Intermittent behaviour on new 2021 RX450h: voice recognition and haptic feedback (and other things...)

PDM · April 10, 2021

Hi All,

On my third Lexus (first RX) and the first time I have started to engage in these forums. It's nice to meet you all, but unfortunately I'm writing because of some issues...

I thought I had solved most of my problems (due to a corrupt memory stick... as I added to this thread yesterday... and the problem is certainly less frequent at present than it was last week...

...but it seems that on starting the car this morning the problems came back. The voice command system was not recognising the usb stick ("play album <name>" and the car responded, "no media selected") even though it was playing an mp3 from the stick at the time.... I waited in case it was reindexing/syncing the disk but the problem persisted even after 5mins. In addition, even though I have the haptic feedback on the track pad set to "force=0", the pad was shaking as my finger moved around. A reboot of the infotainment (holding down the on/off switch for a few seconds) and the voice commands started working again, and the haptic feedback was off as expected. Last week I was also experiencing some intermittent behaviour when changing the map view (cycling between north up, vehicle up, and the angled view) but have not seen these issues again.

I have this logged with customer relations and the dealer but I wanted to see if anyone had come across these issues. I wonder of these are software bugs (that everyone might see) or a hardware problem specific to my RX. I don't want the dealer to rip out and change the infotainment system if this is a common software bug that needs fixing rather than a specific hardware fault.

So far, my total list of issues (after 2 weeks ownership) are:

1. car plays mp3s in alphabetical, rather than disc number/track number order (work around by renaming mp3s as "%disknumber.%tracknumber %title".

2. haptic feedback turning on when it is set to off (goes away on infotainment reboot)

3. cycling through different map views and returning to the angled/3D view, the car is not always pointing up on the map (goes away on infotainmemt on reboot)

4. Been trying for about 10 days to activate the wifi subscription.. still not managed... (many people seem to have issues with this)

5. Rattle in driver's door (steadily getting worse)

6. Intermittent behaviour in voice command system (goes away on infotainment reboot)

I'm booked in on Tuesday at the dealer...

Any ideas, folks? After 8 very happy years with the brand to date, I'm feeling pretty unlucky at present.

Thanks,

Paul

Spacewagon52 · April 10, 2021

31 minutes ago, PDM said:

Hi All,

On my third Lexus (first RX) and the first time I have started to engage in these forums. It's nice to meet you all, but unfortunately I'm writing because of some issues...

I thought I had solved most of my problems (due to a corrupt memory stick... as I added to this thread yesterday... and the problem is certainly less frequent at present than it was last week...

...but it seems that on starting the car this morning the problems came back. The voice command system was not recognising the usb stick ("play album <name>" and the car responded, "no media selected") even though it was playing an mp3 from the stick at the time.... I waited in case it was reindexing/syncing the disk but the problem persisted even after 5mins. In addition, even though I have the haptic feedback on the track pad set to "force=0", the pad was shaking as my finger moved around. A reboot of the infotainment (holding down the on/off switch for a few seconds) and the voice commands started working again, and the haptic feedback was off as expected. Last week I was also experiencing some intermittent behaviour when changing the map view (cycling between north up, vehicle up, and the angled view) but have not seen these issues again.

I have this logged with customer relations and the dealer but I wanted to see if anyone had come across these issues. I wonder of these are software bugs (that everyone might see) or a hardware problem specific to my RX. I don't want the dealer to rip out and change the infotainment system if this is a common software bug that needs fixing rather than a specific hardware fault.

So far, my total list of issues (after 2 weeks ownership) are:

1. car plays mp3s in alphabetical, rather than disc number/track number order (work around by renaming mp3s as "%disknumber.%tracknumber %title".

2. haptic feedback turning on when it is set to off (goes away on infotainment reboot)

3. cycling through different map views and returning to the angled/3D view, the car is not always pointing up on the map (goes away on infotainmemt on reboot)

4. Been trying for about 10 days to activate the wifi subscription.. still not managed... (many people seem to have issues with this)

5. Rattle in driver's door (steadily getting worse)

6. Intermittent behaviour in voice command system (goes away on infotainment reboot)

I'm booked in on Tuesday at the dealer...

Any ideas, folks? After 8 very happy years with the brand to date, I'm feeling pretty unlucky at present.

