3/23 new software phone key issues

[D2Duehren]

Since the last software update, my wife and I, with both of our Tesla Ys have been having persistent phone key problems. Our phones will unlock the car, but we are forced to use our valet card to drive. Very annoying. We've had one car 2 years, another 4 months.

We have both reset our phones, reset the cars, and can remove and reinstall our phones, but it only works for a day or two, then it's back to using the key card.

 

[Wayne Rowland]

Have the same issue. Started on Tuesday, March 6 on trip back from Florida. Have use key card.

 

[Ostrichsak]

We took delivery of our new MYLR very recently. We had the new few days off so we spent some time driving it around. Never once did we experience an issue of it not unlocking or recognizing my phone. The following few days the wife took it to her daily commute into work and was having issues w/the vehicle recognizing her phone. We assumed that it was her phone since we had just had good luck with it previously and assumed the variable was my phone was present and now it was only her phone.

We stopped at the Tesla SC whenever we were nearby and a friendly person came out to assist us in disconnecting and reconnecting her phone again. In this moment it seemed to work fine. Performance over the next couple of days were mixed, however. I saw this thread and it reminded me that we also installed an update on the vehicle at some point during this time period. I'm not entirely sure but it could have been about the same time we started having issues.

Another thing we're noticing and it may or may not be related is that the car will give us notifications that we have a new text message and then will read a text message from literally years ago. It's really weird and has happened with both of our phones. Not sure if this is all firmware related.

I'll monitor this thread and report back if we continue having issues.

 

[Cigar Man]

Add me to the list. I've had my Model Y for 2 1/2 years and only once in awhile did I have any access problems with my phone - perhaps every 2-3 months - when I had to use my card.

But, the past few days it has gotten much worse. Today, while out running errands, I had to use the card four times. I also noticed it was not locking once I walked away after parking it.

Awhile ago, I rebooted the car (not just the touchscreen) and that did nothing. Next, I rebooted my phone. It worked, but wonder if the problem will kick back in soon. My wife and I just returned from a 4,700 mile trip to California and Colorado - and I am most certainly happy nothing serious happened on that trip.

Anyone know of any solutions?

EDIT: I just noticed my last software update was February 22 - just before I left on the trip. From what I see, my car picked up a bug with the last update.

 

[Ostrichsak]

Just this week my wife had another couple of situations occur where she went into work and we got the notification that doors had not been locked and another where it wouldn't let her into the car or start it w/o the key card. This is intermittent and we're not sure if it's her phone or the vehicle. It seems that others who had good luck with these previously are reporting similar issues so my guess is that it's the car/firmware that's the issue.

 

[SWIPE]

Last week I got a weird green error on the bottom that said I may not be able to drive the car when I stop as the “phone (key) was left behind.”. Yet the phone was on its charging area.
Never ever saw that before in one year of driving.
I had turned Bluetooth off the day before, otherwise nothing new.
Luckily it went away a few minutes later as I drove to work.
I always carry the key card with me too.

Maybe the new software update will fix this “linking” issue?

 

[Pianewman]

The "date" of your software update isn't relevant. Please post your software update numbers.

 

[howardnj]

Since the last software update, my wife and I, with both of our Tesla Ys have been having persistent phone key problems. Our phones will unlock the car, but we are forced to use our valet card to drive. Very annoying. We've had one car 2 years, another 4 months.

We have both reset our phones, reset the cars, and can remove and reinstall our phones, but it only works for a day or two, then it's back to using the key card.

When I had a similar problem a few weeks ago I reset my Network Settings on my IPhone and the problem cleared.
Go to
Settings
General
Transfer or reset phone
Reset
Reset Network Settings

Good luck

 

[Cigar Man]

When I had a similar problem a few weeks ago I reset my Network Settings on my IPhone and the problem cleared.
Go to
Settings
General
Transfer or reset phone
Reset
Reset Network Settings

Good luck

Hmmm, I’m an Android user, but I too have ceased having problems. I did nothing than reboot my phone (which I do fairly often) and wonder if somehow I had accidentally changed settings on my Samsung but corrected that change when I rebooted.

