Honda Clocks Are Stuck 20 Years In The Past And There Isn't A Fix

Honda and Acura owners around the world are reporting that their clocks and calendars are getting stuck at a certain time in the year 2002. 'The spread is impressive, impacting Honda and Acura models as old as 2004 and as new as 2012,' reports Jalopnik. 'There is no fix for the current issue. Honda says it's investigating and if it does not find a fix, the clocks should correct themselves sometime in August.' From the report: As a number of Honda and Acura owners have noted on these forums, their clocks read correctly until what appeared to have been the first time update of 2022. Then, their navigation systems turned into time machines, leaving them behind as they went back to 2002. I asked Honda about the cause of the issue and received this back: 'American Honda is aware of a potential concern related to the clock display on certain older Acura and Honda models equipped with navigation systems. We are currently investigating this issue to determine possible countermeasures and have no additional details to share at this time.' Owners have also reached out and received different responses.

If you have experience coding or troubleshooting software, the possible cause of this time warp probably popped into your head early on. Drive Accord forum user Jacalar went into the navigation system's diagnostic menu on Sunday and discovered that the GPS date was set to May 19, 2002, or exactly 1024 weeks in the past. Global Positioning Systems measure time from an epoch, or a specific starting point used to calculate time. The date is broadcasted including a number representing the week, coded in 10 binary digits. These digits count from 0 to 1023 then roll over on week 1024. GPS weeks first started on January 6, 1980 before first zeroing out on midnight August 21, 1999. It happened again April 6, 2019. The next happens in 2038.

If software isn't coded to account for the rollover, weird stuff can happen, like a calendar going back exactly 1024 weeks. It's impossible to know for sure without being able to look at Honda's programming, but these navigation systems might be programmed so that the start of their week counter is a date 19.6 years in the past, but not in-line with GPS epoch. Owners should be able to turn off the automatic update function and set the date and time manually, but they're finding that the functionality doesn't work right now. Likewise, the clock resets back to the incorrect time every time the car is started.

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