A flaw in Tesla’s software could have left drivers shut out of their own cars if they were relying solely on the manufacturer’s app for entry.
It’s always immensely frustrating when an app doesn’t work as it should, but just imagine if that ere to be compounded by the frustration of being locked out of your own car. This weekend some Tesla drivers didn’t have to imagine that teeth-grindingly irritating reality, as the official app’s outage meant that you would be locked out of your car if you didn’t take your key with you and relied just on your smartphone instead.
The BBC quoted one Tesla customer as saying “I’m stuck an hour away from home because I normally use my phone to start [my] car.”
Should be coming back online now. Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2021
Apologies, we will take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
The outage apparently lasted at least five hours, but Elon Musk, the company’s eccentric CEO, swiftly came to Twitter to apologise for the fault, give an explanation, and assure customers that Tesla would “take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
While it’s reassuring to hear that action will be taken, it is of course worrying that such a fault could have happened in the first place, especially as Tesla’s software is increasingly being employed for ever more complex tasks, including self-driving.
When working as it should, Tesla’s smartphone unlocking system is a very convenient way of accessing your vehicle as you can simply verify your identity with your device and open the door without needing a physical key. But as system such as these always do have the propensity to go wrong, you’d be very well-advised to keep an alternative means of unlocking your vehicle with you at all times.
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