16 ms·
Tesla suffers network outage disabling vehicles’ mobile app
- dk1138 6y agoArticle not blocked by paywall: https://electrek.co/2020/09/23/tesla-suffers-complete-network-outage-internal-systems-and-connectivity-features-down/ https://electrek.co/2020/09/23/tesla-suffers-complete-networ...
- fsflover 6y agoAnd the corresponding HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24568236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24568236
- junkrat002 6y agoDisabling js also works
- gmaster1440 6y agohttps://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/auth.tesla.com?proto=https https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/auth.tesla.com?proto=htt...
- mikece 6y agoI'm rather surprised that the Tesla app can't operate in offline mode directly with the car. Due to the nature of a car I would think it's a forgone conclusion that the owner might drive to where the app can't connect with the cloud but should still be an authenticated and trusted issuer of digital commands to the car. Time to add some use cases to the acceptance testing script...
- nacs 6y agoAt least there's still a physical key to work in offline mode. My Nest thermostats on the other hand require Google connectivity to change the temperature even when I'm connected to the home wifi..
- pwinnski 6y agoThat's staggering to learn! I'm glad I've avoided Nest now.
- darkwizard42 6y agoYou can still use it physically, just it won't work over network...which seems absolutely reasonable (its a smart device that has a backup non-smart function)
- nacs 6y agoIt seems reasonable to not be able to control a local device from your local network without calling home to Google first?
- ssully 6y agoThis isn't a defense, but Nest products worked this way before Google bought them. A lot of smart home stuff works this way, I am guessing because it's easier to setup, manage and troubleshoot. Unfortunately it makes buying this stuff a pain because you have to research who owns what and what kind of control you have.
- niklasd 6y agoI just buyed an air cleaner, and amongst other I looked at the one by Xioami. To operate, requires you to install an app which tracks you locations and sends it to Xiaomi servers. This really troubled me. I ended up buying one which can be operated without an app, which there seems to be fewer and fewer.
- fomine3 6y agoXiaomi is connected-oriented brand. Choosing from other brands is better to avoid connectivity.
- 6y ago
- slg 6y agoThere is definitely some functionality that works when offline. Phones are the primary key for Model 3 and that works fine when unlocking the car in subterranean garages that have no reception.
- nacs 6y agoIsn’t there also a touch-less entry key fob?
- bdamm 6y agoFor Model S and X there is, for Model 3 and Model Y there is a contactless key card that normally sits in the driver's wallet. If the phone key is unavailable, the contactless card is the other option, but unlike the phone it isn't a walk-up-and-use-the-car, it's more like walk-up-and-tag-in.
- andrewmunsell 6y agoYou can buy a traditional fob for the 3 & Y too
- trca 6y agoEven with my phone in Airplane mode (WiFi / Cellular disabled), and only Bluetooth on, I'm still able to get into my Model 3. Internet connection is not required by the car, or the phone, to be able to unlock the car, drive, or operate the frunk / trunk.
- dkonofalski 6y agoIt is required if your app hasn't downloaded a new cert. If you're still able to get in via Bluetooth, it's only because the cert on your phone is still valid. Once that cert expires, you'll be locked out.
- lance_t 6y agoModel S and X don't have the same bluetooth antennas to do the proximity triangulation is my understanding and rely on the network connection from Car -> Tesla and App -> Tesla to unlock and start so may be different for S and X drivers?
- xeromal 6y agoActually the S and X were not affected all by these since they have dedicated key fobs. No internet or bluetooth is involved.
- kerng 6y agoThis is unlikely correct, because in many parking garages there is no Internet connectivity and hence this issue would have been heard of many many years ago.
- dkonofalski 6y agoIt's partially correct. The app will still work without internet connectivity if the cert that the app downloaded is still valid. If you close the app and re-open, the app tries to download another cert and would fail without internet connectivity. At that point, you would need to use a backup keycard.
