Tesla owners get locked out of their cars when app fails

After paying through your nose to buy the world’s most high tech car, imagine getting locked out of your Tesla only because your app failed. Tesla owners recently found out that they were held to ransom by their app that refused to start their car. Drivers use the Tesla app as a key to unlock and start their vehicles. Twitter exploded with complaints by owners who hollered in helplessness after receiving an error message on the smartphone app that prevented them from connecting to their automobiles on social media.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, directly reacted to one complaint from a driver in South Korea, writing on Twitter, “Checking.”

Mr Musk later stated that the app would be re-launched. “Should be coming back online now. Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic. Apologies, we will take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.” Mr Musk tweeted.

Should be coming back online now. Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic.

Apologies, we will take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2021

According to the outage tracking website DownDetector, about 500 users reported a problem on the app at 16:40 ET (21:40 GMT) on Friday. After five hours, there were more than 60 reports of a mistake.

However, Stuart Masson, publisher of The Car Expert website, told the BBC that the app is not the only way to access the cars. “There will be a secondary mechanism to get in or out of the car beyond the app, the difficulty will come for drivers if they are not carrying it,” he said.

“Technology makes things convenient but relies on a server working 100% of the time. It’s the same as leaving the house without my credit cards, expecting to pay for things with my smartphone. If we are reliant on one mechanism all the time, we can be caught out.”

David Bailey, a Professor at Birmingham Business School who owns a Tesla, expressed a similar opinion.

“To some extent, Tesla is a bit of a victim of its own success,” he spoke to BBC. “It encourages its customers to use the cutting edge technology it creates and sometimes that will go wrong.

“Although of course you can use a key to open the car too, the natural instinct of many Tesla drivers, who are buying one of the most high tech models in the market, is to rely on the technology.”

It makes you wonder if technology is truly helping us or creating more problems in real life.