Thanks,

Paul

Disappointing. Please let us know what the dealer comes back with.

Habu · April 10, 2021

Let us know how you get on. I’ve got a new RX Takumi and, occasionally, I get a rattle in the drivers door. I can’t put it down to particular outside or inside temperature and there’s nothing but a microfibre cloth in the door bin. When it does occur it doesn’t stay on for too long - thankfully.

PDM · April 15, 2021

Hi All,

Just an update. A software patch was applied today that should have fixed the track pad issue of haptic feedback turning on when switched off in the settings. Working so far. It may have addressed some of the other issues too, but it possibly also created another one 😞 . I'm now on a Feb 21 release. Rather than bore you with my speculation here, I'll post back when I have more concrete info. As you would expect(!) the rattle was not present when they test drove it. That one may take a while to find....

Lexus also think they know why I cannot activate my WIFI subscription. It seems my car was registered a couple of days before the free wifi offer ended, but I only picked up the car (and tried to setup the wifi) a couple of days after it ended. It seems part of the Lexus/Orange backend may think I should have free wifi, and part of it thinks I need to pay.... and it's falling over with some conflict.

Cheers,

Paul

PDM · April 23, 2021

Hi All,

Thought I'd post an update and see if anyone else has been seeing these issues. I'm now suffering from many many bugs in the infotainment. The trackpad haptic feedback turning on when it was set to off has been fixed, I believe, but voice commands for playing music off the usb stick (play album XXXX) are now almost totally broken. The exact same stick works perfectly, with voice commands, in my 2015 NX....

Yesterday's bug was that when I select a radio station from the list of available DAB stations, the car plays a different station to the one selected. This seems to be an "off by 2 error" in that what gets played is the station 2 entries up in the list from the one that I click on.

Have any other RX owners (with the newer touch screen infotainment) seen these issues? I'm trying to help Lexus get to the bottom of this as fast as possible so gathering as much info as I can.

Many thanks,

Paul

PDM · May 8, 2021

Peter,

The rattle in my drivers door turned out to be the door bin itself.... not something in the door bin, but I assume the hinge mechanism where the bin extends. It's fixed now I think. Might give you a clue where to look/get the dealer to look for your rattle.

Paul

Fatts · May 8, 2021

On 4/23/2021 at 9:50 AM, PDM said:

Hi All,

Thought I'd post an update and see if anyone else has been seeing these issues. I'm now suffering from many many bugs in the infotainment. The trackpad haptic feedback turning on when it was set to off has been fixed, I believe, but voice commands for playing music off the usb stick (play album XXXX) are now almost totally broken. The exact same stick works perfectly, with voice commands, in my 2015 NX....

Yesterday's bug was that when I select a radio station from the list of available DAB stations, the car plays a different station to the one selected. This seems to be an "off by 2 error" in that what gets played is the station 2 entries up in the list from the one that I click on.

Have any other RX owners (with the newer touch screen infotainment) seen these issues? I'm trying to help Lexus get to the bottom of this as fast as possible so gathering as much info as I can.

Many thanks,

Paul

Looks like a lot of the issues you’ve described may just isolated and not general, to the 2020/2021 model. I have the same car RX Takumi picked up new las December and have none of those experiences other than initial wifi set up niggles. A Lexus technician eventually assisted me with the WiFi set up and it has been perfect ever since.
Not really sure what advice could be given, which dealership are you dealing with? As it may be worth approaching others especially with technology related issues . Hope you find a lasting solution to help you enjoy your car.

PDM · May 8, 2021

Hi All, thanks Banji for the reply.

Sorry for my long reply but some of this may be useful - particularly with what I have found in the Feb 21 software update to the multimedia system...

1. car plays mp3s in alphabetical, rather than disc number/track number order (work around by renaming mp3s as "%disknumber.%tracknumber %title".

This is acknowledged by Lexus. Let's hope for a fix where the system reads mp3 track number id3 tags.... I can only encourage people who are annoyed by this to raise it with their dealer and with customer service. I can't imagine this is more than 1 afternoon work for a programmer.

2. trackpad haptic feedback turning on when it is set to off (goes away on infotainment reboot)

This was acknowledged by Lexus and fixed in the Feb 2021 software update. If you usually leave the trackpad haptic feedback on, you won't have noticed this of course. I turn it off and hence noticed it. Anyway, it's fixed in the February update.