- cma 6y agoThey were supposed to have a Robotaxi network running this year, I wonder how it would have handled it? All cars pull over and wait on further instructions? Return to home base all at once?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- taf2 6y agoSeems to be resolved
- gmaster1440 6y agoDoes this load for you? https://auth.tesla.com/ https://auth.tesla.com/
- daphneokeefe 6y agoNope
- bdamm 6y agoNot resolved for me. I'm getting the "Car is no longer in your Tesla account" error.
- api 6y agoWhy can't the app just talk directly to the car? Oh yeah, because we broke the Internet with NAT.
- mey 6y agoThat has nothing to do with NAT.
- function_seven 6y agoWhy can't the app just talk directly to the car? No Internet needed at all[1]. NAT shouldn't even come into it. Local Wi-Fi or Bluetooth should work. [1] Well, I suppose if you're not near the car, Internet would be needed. Does the car have a publicly reachable IP?
- stu2b50 6y agoI mean, it does talk to the car with Bluetooth. You can unlock it without internet connectivity, just locally via Bluetooth.
- bdamm 6y agoThe car does not have a publicly reachable IP. It is using message bus (Kafka pub-sub, I believe) to bridge phone and car. Tesla does publish an API for anyone that wants to control a car (uses OAUTH for authorization.) Other than being unable to revoke tokens from within the car, it works great and solves the fleet management problem. (It is possible to simply entirely disable remote access from within the car, so this is a partial solution that Tesla does already.)
- trca 6y agoThe app does talk directly to the car, when you're in range of Bluetooth. That's how the phone key functions, all handoff and communications are done via bluetooth, not the internet when the devices are in range. Even with my phone in airplane mode (WiFi/Cellular disabled), and only Bluetooth on, I'm still able to unlock/lock the car, drive, and open the frunk/trunk.
- 6y ago
- ChuckMcM 6y agoI'm curious if this was in retaliation for them helping arrest a russian malware hacker.[1] [1] https://electrek.co/2020/08/27/tesla-fbi-prevent-ransomware-hack-gigafactory-nevada/ https://electrek.co/2020/08/27/tesla-fbi-prevent-ransomware-...
- mtviewdave 6y agoI just tried this with my Tesla. The app cannot connect over the internet to the car, but unlocking and starting the car still works, as does using the app to open the charge port and the front trunk. The Tesla app uses both internet and bluetooth to connect to the car. I would expect that even with no internet connectivity, bluetooth-related functionality would continue to work, and at least today, that is the case. EDIT: After seeing dawnerd's comment, I just re-opened the app (didn't kill it, it was in background), and now the entry for my car is gone, which means all the bluetooth functionality I mentioned above no longer works. That's one hell of a bug.
- dawnerd 6y agoDon't close the app - I just tried and now bluetooth doesn't even work.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- brianwawok 6y agoHopefully the keycard would? I do carry it in my wallet just in case...
- agent86 6y agoThe keycard is NFC[1] and should absolutely work without any connectivity. [1] https://gist.github.com/darconeous/2cd2de11148e3a75685940158bddf933 https://gist.github.com/darconeous/2cd2de11148e3a75685940158...
- Nextgrid 6y agoI am happy and impressed that they are using standard, secure cryptography without any intentional obfuscation. Typically car "security" relies on obscure, obfuscated protocols that rarely use strong cryptography and the entire "security" is provided by obscurity (which doesn't last long).
- bobthepanda 6y agoHonestly, the prospect of having parts of my car have to depend on American network reliability is a huge issue for me. I've had friends stuck outside their Zipcars because they can no longer unlock it in the parking lot of a trailhead.
- tensor 6y agoIt doesn't. There is a backup keycard you are supposed to have on you somewhere.
- bobthepanda 6y agoIf this is a common enough problem, then maybe the issue is the fact that they offer a marginally more convenient but network-limited option that lulls people into a false sense of security.
