#Fail: Tesla App Outage Locked Some Owners Out of Their Cars For Hours

Some Tesla owners who depended on the app to unlock their cars were left scrambling for their physical keys yesterday when the app went down for maintenance:

A Tesla spokesperson confirmed to Gizmodo that Tesla’s app was temporarily unavailable on Monday but full functionality was soon restored. Tweets suggest the app was down for around three hours at least.

The company clarified that Tesla owners were still able to access their Model 3 with their physical key fob or key cards, which the company encourages owners to carry in the event that they lose their phone or it dies. Owners were also able to gain access to and start their cars through their mobile devices if they had activated the phone-as-key function, which uses Bluetooth Low Energy to connect with the car and doesn’t rely on the app.

However, Model 3 owners who don’t carry a key fob or key card, and don’t use the phone-as-key feature, and who only use the Tesla in-app lock and unlock feature that requires cell signals will be temporarily screwed when the app fails.

I guess this underlines the fact that using your phone to do stuff is great. But it isn’t perfect. Thus if you own a Tesla, you should always keep your physical keys on your person as something like this is likely to happen again.

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