3. cycling through different map views and returning to the angled/3D view, the car is not always pointing up on the map (goes away on infotainmemt on reboot)

I have not noticed this occurring again since the dealer updated me to the Feb 2021 software.

4. Been trying for about 10 days to activate the wifi subscription.. still not managed... (many people seem to have issues with this)

This is now resolved.... my vehicle had an additional problem where it was registered in the free-wifi trial period, but I picked it up a day after the trial ended, hence various things on lexus link were completed before and after the free wifi cut off. This was a "special case" for my car and is now fixed - free wifi enabled for 6 months. Required some back end work in the online system by Lexus. Bad timing/luck on my part.

5. Rattle in driver's door (steadily getting worse)

This is fixed now I believe as of a trip to the dealer yesterday. It seems the rattle was in the extendable drivers door bin mechanism. I also had a rattle where the dashboard meets the a pillar just below the speaker. This was also fixed yesterday.

6. Intermittent behaviour in voice command system (goes away on infotainment reboot)

This got much much worse since the Feb 2021 update was applied and now no longer works at all. The voice commands do work for everything apart from "play album" etc for accessing memory stick music. The same usb stick works totally fine in my 2015 NX, works fine in a 2015 IS, fine in a new UX and does not work in a 2021 NX and another 2021 RX I have tried it in at the dealer. It may well be that if you have not got the Feb 21 software update yet (which I got because it fixed the track pad issue), you may not have seen this issue with voice command music playback. Banji - do you ever use voice commands for playing music off a usb stick? If so, be cautious about being updated to the Feb 21 software at your next service... This issue is not totally confirmed yet, and I will post an update as soon as I have more concrete information.

Thanks everyone for reafing and I hope this is useful. The main word of caution is that the Feb 21 update seems to have totally broken the usb music voice commands.... at least for me. Lexus are investigating. We still have to totally rule out the issue being my music/stick, but the fact that it works on my wife's 2015 NX, and the problem has gone from intermittent to always on the RX since the Feb 21 update was installed, suggests to me something has happened recently in the code base to break this.

Thanks,

Paul

RXJasonRX · May 8, 2021

hello

just a thought. Have you trained the voice recognition by going through the tutorial on the screen? This significantly improves voice command system performance.

PDM · May 8, 2021

Hi Jason,

Thanks for noting this - however I think the voice training has been removed in the later versions of the head unit software. I seem to remember we had this on our CT, but it's not on the new RX (just checked the manual and can't see any mention of it. Interestingly I think it is still present on the American systems...

Problem for me seems to be that the voice command system is not even indexing the album/track/artist names on the usb disk.

Paul

Rob62 · July 26, 2021

On 5/8/2021 at 9:08 PM, PDM said:

6. Intermittent behaviour in voice command system (goes away on infotainment reboot)

This got much much worse since the Feb 2021 update was applied and now no longer works at all. The voice commands do work for everything apart from "play album" etc for accessing memory stick music. The same usb stick works totally fine in my 2015 NX, works fine in a 2015 IS, fine in a new UX and does not work in a 2021 NX and another 2021 RX I have tried it in at the dealer. It may well be that if you have not got the Feb 21 software update yet (which I got because it fixed the track pad issue), you may not have seen this issue with voice command music playback. Banji - do you ever use voice commands for playing music off a usb stick? If so, be cautious about being updated to the Feb 21 software at your next service... This issue is not totally confirmed yet, and I will post an update as soon as I have more concrete information.

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This may sound stupid but I have had the same issue with my 2020 RX. However I have found that if the USB is plugged into the top USB socket under the armrest then voice command seems to work but if connected to the bottom one then it doesn't!

It does not make sense but so far working for me.

Las Palmas · July 26, 2021

On 5/9/2021 at 12:08 AM, PDM said:

Hi Jason,

Thanks for noting this - however I think the voice training has been removed in the later versions of the head unit software. I seem to remember we had this on our CT, but it's not on the new RX (just checked the manual and can't see any mention of it. Interestingly I think it is still present on the American systems...

Problem for me seems to be that the voice command system is not even indexing the album/track/artist names on the usb disk.

Paul

Does a CT have voice recognition?

