hmmm… A couple of days ago, our built-in google map began to not map. I nearly always have google maps on when driving our Lyric and while it burped in 2024 showing my Lyriq in a lake on the infotainment screen rather than the dealer’s covered driveway, it has been behaving since then.
This time, as we were about to leave home to do some errands, I put the destination address in per normal. After leaving our neighborhood, I watched the map start moving essentially uncontrollably and end up somewhere that was nowhere near where we were. Rather than mapping to the destination, I got a frozen map, a spinning circle and an error message indicating the map app was waiting for the destination. I backed out of it and tried again - same issue.
Using CarPlay and Apple Maps, I was able to enter the destination and route. We got there, did what we needed and after about an hour, returned to the car. Tried google map again and the spinning ball and same error sequence and message happened with the google map stuck at the same location it showed when we left home. Once again, CarPlay, my iPhone and Apple Maps to the rescue.
The Lyriq has been sitting in the garage, plugged in, for the last couple of days. I will check it, and google map, tomorrow.
Before this happened, I had been getting the red notification light on the bell in the lower portion of the infotainment screen. Selecting the bell resulted in a display of two items: first, a notice that we had exceeded our data plan (were still on the GM/Cadillac supplied plan) and data speeds might be slowed until the next month. This message includes a day counter that increases by 1 each day. I’ll get back to this in a moment.
Along with the inappropriate data plan notification message, the “Disable lockout” message began appearing. I tried both buttons to either Clear or Disable Lockouts. Neither made a difference. The action buttons would get the red light and the notifications to go away, but the red light and notifications would return the next time the Lyriq was powered up.
The inappropriate data speed notification message had a counter on it that appeared to go up by one each day. We got to 74 which means we crossed past through at least 2 months, more likely 3… but I don’t known what the billing cycle date is… About a week or so ago, before the google map failure started, I again disabled lockouts, the notifications went away per normal, but surprisingly, neither notification returned at the next power up. YAY! SO HAPPY!
But then the map failure happened. Our Lyriq had been stable for a couple of weeks and the notification messages were just a minor irritation. The google map issue could be a safety issue if the map app started malfunctioning at a specific instruction set that could not be communicated to the Lyriq driver. As it is, this is another feature purchased that stopped working properly, requiring yet another dealer intervention to resolve.
The confidence I had in our Lyriq had grown since about June basically got flushed away with this “minor irritation”. And that seems to be representative of our experience since taking delivery in early 2024. I know I should be happy and relieved that I have not had the problems that some others have had. I also know that this means I would be “settling” and I am not willing to do that. Measuring happiness with a stable vehicle because I haven’t had to contact the dealer for 2-4 weeks is not good at all.
Getting more than a couple of weeks of a useful, dependable, Cadillac Lyriq seems to be an impossibility and not representative of any of the General Motors products we’ve owned over the years (including 3 other Cadillacs). I am clinging to still wanting to love the car, and nearly got there except the car’s software, hardware or both threw up a little and the appointment with the dealer is now on 9/23.
