Dealer rang me on Friday to let me know the car is done, and ready for collection. Due to being in Manchester and calling in to Williams, I wasn’t going to be back in time to collect that day. So, collected first thing Saturday morning.
This which follows will sound like I am being critical of the dealer. This isn’t the case. I realise they didn’t supply this car, and they are trying their best to help.
On the journey back, and once back home, I did a few checks.
Firstly, the connectivity via the SIM is now back working. I did have some disconnect issues on the journey, but the SIM is for the ‘3’ network and I don’t know what that coverage is like. My vodafone SIM doesn’t drop out in the same journey, but of course this could be network provider issues.
The dealer said they couldn’t get my account at here.com to work, and that I would have to ring them (here.com) to sort that. I did ask if they had tried my account on another car, or another account on my car. This needs clarification on Monday. However, I am not now sure it is a relevant question as I expect that the vehicle’s VIN or other identifier is transmitted with that account login data. Certainly, when setting up the account from a PC, you have to enter your VIN, then log in from the car to validate. This last step is of course the problem. I suspect that unless the whole process of adding a new vehicle to my here.com account is followed, then it won’t work. Equally we would have to add my vehicle to someone else’s here.com account to fully verify the behaviour.
Just to verify, I can’t get the login to work…
Interestingly this is a new problem – it claims there is no connectivity even though you can clearly see from the top left, that it does have WiFi connectivity. Technical note: I realise that it would still be possible to have WiFi connectivity, but no route out to the internet – however, I can catagorically state that there was internet access from that WiFi network.
This issue was only temporary, and on retrying (only a minute later) we got, as expected…
The dealer tells me they downloaded the maps from their system on to USB, then installed it on my car. Again, to make the point, though I am grateful for this process being done, it is the issue if the system continually telling me there is a new map, and then not letting me deal with it as I should that is the real problem.
Unfortunately, on checking for new maps, the system says…
So, we are back where we started. Checking the version of maps on the car we find…
Which is exactly the same as before it went in. Note that the ‘Last Check’ date is today (just so no-one thinks I have mixed up screen photographs), Last update is showing as 5th November – which is the date that I did the update when I had borrowed the USB stick (with data for my car) from the Service Manager.
Moving on to the new issue of the ambient lighting changing on its own. I have to say though it is slightly annoying, it isn’t a show stopper. I mention it only in case it leads to a solution for other random behaviour. The ambient lighting keeps changing to light blue. In my case this is subtle, as my normal setting is the dark blue. Therefore as the colour change is only small (i.e. not from yellow to light blue) you do start to doubt your eyes.
However, I have taken to recording the changes with a camera so that there can be no doubt. It doesn’t show that well in daylight, but see previous postings for a night time version. It has changed to light blue again…
I am now setting it back to my preferred dark blue…
Some of the other issues it went in for haven’t been fixed, though I do understand the difficulty in dealing with them.
DAB radio, no more can be done. Not dropping out at present, but as shown in a previous post, audio data has been supplied that shows it occuring. Also from a previous post, it should be noticed that it doesn’t just drop out for a few seconds – one time it was for minutes if not tens of minutes whilst travelling.
Stripping the outside edges off the front tyres, dealer doesn’t have a set of tracking gauges. I do, and I have checked the tracking is in spec. I am to get a full four-wheel alignment done.
Vibration, couldn’t do anything about that. It is an odd one, as you can get the car to resonate at certain revs and loads. Interestingly, the diesel loan XF did this too only much worse. Similar rev range (around 1700) and when on load. It really isn’t good for a car of this class to vibrate that badly. Even my passenger mentioned it to me.
Next steps;
email CRC, Speak with Williams, speak with CRC, speak with Stratstone.
I am not really sure I should be wasting any more time on this… it feels like I am on the development team.