Would not use it anyway.

Have music on the phone and when sitting alone in the car listening to high resolution I use line-in, but when driving around Bluetooth transmission of the music is good enough. Phones these days have so much memory that my 200 Gb music is not even using half of it.

Lexus have great hardware but the people making their software are lightyears behind competition. Have the latest OEM Lexus navigation installed and the stupid thing cannot tell the shortest way and sometimes even want to direct against traffic in a one way street. No problem the island is so small that navigation is not needed.

royoftherovers · July 26, 2021

Which island, John?

PDM · July 27, 2021

On 7/26/2021 at 11:03 AM, Rob62 said:

Ho Robert,

Thanks for this. I have tried swapping around and it makes no difference for me unfortunately. I have had it work very occasionally (but then stop completely when I add more music to the disk). I suspect (unless your issue is a different underlying issue to mine) that in your case, when you plugged it in to the top socket the stars were aligned for you and it just worked! But when you plugged into the bottom is didn't. If you add more music, does it continue to work for you in the top socket and fail in the lower one.

I any case, it would be great if you can report a bug to customer services at cr@lexus.co.uk and we all have a better chance of these things being fixed.

Thanks for the input.

Paul

PDM · July 27, 2021

23 hours ago, Las Palmas said:

Does a CT have voice recognition?

Would not use it anyway.

Have music on the phone and when sitting alone in the car listening to high resolution I use line-in, but when driving around Bluetooth transmission of the music is good enough. Phones these days have so much memory that my 200 Gb music is not even using half of it.

Lexus have great hardware but the people making their software are lightyears behind competition. Have the latest OEM Lexus navigation installed and the stupid thing cannot tell the shortest way and sometimes even want to direct against traffic in a one way street. No problem the island is so small that navigation is not needed.

Yes, the CT has voice recognition (at least is does with the ML system). It's pretty good when it works!

The current s/w seems to be quite buggy unfortunately.

Paul

PDM · July 27, 2021

On 7/26/2021 at 11:03 AM, Rob62 said:

Robert - can I just check - I assume the mp3s will play from both ports, but the voice commands only seem to work from one port? Is that right?

Thanks,

Paul

Las Palmas · July 27, 2021

50 minutes ago, PDM said:

Yes, the CT has voice recognition (at least is does with the ML system). It's pretty good when it works!

The current s/w seems to be quite buggy unfortunately.

Paul

I am happy that Bluetooth is functioning most of the time without problems. When it will not start I have to reinstall the phone (such never happened with VW) but not too much of a problem.

That they cannot make a navigations system that function is really not something that can call it luxury.

Lexus is hopeless with their software. Good that the hardware is OK.

ML audio is the best I have seen as factory installed audio, we are very happy with it; playing high resolution .flac files make the car a concert hall. Better than anything heard in MB and more or less the same as the B&O in the extremely expensive Audi's; also the latest audio in Porsche's is pretty good.

PDM · July 27, 2021

3 hours ago, Las Palmas said:

I am happy that Bluetooth is functioning most of the time without problems. When it will not start I have to reinstall the phone (such never happened with VW) but not too much of a problem.

That they cannot make a navigations system that function is really not something that can call it luxury.

Lexus is hopeless with their software. Good that the hardware is OK.

ML audio is the best I have seen as factory installed audio, we are very happy with it; playing high resolution .flac files make the car a concert hall. Better than anything heard in MB and more or less the same as the B&O in the extremely expensive Audi's; also the latest audio in Porsche's is pretty good.

Hi John,

On the very occasional time that my phone does not auto connect to Bluetooth, a reboot of the infotainment (5s hold of the power on button on the stereo) seems to fix it and the phone will connect as the system comes back up. Have you tried that?

I agree that the ML sounds excellent.

Paul

Las Palmas · July 27, 2021

1 hour ago, PDM said:

Hi John,

On the very occasional time that my phone does not auto connect to bluetooth, a reboot of the infotainment (5s hold of the power on button on the stereo) seems to fix it and the phone will connect as the system comes back up. Have you tried that?

I agree that the ML sounds excellent.

Paul

No, never tried that. Will next time it happen.

Thank you.

Rob62 · August 3, 2021

On 7/27/2021 at 2:41 PM, PDM said:

Robert - can I just check - I assume the mp3s will play from both ports, but the voice commands only seem to work from one port? Is that right?

