I love everything about my 2021 Acura RDX but this issue is black mark on Acura. I received an email from Acura on March 2nd and I'm glad the map update is "complimentary" because I have yet to get it to update my maps and I'd really be more upset than I am had I had to purchase it. I still have the 2019.07.08 map version that was on the car when I purchased it in November of 2020.
My first contact was to the dealer I bought the car from and was told that they didn't have anything to do with updates and referred me to "Here Support", which apparently is the company that creates and maintains the map software.
As of today, I have contacted the "Here Customer Support" three times now about this issue. The first time I reached someone, they tried to walk me through the process of getting the software after I repeatedly tried to tell the individual that I had already downloaded it and had it on a flash drive and that all I needed to know was why I was getting an "updating" message but that nothing ever updated. They had no other options for me and said I should contact my dealer. I'm a retired software developer so this really ground my gears. The second time I called, the individual I reached stated that they knew they were having installation issues and that she had the steps necessary to make it work; 1) take the flash drive out of the car, 2) disable Bluetooth in the settings on the car, 3) disable Bluetooth on my phone; 3) open all 4 doors on the vehicle and leave them open for 5 minutes; 4) plug the drive into the car and wait. As you can guess, this also was not successful. The 3rd time I called, I got a very nice lady who said that she had talked to at least 50 other people that day that had been told to do the same steps given above. She said she wished she knew who the person was that had told me to go through those steps because they simply don't work. However, she told me that they had discovered that certain brands of flash drives had security software on them that prevented the software from installing; those brands were SanDisk and PNY and if I went out and bought any other brand and installed the update on it, it would work. This logic kind of made sense to me so I purchased two no name brands of drives, installed the software and spent another two hours of my time plugging each of these in with no success; each one giving me the same message about the software "updating" but no other progress messages from that point. I even left the drive in over night with no success. I have to think that you must at least have the vehicle's power button in the accessory mode or else the flash drive isn't getting any power. But once again, these guys have said that the car doesn't need to be turned on for the update to install which just doesn't make any sense.
I have sent an email directly to Acura Customer Support yesterday about my displeasure with this irritating process but it will probably be awhile before I get any response. I'm going to keep pounding on them until I get an answer because I'm retired and have plenty of time to do it
If Acura isn't going to do something to make this process less painful, I suggest they take maps off the feature list and I'll just keep using Android Auto's Google Maps which are probably better than their map software anyway.
Update 3/7/2022:
After contacting my dealer's service department, I took the car in and they downloaded the map software onto one of their flash drives. I went back home and compared their drive to mine and could see no difference in the name or size of the file on either. The service guy said he was able to update his car by leaving the car running and that it took about an hour to update. So I did the same thing when I got back home and after about an hour, an information icon had popped up on the display. I shut the vehicle off, turned it back on and checked the map version and it had successfully installed the update. Happy to have the update but it's still a terrible process.
