Voice Recognition Issue
 

The other day my 2015 ES 350 stopped reading text messages to me. The car still notifies me I received a text message and who it's from but when I hit the button to read it, it doesn't do anything. Took it to the dealer today but the Service department was closed so all they had was a "technology specialist" to try and help me. After going through the basics which I had already done on my own he had me test the voice recognition by pushing the button the steering wheel. We get a message that says "Voice recognition is initializing and is not available at this time."

The technology specialist was helpful in that he was able to inform me that voice recognition and the text to speech for reading text messages is the same system. He couldn't help me further and advised I make an appointment with Service for them to look at it.

When I got home I decided to do a hard reset of the vehicle by disconnecting the negative terminal of the battery for 10 minutes. I did this but it didn't fix the problem: still not text to speech when receiving text messages and the voice recognition is still initializing and not available. It did however do something because it fixed another minor issue where the audio system wasn't giving me the audible beeps when I made a selection. After doing the hard reset the beeps when making a section returned.

Any clue about the voice recognition/text to speech? Willing to take any suggestions and try anything.

You can force a reboot of the entire audio/infotainment system by pressing and holding the down volume button on the steering wheel for about 20 seconds. I'm not sure whether doing a reboot that way would do anything different from what happened when you disconnected the battery, but it might be worth a try.

I read that somewhere else but I couldn't get it to work. Does the car need to be fully on? Infotainment system on or off? I tried a bunch of different ways and couldn't tell if it was actually doing anything.

I would guess that having the ignition in the Accessory position would be sufficient, but I'm sure that having the engine actually running will work.

When the system is rebooting, you will know that it is. The screen should briefly turn to black, and there should be a message on the screen that says something like "System is getting ready. Do not shut off power". When the rebooting is complete, the screen will return to your normal Home screen.

The car needs to be on.

im a technology specialist at a dealership. ive seen this problem before. heres how to fix it.

1. unpair and delete phones from both ends.
2. disconnect any kind of anything, like a snapshot dongle, usb flash drive, etc.
3. push and hold the volume knob till the screen goes dark.
4. wait about 45 seconds and hit the talk switch.

if that doesnt work, unpair everything and do a hard reset, as in disconnect the battery for about a minute or so, then follow the steps above if not already finished.

only thing about a hard reset is that youll loose your presets as well as previous destinations, you may also have to initialize the windows and sunroof. not always, but sometimes.

you guys know how to initialize the windows and sunroof?

You actually need to press and hold in the audio power button on the console, not the steering wheel. Either way though, it didn't fix my problem. Have an appointment at the dealer Saturday morning for them to hook it up to the diagnostic system and determine what the problem is. Lexus agreed to pay for this and then depending on what the actual problem is may or may not pay to have it fixed.