Tesla Drivers Can’t Unlock Their Cars

Some Tesla drivers say they have been locked out of their cars after an outage struck the car maker's app. A number of drivers report seeing a server-related error on the company's phone app and dozens of owners posted on social media about seeing an error message on the mobile app that was preventing them from connecting to their vehicles.

Tesla's CEO Elon Musk responded personally to one driver, saying he was checking on the issue and promised to take measures to ensure 'this doesn't happen again'

Tesla's mobile app enables owners to use their phone as a key to unlock and start their Tesla vehicles. In case a user doesn't disconnect from the mobile app, they should still be able to use the mobile phone as a key through the Bluetooth connection. 

Outages of Tesla's systems are relatively uncommon, although there have been examples of such outages in the past.

Last year, Tesla experienced a complete outage of both its internal systems and customer-facing servers for several hours. "Technology makes things convenient, but relies on a server working 100% of the time," Stuart Masson, editor of The Car Expert website, told the BBC.  "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."

Professor David Bailey from Birmingham University Business School said, "Tesla is a bit of a victim of its own success.. 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."

Last September, a Tesla driver in California reported that he couldn't get his car into neutral after it shut down in the middle of a highway.

Following the lates incident, Musk said that his company's mobile app was coming back online after a server outage, blaming the issue on network traffic. "Should be coming back online now. Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic."

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