- filoleg 6y ago>If this is a common enough problem It isn't a common enough problem. Over my 1 year of ownership with almost daily driving, I only had to use the card twice. Once when setting up the car for the first time, the second time when I was dealing with valet parking (for obvious reasons). It is basically a kind of a failsafe solution, just in case your phone dies or something like that. And mind you, i don't live somewhere where my car gets constant network connection. In fact, the underground garage of my apt building where I park the car has zero network or cell coverage. It all works just fine. You don't need to have active internet connection to unlock the car with your phone, it just needs bluetooth and an unexpired certificate from Tesla servers, which syncs occasionally in the background. But until that cert expires, it works perfectly fine with no internet. Never had such a situation happen to me before, despite me opening the Tesla mobile app only once in forever.
- w0m 6y agoThe phone still worked fine to unlock/drive the car over direct bluetooth to your phone as long as you don't sign out of the app; you just couldn't access the extended functionality or log back in manually (see: activate a new phone) during the outage. I drove all over during the outage without a functional issue.
- judge2020 6y agoQuite a few things just died: https://downdetector.com/ https://downdetector.com/ https://downdetector.com/status/rocket-league/ https://downdetector.com/status/rocket-league/
- stevehawk 6y agoRocket League being down (unplanned) is a near weekly occurrence and may just be coincidental.
- frakkingcylons 6y agoRocket League just went free to play today, so it’s a bit different.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- RLdown 6y agoRocket league became free today. Many are downloading it right now.
- throwaway5752 6y agoFeels like regional outages. Doesn't bode well about 45 days out from this election.
- jlv2 6y agoFrom the article: “If you’re unable to unlock your car and drive, that’s a problem,” he said. That's a bogus comment hovering on FUD. In no general usage do you need app access to the car via the Internet in order to unlock or drive. My wife just drove one of our cars during the outage and didn't even known it was ongoing. I would assume that even with the Model 3 using the phone as a key, it just uses LE Bluetooth -- not Internet access via the app.
- mrguyorama 6y agoAs the poster right above you mentioned, the local bluetooth functions don't work unless the app recently connected to the Tesla servers. Are there teslas without physical "key" cards of fobs?
- the_duke 6y agoNo. S/X have fobs and 3/Y have key cards. I'd bet that a good number of owners don't always carry them around though.
- martythemaniak 6y agoPretty silly not to. You can always break or lose your phone.
- root_axis 6y agoor even more likely: the battery dies.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoWell, you could also loose your keys. A lot of newer tech products seem intended to move us to a place where we don't need to carry separate wallets/keys alongside our phones. That's a reasonable goal. Look at how popular credit card phone cases are!
- 6y ago
- encom 6y agoMost of this thread is material for @internetofshit[1]. Hot take: I would rather walk than use my phone to unlock my car, not to mention having my car connected to the internet in the first place. If you're affected by this, you have no one but yourself to blame. This really is the clowniest timeline. [1]https://twitter.com/internetofshit https://twitter.com/internetofshit
- martythemaniak 6y agoThe cars have keys, the apps are for added convenience.
- jimbob45 6y agoTesla has beaten everyone to the electric car mass market and that’s great. However, every report I see contains failures of the cars like these such that the car itself is poorly designed. What’s stopping Toyota or Isuzu from making a me-too version of the Tesla? What competitive advantage does Tesla have beyond being first to the market?
- martythemaniak 6y agoYou can watch yesterday's battery day event for a hint: https://youtu.be/l6T9xIeZTds?t=6028 https://youtu.be/l6T9xIeZTds?t=6028
- mrtksn 6y agoToyota doesn’t have a celebrity CEO that can push through unreasonable product tied to a promise of having a good product in the feature. Tesla’s competitive advantage is Elon Musk. Try selling crappy and expensive product with a promise of using the money and expertise to build a better one next time. Yesterday’s battery day was also a promise to do great things in the future. Autopilot is something that Tesla sells with the promise of one day becoming self-driving car. Who else can do that? The others need to put their own money to bet on that and need to deliver good value products with reasonable quality for the money asked.
