Y2K 2.2.1 - Older Honda and Acura models hit by Y2K22 bug that resets clocks 20 years in the past

[Lightwreather]

Summary

Owners of older Honda and Acura models started up their cars on New Year’s Day, only to find that their vehicles turned into time machines, according to a report from Jalopnik. Instead of seamlessly transitioning to the year 2022, cars’ clocks jumped 20 years back in time, and Honda says a fix could be months away.

 

Quotes

Quote

As spotted by Jalopnik, reports of digital clock issues have been popping up in Honda and Acura forums all over the internet, with the issue only affecting older vehicles with navigation. It’s not clear exactly which years are affected, but judging by user reports, it looks like the issue is prevalent in models released from 2006 to 2014 in the US, Canada, and the UK.

No matter the year or model, the Y2K22 problem manifests itself in the same way — the date shown on the navigation system has been reverted to the year 2002 and displays a time that’s several hours off. Some users mention that the separate radio clock shows an incorrect time as well, and even if they attempt to manually tweak the time and date, the system doesn’t appear to save those changes.

“American Honda is aware of a potential concern related to the clock display on certain older Acura and Honda models equipped with navigation systems,” Honda spokesperson Chris Naughton told The Verge. “We are currently investigating this issue to determine possible countermeasures and have no additional details to share at this time.”

A post on the CR-V Owners forum shows a more detailed response from both Honda in the US and the UK, with the US representative noting that drivers could experience the issue from January to August 2022 and that the system will “auto-correct” itself after this period. Meanwhile, the UK spokesperson doesn’t provide an exact timeline for the fix, but says that the “Honda technical department are currently working on this” and that “a service bulletin will be issued to our dealers from Honda UK on how to fix this.”

 

As explained by Jalopnik, a GPS uses a starting point, otherwise known as an epoch, to determine the date and time. This information is sent out to GPS devices in a string of 10 binary digits that represents the current week, which starts at zero and ends at 1,023 — the number is supposed to return to zero on week 1,024. Ever since the first week zero was set on January 6th, 1980, we experience a widescale GPS week number rollover every 19.7 years, with the first occurring in August 1999, and the most recent on April 6th, 2019. It’s possible that Honda’s navigation software didn’t account for a rollover to happen on New Year’s Day, potentially due to a coding oversight, causing navigation systems to return to the beginning of the set calendar.

 

My thoughts

So, this is Time-travel..... Huh. Is it just me or shouldn't it feel more glamorous? Jokes aside, I don't think this is all that serious, unless the car uses GPS which I think would stop working outright (Right? Can someone confirm this, I'm not an expert at these things). Well, enjoy the time travel while it lasts, I suppose.

 

Sources

Theverge

Jalopnik
Honda forum, Acura forum, Reddit
CR-V Owners Forum

Drive accord forum

[williamcll]

Me when I get in my civic

[DeScruff]

How is it that this kinda problem comes to existing?
Do software developers be like:

[vetali]

Our service department has been slammed by calls about this. Highly doubt it gets fixed before its auto corrected. Its like pulling teeth to get engineering to make an infotainment / headunit software patch for models they currently sell, let alone over 10 year old models.

[brwainer]

1 hour ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

unless the car uses GPS which I think would stop working outright (Right? Can someone confirm this, I'm not an expert at these things).

The “positional” aspect only relies on the difference in the timestamps received, so it wouldn’t matter what those timestamps are interpreted to mean. So I expect that navigating still works just fine. But when the system takes one of those timestamps and tries to convert it into a date/time for human use, its getting confused.

 

1 hour ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Some users mention that the separate radio clock shows an incorrect time as well

My guess is that on any car that has a GPS receiver, even if the navigation package wasn’t purchased, the whole car uses the same time received from GPS, otherwise communication between modules in the car may have issues.

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, brwainer said:

otherwise communication between modules in the car may have issues

AFAIK CAN-BUS does not use time in any way for communication. It is "dumbed down" as much as possible so electronics will need less "brain" to send/receive data.

[RejZoR]

It's funny when there was a massive panic about year 2000 and whole lot of nothing happened and here is casual year 2022 and shit is breaking lol.

[mr moose]

Good thing they don't count the miles on a car the same way... 

[brwainer]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

AFAIK CAN-BUS does not use time in any way for communication. It is "dumbed down" as much as possible so electronics will need less "brain" to send/receive data.

I’m not familiar with the encapsulation of CANBUS packets but I can believe it. i wouldn’t be surprised if every module that does have a clock gets synchronized to the nav unit though. 

[Arika]

i have a 2011 civic and it's never had a date in the clock.

 

stop making cars needlessly digital and complicated.

[jagdtigger]

2 minutes ago, Arika S said:

stop making cars needlessly digital and complicated.