 

[Ryujin27]

I have had endless problems for the last several weeks with phone as a key. My 2023 MYLR wouldn't unlock as I approached, stopped locking when I walked away, and in order for me to be able to drive with the phone as a key, I would have to go into the Tesla app and hit the "Start" button under Controls, as this would enable Keyless Driving. This morning in an attempt to solve the issue, I uninstalled the Tesla app from my phone (Samsung Galaxy Fold 3), went into the bluetooth settings, unpaired the phone from the Tesla MYLR, disabled Bluetooth, reenabled Bluetooth and redownload the Tesla app, then went to the MYLR, deleted my phone as a key, and removed the phone from the paired device list (it was the only one).

From there I repaired my phone and the MYLR via Bluetooth. Then I tried to add my phone as a key. The process is a failure every time. In the Tesla app, the phone receives an error message saying it can't connect and then says "Rety". I was able to finally get a different response, if I place the phone directly on the area where you normally place the key card. Then it connects, however, it still gets the same error message in the app, even though the car says the key has been set up. Once I took the phone off the NFC area and put it on the charger, it's font on the key screen turned from black to grey and when I pushed the brake to try to shift into Reverse, I got the message that I needed to use a keycard to drive.

Up until a couple weeks ago, my phone as a key worked decently well. I say decently well because it would always unlock the driver door and let me drive, and locked the doors when I walk away, save for an update in January that was resolved. The part that has never worked for me is that the non-driver doors and the hatchback will not open unless I manually go into the app and unlock the care even if I am physically touching the car with my phone.

 

[Goobers]

I’ve been getting similar issues… and find that turning BT off and then back on fixes it… for a while.

Could be a timeout issue somewhere.

Up until a couple weeks ago, my phone as a key worked decently well. I say decently well because it would always unlock the driver door and let me drive, and locked the doors when I walk away, save for an update in January that was resolved. The part that has never worked for me is that the non-driver doors and the hatchback will not open unless I manually go into the app and unlock the care even if I am physically touching the car with my phone.

The sounds like you turned on a specific option.

Model Y Owner's Manual | Tesla

Learn how to open, close and lock your vehicle's doors.

www.tesla.com

Scroll down to near the bottom for “Driver Door Unlock Mode.”

 

[Madsen203]

I’ll report I only have issue of phone is in back pocket. As of current, works 100% of time if in front pocket. Tesla app open in background. Best of luck finding your solution. iPhone XR.

 

[Ryujin27]

There was no option that I changed, it simply stopped working, which it had done before, back in January after the Tesla software update also. This however, when attempting to readd my phone as a key, it doesn't successfully complete. My phone will pair with the car and play music and take calls through the Tesla. So there is something wrong with Tesla's functionality with phone as a key specifically. I have only had my MYLR since 12/1/2022, so I'm only dealing with 4 months of experience here, but phone as a key, based on that is very unreliable.

The sounds like you turned on a specific option.

Thanks, this helps, so changing this option will all all doors to unlock as I approach, assuming I can ever use my phone as a key again. I appreciate that.

 

[Ryujin27]

Nobody seems to have a solution for this issue and most don't even want to acknowledge that it is an issue. My Tesla app is in a perpetual state of "Set Up Phone Key" after I uninstalled it and reinstalled it and added the phone as a key to the car. The phone is completely up to date - Samsung Fold 3, and Bluetooth works in all use cases except Phone as a Key.

 

[Ostrichsak]

Update: my wife and I replaced our Pixel 5 phones with Pixel 7 phones the other day. One thing I noticed is that the newer devices come with Bluetooth 5.2 whereas the previous Pixel 5 had the Bluetooth 5.0 protocol. It seems as though the primary difference between those to iterative protocol versions is in speed so I'm not sure that it has the potential to yield better performance but, maybe.