- avalys 6y agoSpeaking as a car nut and long-time Tesla skeptic who eventually broke down and bought a Model 3 - the car is not poorly designed, it's just not perfect, and any imperfection gets amplified by the company's high profile and the army of people that seem to want to tear them down.
- dk1138 6y agoSame. Bought a 3 at the beginning of August. Is it perfect? No. Is it the best driving experience I've ever had? Bar none. I sometimes take it out just to drive in the evenings. I plug it into my house and have a full tank every day. The power on demand is incredible. Is there room for improvement? Yes. Do I feel like I overpaid? Not in the slightest. My last new car was a Mazda 3 and I feel as though the 5k difference in cost is negligible to the gas savings.
- ChrisClark 6y agoI don't see how this is a problem. My Tesla comes with a key (card) so even if the app might fail, I'll always be able to drive perfectly fine. The card is in my wallet, I just hold my wallet up to the door and get in. Just one of a variety of conveniences is currently down.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoBut why does the app need internet access in the first place to unlock a car over bluetooth?
- cavisne 6y agoif your phone gets stolen you can remove the phone as a key, this info needs to be synced back from tesla. It doesn't need internet access to unlock it, but it needs periodic internet access to sync this info.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoOkay, thanks, that makes a bit more sense, but also still the wrong way to handle this. It should work like SSH where the car accepts certain (digital) keys that can be revoked...
- mrich 6y agoHow are you going to revoke keys without internet access?
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoI was thinking the car would contain the set of acceptable keys. If you get a new phone, the car accepts the new phone's key. If you loose that phone, you set the car to stop accepting that key. Am I grossly misunderstanding something?
- 6y ago
- phone8675309 6y agoI hope people keep this in mind when you purchase "DLC" features for your car - features that you can unlock after purchase like this: https://www.cars.com/articles/bmw-software-updates-will-enable-owners-to-add-options-after-purchase-423688/ https://www.cars.com/articles/bmw-software-updates-will-enab...
- xeromal 6y agoDLC can be problematic but it can also be a benefit. An example with Tesla is that the Model 3 recently received an option to improve its off the line acceleration after Tesla monitored enough usage to see if there were any motor and battery issues in their new model 3. You'd have to wait to get a new car in the old world.
- hellotomyrars 6y agoIt has been very problematic in the case of Tesla, as they have stripped features from resold vehicles. If I bought a car from anyone else, everything I bought the car with will be on the car when I resell it. I'm sure some people will tell me I just need to understand this exciting and innovative new paradigm pioneered by Tesla, but I'd like to think most people can understand how this is anti-consumer behavior and really gross.
- phone8675309 6y agoHow long until Tesla (or some other car maker) goes the EA Games route and requires pre-owned buyers pay fee to "activate" their car after the transfer of ownership?
- phone8675309 6y agoMy previous comment was discussing paid DLC - content that may require an active connection to check authorization for and may disable features if it cannot verify online that you have purchased. Free DLC/software updates that do not have such a check would not be impacted by a loss of network connectivity, but thank you for raising that issue explicitly.
- jedberg 6y agoThere are a lot of people saying, "This isn't a problem, just use the key/keycard". Which is a fair thing to say, but not what Tesla markets. Tesla strongly markets the idea that "all you need is the phone". I know that my in-laws with a Tesla don't carry the key cards. They just use their phone. So either Tesla needs to make a much stronger push for carrying one's key/keycard, or they need to fix the bug that makes the local bluetooth on the app stop working (or both). Maybe some people will learn an important lesson here and start carrying their cards.
- tensor 6y agoThe Tesla sales person told me to keep the keycard in my wallet or somewhere similar.