Im afraid they wont. First up getting a license is way too easy,  to keep the accident statistics nice they need to stuff vehicles with "driver support functions". Plus manufacturers realized how to milk their customers even further with the help of  their internet connected cars....

[cj09beira]

does it matter though? i never cared if my car even knew what date it was.

[Moonzy]

17 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

 i never cared if my car even knew what date it was.

How else would they know if your subscription to the remote start service had expired?

 

Edit: /s, btw

[Paul Thexton]

A friend of mine had a Vauxhall Corsa some years ago that was convinced it was permanently the year 2000. It bugged me so much one day that I fixed it, within weeks the car developed all sorts of problems (hey, it’s a Vauxhall ) and eventually the engine died a terminal death when driving from Manchester to Hull. 
 

To this very day said friend still jokingly blames me for triggering some sort of built-in obsolescence by telling it the real date

[Beerzerker]

14 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

A friend of mine had a Vauxhall Corsa some years ago that was convinced it was permanently the year 2000. It bugged me so much one day that I fixed it, within weeks the car developed all sorts of problems (hey, it’s a Vauxhall ) and eventually the engine died a terminal death when driving from Manchester to Hull. 
 

To this very day said friend still jokingly blames me for triggering some sort of built-in obsolescence by telling it the real date

So it died from it.

 

[Bitter]

6 hours ago, brwainer said:

I’m not familiar with the encapsulation of CANBUS packets but I can believe it. i wouldn’t be surprised if every module that does have a clock gets synchronized to the nav unit though. 

Most modules have no concept of time or miles, at most they'll have the vehicle VIN to prevent stolen parts swapping. Modules with miles would usually be the PCM/TCM, gauge cluster, maybe the body module if it's the go-between for other modules. Modules with time would usually be the GPS receiver/radio (ota time from FM/weather band), and maybe the airbag or EBCM. Rest of the car is pretty stupid usually, just turns on does it's things and then goes back to sleep mode. The less the other modules do and communicate the better, CANBUS is already built pretty stupid. In some cars the network lay out means that one module faulting out will short the entire low or high speed canbus or both even. No canbus data? Oh well sorry your car is now dead because that's how the steering column module talks to the theft module to enable vehicle start via the PCM enabling the crank relay or fuel injector pulse with a valid key. Think you can just jump some relays to bypass that? Maybe if it's crank disable since dumb computer starts running engine when key on and see's RPM, but if it's fuel injector pulse disable then not a chance. What was I talking about?

[Guest willies leg]

Yeah Honda doesn't do software well.

Come to think of it, pretty much all the auto manufactures don't do it well either, it's more of an afterthought.

[jagdtigger]

22 minutes ago, Bitter said:

at most they'll have the vehicle VIN to prevent stolen parts swapping

Not even that, im not keeping up-to-date anymore but i dont think it changed a lot since. Some bigger components like the ECU, maybe BCM, and the gearbox control unit has the VIN, the rest has a simple burned in unique ID. The car continuously verifies this against the known ID's and if its not listed it simply wont "talk" to it.

[Bitter]

37 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Not even that, im not keeping up-to-date anymore but i dont think it changed a lot since. Some bigger components like the ECU, maybe BCM, and the gearbox control unit has the VIN, the rest has a simple burned in unique ID. The car continuously verifies this against the known ID's and if its not listed it simply wont "talk" to it.

Depends on the vehicle. Some do, some don't, some use VIN, some serial numbers. Usually it's euro cars for some reason that are the most difficult.

[Dominik W]

This seems to have affected my car as well. They better fix this because it really annoys me when I know the time is 12:00 but what I see is 5:28. It really confuses me lol.

[Salv8 (sam)]

10 hours ago, RejZoR said:

It's funny when there was a massive panic about year 2000 and whole lot of nothing happened and here is casual year 2022 and shit is breaking lol.

tbh we are used to shit breaking and huge vulnerability's now.

and even then people thought computers had automatic a.i like control over water and nukes and shit back then.

nowadays it does (it shouldn't) and a more 'Y2K: countdown to chaos' like scenario actually can now happen!

those Y2K spreaders were right, they just got the date wrong!

[SpikeSpiegel]

18 hours ago, williamcll said:

Me when I get in my civic

Meanwhile before the year of 2000

 

[Chiyawa]

My car only has clock, and it is manufacture from year 2013. Yeah, it's basic, just what I wanted. It's not very high tech, just has a Radio and CD player. It's good, still rocking on all the 80's hits.

[vetali]

In case someone comes across this thread in a google search, Honda will not be updating this and the fix will be when it auto corrects on August 17th 2022. You will have to manually set DST henceforth if applicable.