U0158 Moderate Generic / SAE

U0158: Lost Communication With Head Up Display

Network and Communication Lost Communication

What to do

The display projected onto your windscreen has gone dark. Use the speedometer, and the car is entirely safe to drive.

This is the harmless version of a head-up display fault. A blank projection cannot mislead you — the dangerous version is one showing a frozen or wrong speed in your forward view, where you read it without thinking, and that is not what has happened here.

One thing worth separating, because it gets reported as the same problem. If the image is doubled, ghosted or blurred rather than absent, that is the windscreen and not the electronics. Cars with a head-up display need a special screen with a wedge-shaped layer inside it to stop the two reflections separating, and a replacement screen of the wrong type produces exactly that ghosting — with no fault code at all. If the glass has been changed recently, start there.

Mention any recent work on the dashboard, the windscreen, or a camera recalibration. The projector sits deep in the top of the dash and its connector is disturbed by all three.

If the dashboard gauges have stopped working too, the fault is more likely the instrument cluster itself.

What this code means

The head-up display has stopped being heard from. The general reasoning is at U0100, and U0459 explains why a wrong figure in the driver's forward view is worse than the same error on a dial.

Which makes this the safe half of that pair. A projection that has gone dark cannot be believed, because there is nothing there to believe. The driver reads the dials, as they would in any vehicle without one. A frozen or wrong projected speed is the dangerous version, and this is not it.

So there is no urgency. Use the speedometer and treat the display as an absent convenience.

One thing worth separating, because it is regularly reported as this fault and is not electrical at all. A doubled, ghosted or blurred image is the windscreen. These vehicles need glass with a wedge-shaped interlayer so the two reflections coincide, and a replacement screen of the wrong specification produces exactly that ghosting with no code stored whatever. If the complaint is image quality rather than image absence, the glass is the place to start — and if it has been changed recently, that is almost certainly the answer.

Where the fault usually is: the projector sits deep in the dash top, reached by removing the instrument binnacle or the whole upper trim, and its connector is one of the ones disturbed by windscreen replacement, dash rattle chasing and camera recalibration work. A fault dating from any of those is that connector.

And its supply is frequently shared with the instrument cluster, so if the gauges have gone too, U0155 is the better page.

Likely causes

Start here

Less common

Failed power or earth supply to the module · moderate
Failed instrument cluster · specialist
Module not coded to the vehicle · specialist

Symptoms

Components involved

Information, not instruction

CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.

Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.

Community experience

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