Thanks,

Paul

Hi Paul,

Yes. The music plays regardless of which port I use but the voice control seems to work only in the top one.

Or as you said, the stars must have been aligned!

I will try and add more music and plug back in to see if it continues working.

PDM · August 3, 2021

6 minutes ago, Rob62 said:

Hi Paul,

Yes. The music plays regardless of which port I use but the voice control seems to work only in the top one.

Or as you said, the stars must have been aligned!

I will try and add more music and plug back in to see if it continues working.

Thanks, Robert.

Paul

Rob62 · August 10, 2021

Just by way of an update, I took out the USB and added more music. When plugged back in the voice recognition worked straight away but it would not recognise any of the new music. The music was there and could be accessed manually from the screen!

Perhaps the RX voice control was still working off an old database file which is why it did not recognise the new music. So I decided to erase the USB and add all the music back in the hope that the RX would rebuild a new database file.

All the music is now available manually but when I try the voice control I get the good old "Media device not selected"!

Maybe it needs a long time to rebuild the database for voice recognition as I have 34Gb of music on the USB.

I will update if anything changes..........

PDM · August 10, 2021

2 hours ago, Rob62 said:

Just by way of an update, I took out the USB and added more music. When plugged back in the voice recognition worked straight away but it would not recognise any of the new music. The music was there and could be accessed manually from the screen!

Perhaps the RX voice control was still working off an old database file which is why it did not recognise the new music. So I decided to erase the USB and add all the music back in the hope that the RX would rebuild a new database file.

All the music is now available manually but when I try the voice control I get the good old "Media device not selected"!

Maybe it needs a long time to rebuild the database for voice recognition as I have 34Gb of music on the USB.

I will update if anything changes..........

Rob,

Thanks for the update. If you havent already, please let customer relations know at cr@lexus.co.uk

My head unit it being swapped in my vehicle on friday so that the current one can go to lexus for diagnosis.

The more people who raise this issue formally to customer relations, the faster it will get fixed.

Cheers,

Paul

PDM · August 10, 2021

2 hours ago, Rob62 said:

Just by way of an update, I took out the USB and added more music. When plugged back in the voice recognition worked straight away but it would not recognise any of the new music. The music was there and could be accessed manually from the screen!

Perhaps the RX voice control was still working off an old database file which is why it did not recognise the new music. So I decided to erase the USB and add all the music back in the hope that the RX would rebuild a new database file.

All the music is now available manually but when I try the voice control I get the good old "Media device not selected"!

Maybe it needs a long time to rebuild the database for voice recognition as I have 34Gb of music on the USB.

I will update if anything changes..........

Rob,

I should have also said - you may find that at some point it could randomly start to work. For me, occasionally a disk will get indexed into the voice commands after a few days. Sometimes never.

I had also thought it could simply be that it takes time to perform the indexing, but on my wife's 2015 NX it does it in a minute or two, and before it has indexed, if you try to use the voice commands it says " voice commands not available at this time" I think. Then a minute later it all works.

I hope at some point your car will reindex this for you so it works again before we (hopefully) get a software fix.

Cheers,

Paul

Rob62 · August 10, 2021

4 hours ago, PDM said:

Rob,

I should have also said - you may find that at some point it could randomly start to work. For me, occasionally a disk will get indexed into the voice commands after a few days. Sometimes never.

I had also thought it could simply be that it takes time to perform the indexing, but on my wife's 2015 NX it does it in a minute or two, and before it has indexed, if you try to use the voice commands it says " voice commands not available at this time" I think. Then a minute later it all works.

I hope at some point your car will reindex this for you so it works again before we (hopefully) get a software fix.

Cheers,

Paul

Thanks Paul.

I found this previously where it doesn't work for a week or so and then suddenly it works fine. Once it works it just continues working.

I will update you in a week or two!

The other issue I have (it is a known issue and there is nothing that can be done at the moment), I have had to rename all the songs with their number in the name. Something like "001 - The Beatles - Something". This is the only way that they play in the order they should. However because of this one cannot use voice recognition to play a specific song, unless you know the whole name including numbers!

If the songs are left with their own names then they all play alphabetically. I never had this issue in my 2013 GS.

ROB