Monday evening saw Tesla’s car app go down not letting some car owners inside their vehicle. The Tesla owners reported that they were locked out of their cars and their app was down for maintenance for several hours.
The main issue here that comes is the fact that apart from the app, there are two other ways that allows Tesla owners to unlock their cars, one of which is using a physical key card or fob and the other being their smartphone equipped to work as a key as long is the vehicle is in Bluetooth range of the smartphone.
Despite this, the app being down led to several owners being locked out of their cars as well.
What is even more shocking is that Tesla Model 3 is the only car that has the phone- as- key function. Once a driver’s Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE)-paired smartphone is in range of the car other models like Tesla Model X or Tesla Model S should be able to unlock the car along with Tesla Model 3 owners.
The frustration of several Tesla drivers was voiced on Twitter and a company spokesperson confirmed the unavailability of the car’s app for a brief time period along with stating that soon it was restored.
What is important to note here is that the phone- as- key function works exclusive of the in- app lock and unlock feature.
The latter requires cellular connectivity as well. The app outage did not affect key fobs, cards, and Bluetooth connectivity for many Tesla owners as per their response.
The reason why it did not work for some users is simple- they were logged out of their car apps at the time. In case of Model S or X drivers without a physical keycard or fob it is not possible to unlock the car if they are already logged out the app as well, since the phone- as- a key function is not available for those two models.