- Sohcahtoa82 6y agoI don't recall being told that during my test drive or during delivery, but even if they didn't, it seemed like a no-brainer thing to do. A lost, broken, or dead phone is a common failure case. If you know your phone is your key, then you should be considering what your backup will be. Since you already need to be carrying something with your license, it makes sense to keep a key card with it.
- dkonofalski 6y agoWhere does Tesla market the idea that "all you need is the phone"? When you enable the phone as a key, it explicitly tells you to keep your keycard with you as a backup and that the phone is for convenience only. People may primarily use their phone because it's convenient (I definitely do) but that doesn't mean Tesla marketed it that way to me.
- xoa 6y agoAs a practical matter this is reinforced as well by the need to still carry a driver's license. In principle the government could offer a secure digital ID, but it doesn't. Phone payment also isn't at 100%, so a backup credit card also still a good idea. So it's necessary to have the ability to have a card on hand anyway, and at that point it's not much of a stretch to have a couple. Either via a phone case or whole wallet, but it's not like someone can (legally) just take their phone with them when going for a drive. Keeping the keycard along with license and credit card is still fairly minimal (phone digital wallet can consolidate a lot of fat card packs beyond those). I guess the bigger risk is that while I always at least take my wallet with me in the car, I don't always take it with me out of my car while I always have my phone. Might be nice if Tesla had at least an option for some sort of fallback auth mechanism built into the car itself, be it keypad or biometric. The ones in phones are pretty good and are a pretty tiny item on the BOM, in a $35k+ vehicle seems like there should be room for it as an option? Maybe that's overthinking it though, not like regular cars tend to have those either. Sometimes people just lock themselves out with regular keys too and that's that.
- tersers 6y agoI'm surprised by many of the comments in this thread. For those who keep referring back to the keycard/fob access, those are still software solutions and can themselves be susceptible to some bug. Just because it's a backup doesn't mean it's any more reliable than the more "convenient" solution.
- cblconfederate 6y agoCars are just not phones, don't treat them as such
- novok 6y agoTeslas need to work properly offline, and stuff that could be offline like opening the car with your phone needs to keep on working.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/TIJ7s https://archive.is/TIJ7s
- golem14 6y agoCould this co-incide with the latest comcast outage in the bay area ?
- millerm 6y agoIn the end it's the car operator's fault. From the Model 3 manual: CAUTION: Always carry your key card with you in your purse or wallet to use as a backup in case your authenticated phone has a dead battery, or is lost or stolen. Again, sure maybe people will NOT do this, but you cannot blame Tesla for this. Services fail all the time. The phone as a key is just a convenience. This same silly FUD went around earlier this year as well. Nobody got locked out of their car by a failure of Tesla. They locked themselves out of their own cars.
- sschueller 6y agoJust like Tesla aggressively overselling you auto pilot but in the fine print it's you fault if it doesn't work... /s At what point does the manufacturer take some responsibility for their blatant lies to sell cars?
- bdamm 6y agoIt's also posted in the car when the phone key is added. In my case, the handover agent specifically told me to keep my key card with me. It's not really a secret, nor is Tesla saying you should only use your phone as a key and nothing else. Tesla's marketing is that you can use your phone as your key - and they're right, and it's also very convenient. It's not the same thing to say that users should only rely on their phones. They can't anyway, since the car will require the key card when adding a phone.
- sib 6y agoOf course, if you read that literally, none of those things ("phone has a dead battery, or is lost or stolen") happened, and Tesla's screwup still caused a problem. (Note, both my wife and I own Model 3's and I own $TSLA, so I'm no hater... I do carry a card key in my wallet, but I don't carry my wallet 100% of the time that I need to get into my car.)
- nunez 6y agoIt's crazy to me that people won't carry a key card that is literally designed to be placed into a wallet.
- ra7 6y agoDoes Tesla even have a status page for the online services they provide to cars? I couldn't find one.