Owners of older Mazda vehicles in the Seattle, Washington area have come across a weird issue with their cars: if they tune their radio into the local National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate, KUOW on 94.9 FM, their GPS, backup camera, and infotainment system stops working, and they can’t change the dial back to any other station.
Reports of the Mazda Connect systems in cars from model years 2014 through 2017 malfunctioning after tuning into NPR first cropped up on owner forums and reddit in early February, reports Geekwire, with initial diagnoses suggesting the car’s infotainment software was stuck in a reboot cycle.
One dealer chalked up the issue to the recent switch from 3G to 5G cellular networks, though technically speaking the ranges in which those bands operate should not interfere with car radios or electronics; another dealer suggests the problem is linked to a corrupted “Connectivity Master Unit.” The latter dealer had roughly 10 owners come in to have the issue repaired – swapping out the CMU would run them about US$1,500 each – and a redditor says another dealership has counted 50 cases of this bizarre error.
Mazda itself released a statement early February after the speculation had started to run wild — thankfully, it said it’d figured out the issue, which was tied to the cars’ software and the fact 94.9 FM was an HD Radio signal.
“HD Radio is a digital broadcast format of a radio station signal and enables certain digital information to be pushed down to a receiver, such as artist and song name, and even album art,” explains car magazine The Drive. “That last little bit seems to be the source of Mazda’s problem. In a statement to The Drive, Mazda said the issue began when ‘a radio station in the Seattle area’ accidentally included album art without an image type extension” – e.g. it was missing its .jpeg or .gif suffix – “triggering the system crashes.”
That’s the good news. The bad news is, if Mazda’s right, it’s not as simple a fix as turning off the car’s computer and turning it back again. New parts would be required, and shipping those parts to affected owners may take time. “These customers should contact their local Mazda dealer who can submit a goodwill request to the Mazda Warranty department on their behalf, order the parts, and schedule a free repair when the parts arrive,” the automaker told The Drive.
For its part, 94.9 KUOW says it’s trying to figure out the glitch too, and has given all the info and access it can to Xperi, the company behind the HD Radio tech. In the meantime, it seems the NPR broadcaster has found itself a raft of new listeners—even if they’re not tuning in by choice.
Keyword: Older Mazdas see infotainment bricked by NPR radio station