Please can someone explain for me. I find at times it can take a couple of minutes for the car icon to go solid while other commands in the interim e.g. changing charge levels, turning on climate control all work.
Surely the fast that commands work mean the app is connecting to the Tesla servers? If so, why the delay in the car icon going solid white?
This is going to be a long explanation. But if you don't want to know what's going on behind the scenes, just skip to the underlined sentences at the end to possibly fix your problem.
The solid white icon is only for HomeLink and Summon commands. This is because both commands require an active connection to Tesla's websocket server to function. The reason is that the Summon commands require a person to continuously press on the app for it to work. As soon as they stop, the Tesla car will stop. In my app, the continuous press is simulated so that you don't have to do it. But if the app were to close or you lose internet or your phone ran out of batteries, your Tesla will stop immediately from the Summon, because the active connection is severed.
Remote S also waits up to 30 seconds for the connection to happen before sending the command if no active connection is detected. So you're still able to issue the command before a connection is made, and it'll send the command as soon as that connection is established. After 30 seconds, the command expires. And if you issue a HomeLink or Summon command before the 30 seconds expires and before a connection is made, it will overwrite all previous HomeLink/Summon commands - so that you don't end up opening and closing your HomeLink at the same time.
None of the other commands require an active connection. It just sends a command to Tesla's servers and then the connection is over. This is done over https:// server. The websocket server is a wss:// server. These are two different communication methods to Tesla's servers, and most likely two different servers.
Having said that, the solid white comes on within 3 seconds on LTE, and within a second on WiFi for me, even though I'm all the way in the East Coast while Teslas servers are in California.
What I did notice is that at my garage, the WiFi is pretty spotty, so my device keeps flipping between LTE and WiFi. This causes the connection to Tesla to keep disconnecting and reconnecting. When this happens, it might have trouble getting a solid connection to Tesla's server in a timely manner. In that case, I'd just turn off WiFi temporarily when at a weak WiFi location, so that it sticks to LTE. I suspect that the same thing is happening to you.