Radio audio is intermittently flaky. Sometimes it is difficult to get selections to display or choices to play. Also the radio may not turn on immediately and I have to try several times.

I have been preoccupied with other electrical problems with the radio and infocenter illumination so this problem has not been a focus of my complaints to the Honda dealer service department. I think these problems are probably related electrical issues. I will bring this up at my next service appointment in a week!

I was on a cross-country trip when all of a sudden I hear my wife say "hello?" What's up I ask, You called me she said. No I didn't I reply. Turns out the CAR called her. I'd been having some random issues with beeps coming from the touchscreen panel and the screen flashing around for the past 30 minutes or so and was planning to investigate at the next rest stop, but I guess the "random" touchscreen happened to select phone and my home number and called my wife! The Honda dealer in Sparks, NV helpfully told me I could come back in a week and they'd look at the car, which by this time had a completely blank touchscreen and was unusable. I said I can't wait a week to have you look at the car is there anything else I can do? She said sometimes resetting the computer helps. She told me to read the manual. So I sat in the parking lot and read the manual to reset the computer. I'm a computer engineer so I was able to successfully reset the computer, and it did fix the problem - for a while.

It happens now with increasing frequency - typically within a week or so of a reset, but it's random and comes and goes, so I held off taking it to a dealer until it was locked into the failure mode. It seems to be related to having a cell phone connected either vie Bluetooth or a cable. I disabled the car's Bluetooth for a while and the problem did not occur until I re-enabled it.

Anyway, I asked my local Honda dealer about it and was told there is no problem and seemed surprised when I told him about all the internet chatter on the problem, including lawsuits in multiple states.

I found Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) #19-066 dated July 2019 on the Honda website which is a firmware update for the Center Screen. I asked the dealer about it and he told me my car didn't qualify, even though the TSB clearly referred to my make and model (All VINs for EX, EX-L and Touring CR-Vs model years 17, 18 & 19). He said "ask Honda America who make the car, nothing I can do."

So I called Honda America who said that because I had not brought the car in for this problem, my car would not be flagged as needing it, and therefore no dealer would know to install it. Very poor management of a known problem in my opinion, but there you have it! Apparently, they would rather face multiple lawsuits than update firmware!!!!????!!!!

If anybody has had TSB 19-066 installed I'd dearly love to hear whether or not it fixes the problem as otherwise it will cost me at least $198 (minimum dealer charge to look at a car in San Jose, CA) to find out for myself.

Update from Jul 1, 2021: Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) 19-066 is a firmware upgrade to the center display console.

The fix has been around for a long time but dealers either: 1) don't know about it; or 2) know about it but don't install it because customer VIN numbers don't match the TSB - a requirement under Honda policy.

As I suspected, the problem is related to Apple CarPlay - so if you have an iPhone and use it in the car, you WILL encounter this problem unless you have the firmware update.

So why don't CR-Vs needing the fix (model years 2017 - 2019, trim EX, EX-L and Touring, and "All VINs") match the TSB? In my personal experience and from what I see on the internet, the problem is the "All VINs" disposition. VINs are usually expressed as a range of VINs - say 100 to 350 as a simple example - and a simple algebraic calculation of the customer VIN against the range will determine whether or not your vehicle is in the range. However, an "All VINs" range seems to stump the matching algorithm such that NOBODY's VIN matches. This has the effect of denying customers access to a known fix to a known problem. I have written Honda America about this and received a nice reply saying they'll send my complaint on to various departments.

I was fortunate in getting my local dealer to install the TSB once I showed it to him and pointed out that my car was clearly a match. I applaud his common sense.