer King Ada” (電腦王阿達) who confirmed the bug as shown in the video above, contacted a Taiwanese Tesla-owner friend in China who ran the same test, only to find his system did not crash. Therefore, it is likely a bug exclusive to Taiwan, Ada wrote.
The crash will not affect normal driving, Ada told readers, “but personally I do not recommend that you do this test while driving. If you really want to test, please stop on the roadside,” Ada said.
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