Nuance: “Tesla owners can no longer enter the car due to a glitch in the application servers” – picture and sound – news

In recent days, it has been widely read on news sites: Tesla owners can no longer ride in their cars due to a failure in the company’s application servers. It is often omitted or only mentioned at the end of articles, however, that no owner is really left out. Or rather, he was not ruled out by the failure of Tesla.

First of all, what happened. On Friday, November 19, Tesla’s global server outage occurred and users received a 500 . errorIn-app notification. As a result, it was not possible to connect and functionality was limited. News reports have spoken that apps can no longer decode cars and that countless owners around the world have been unable to get in their cars. The outage lasted about five hours and Tesla CEO Elon Musk presented … Excuses So. If you read the story like that, it would already sound like something to review on a Twitter account internetofchit. It would probably have happened if this account had been more active.

However, the content of the news articles is not correct and the provision of information is also flawed. Below is an explanation of what was and did not happen, as well as the inaccessibility of the servers.

Car unlocking using the app is not always online

First, it’s important to know that not all Teslas require an internet connection to open them. Models X and S from 2021, 3 and Y support Bluetooth for this. If a mobile app is authorized to connect to one of these cars, it must be opened Not to go online.

However, these cars can still have problems. Although unlocking after obtaining permission from the app is done locally via Bluetooth, a connection to Tesla servers is required to determine this authorization. Not only that, but this permission is also updated periodically. So if a Tesla owner is unlucky enough, that authorization must be updated during a failure and they can no longer get into the car using the phone. That’s exactly test YCombinator user last year for example.

All Teslas have had a solution to this potential connection problem since day one

As mentioned: the newer models use Bluetooth to unlock. The before update However, the X and S models, from the build years through 2020, don’t. If you unlock those cars using the app, it’s done online. But what if there is no mobile coverage or WiFi? Even in the Netherlands, where you always have mobile coverage, you sometimes find yourself in an underground parking garage, for example. In such cases, every Tesla has an alternative to apply: the key card.

The key card is RFID card, ordinary bank card size and light weight. If you slide against the scanner in the shaft between the front and rear doors on the driver’s side, you can unlock the car and you can drive away with it. The Internet is not necessary for this. Every Tesla has two main cards as standard. Another alternative is key fobA more traditional looking device. For many models, this must be purchased separately.

Concerned Tesla owners put themselves in a vulnerable position by relying on them One point of failure

Tesla owners who concluded they couldn’t use their car because of a power outage were more at risk than this alone. If you only use your phone as a Tesla key, you also run the risk of it being locked if other phone issues occur: battery drain, damage, loss, or theft. So, the fact that the shutdown was due to a server failure is just one of a series of weaknesses that car owners chose for themselves. In particular, Teslas owners who do not have a bluetooth switch function should know better.

In fairness, it should be noted: in the course of researching this article, this editor did not find an official Tesla letter advising you to always carry the key card with you.

If Tesla owners had their key card with them, the malfunction would only ensure that they couldn’t operate the climate control remotely, for example, or summoned Use the job. Such a turmoil is news of a completely different arrangement than what is being published now.

It simply cannot be expected from service providers that the service never fails. Its inevitability has been proven by Tesla, but also deadAnd google browserAnd Amazon even in DNS Providers, ensuring that entire websites turn black in the event of a failure. However, this malfunction should never mean you can no longer ride in your own car, which is not something Tesla was guilty of.