[flax]

My 2017 Mazda cx5 refuses to not play the radio. There is no "off" for the audio, you have to choose a source. I use my phone, via bluetooth. But sometimes, for unknown reasons, the car does not connect with the phone. It then falls back to the last source chosen before BT, which is radio. Okay, so I created a flash drive with an mp3 of 30 seconds of silence, played that, then went back to bluetooth. This failback strategy worked one time, then it also failed to recognize the flash drive, and failed back to radio, again.

I will never want to listen to the radio. I would love to remove radio as an option. I would love to have no fallback as an option. But no, the car just f-n loves the radio and will not stop trying to force it on me.

Oh yeah, and the radio is buggy and could get stuck if I tune into the wrong station. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60333765.

This car definitely tries too hard to be smarter than it is. There's all sorts of exceptions that keep the doors from auto-locking when I walk away, and I would turn all of them off, but I can't. Walk away too fast? doesn't lock. Open the rear? won't auto lock. Car just doesn't feel like it? doesn't auto-lock.

And god forbid you hit the unlock button when the passenger has already unlocked it. Anxious beeps from the car for several solid seconds. That is not an error condition!

Performance and reliability have been great though. They just need to stop trying to be smart. They're not.

[victor9000]

Long pressing the source button turns off audio and keeps it from turning on automatically on the next start. This at least lets you explicitly decide when you want music.

[PlunderBunny]

Re: radio always turning on, my LDV eDeliver 9 is the same but worse - sometimes the radio comes on immediately, and sometimes it takes about 20 seconds. You can’t preemptively mute it in the latter case. There’s lots of other weird quirks with the radio (e.g. going into reverse switches to a low-volume radio if you were previously playing music or a podcast in CarPlay). It’s as-if almost any change in the audio switches the radio on. Other than that, it’s a great van!

[b112]

Ah yes, Mazda. The car company which won't even give you a fuse box diagram, and instead says to contact the dealer if a fuse blows.

https://www.cx90forum.com/threads/fuse-box-diagram.172/

Something foul and malign is afoot at Mazda these days.

[xethos]

While not dramatically better, just a few posts down[0] someone paid for the "Welcome to Mazda" service manuals/program for $30 and shared the fuse box schematics

[0] https://www.cx90forum.com/posts/2706/

[b112]

From the perspective of Mazda being malign, it's not the tiniest bit better.

[viraptor]

MG has exactly the same issue. Default to radio for some weird reason and no real "off" without disabling the whole system.

[noisy_boy]

Use the volume button as "functional on/off" for the radio.

[bluGill]

I have tried that (not on a Mazda). The radio is still there playing whatever and if there is a valid station the now playing song has to be shown on the other useful screen. On I got the system to default to radio off, but that means I can't control my heated seats w=ithout turning the system on - there are several seconds of noise between getting the system on and it responding tol the volumn knob.

[rustcleaner]

I think making manufacturers pay you back the whole car in a recall, or half the car and you keep it, for this kind of crappy design, would be a good thing (especially since I am sure the firmware is code signed lolol). Oh no more Matsuda or GM because they went bankrupt from fines and restitution? Cry me a river, sucks to suck cutting corners lol.