I believe this was working with much better stability previously which points to a firmware issue on Tesla's end. Since we just bought our new MY a few days before the latest update was installed I'm unable to speak from personal experience. I just know that both of our phones worked flawlessly the few days leading up to that update and then we began having issues. I don't have a large enough data pool to say with certainty though that ours would have worked fine with any length of time prior to that.

One other thing I noticed while setting up our new devices is that Android devices have several "Adaptive" features where the devices try to use machine learning in an attempt to preserve battery life, mostly. It does this by disabling certain aspects it thinks you're not using based on monitoring your activities. I tend to disable most of this because I'm the type who would rather have my phone work as expected consistently than get erratic battery optimization at the cost of erratic phone function. I do tend to go in on an app-by-app basis to restrict or allow background and mobile data usage.

All of that said, I discovered a setting I hadn't previously been aware of called "Adaptive Connectivity" which is similar to what I described but as it pertains to your connectivity. Now, it says "Network & Internet" but its very possible that this is all connectivity pertaining to wireless radios to include NFC and Bluetooth. This could potentially be seeing the continual connection between the phone and the Tesla as unnecessary and "sleeping" it behind the scenes which would effectively sever the connection.

This is just a theory at this point as we've only had the phone a day or two at this point and I just discovered this setting last night. There's a chance that our phones could begin being more reliable (fingers crossed) and if that's the case I wouldn't have a definitive scientific reason to point to due to the number of variables introduced to our specific test case. It could be the newer BT version, could be the newer devices for another reason or it could be the disabling of that Adaptive Connectivity feature I mentioned.

Either way, I hope this starts working more reliably for all of us for whatever reason.

 

[Ostrichsak]

Update: my wife and I replaced our Pixel 5 phones with Pixel 7 phones the other day. One thing I noticed is that the newer devices come with Bluetooth 5.2 whereas the previous Pixel 5 had the Bluetooth 5.0 protocol. It seems as though the primary difference between those to iterative protocol versions is in speed so I'm not sure that it has the potential to yield better performance but, maybe.

I believe this was working with much better stability previously which points to a firmware issue on Tesla's end. Since we just bought our new MY a few days before the latest update was installed I'm unable to speak from personal experience. I just know that both of our phones worked flawlessly the few days leading up to that update and then we began having issues. I don't have a large enough data pool to say with certainty though that ours would have worked fine with any length of time prior to that.

One other thing I noticed while setting up our new devices is that Android devices have several "Adaptive" features where the devices try to use machine learning in an attempt to preserve battery life, mostly. It does this by disabling certain aspects it thinks you're not using based on monitoring your activities. I tend to disable most of this because I'm the type who would rather have my phone work as expected consistently than get erratic battery optimization at the cost of erratic phone function. I do tend to go in on an app-by-app basis to restrict or allow background and mobile data usage.

All of that said, I discovered a setting I hadn't previously been aware of called "Adaptive Connectivity" which is similar to what I described but as it pertains to your connectivity. Now, it says "Network & Internet" but its very possible that this is all connectivity pertaining to wireless radios to include NFC and Bluetooth. This could potentially be seeing the continual connection between the phone and the Tesla as unnecessary and "sleeping" it behind the scenes which would effectively sever the connection.

This is just a theory at this point as we've only had the phone a day or two at this point and I just discovered this setting last night. There's a chance that our phones could begin being more reliable (fingers crossed) and if that's the case I wouldn't have a definitive scientific reason to point to due to the number of variables introduced to our specific test case. It could be the newer BT version, could be the newer devices for another reason or it could be the disabling of that Adaptive Connectivity feature I mentioned.

Either way, I hope this starts working more reliably for all of us for whatever reason.

I had another thought on the Bluetooth topic: Early on, my phone worked flawlessly for the few days after we took delivery. My wife and I were together as we both had some time off from work so we didn't notice any PaaK issues. Once she returned to work and was commuting on her own is when we started noticing things not working.

At first, I suspected her phone or her specific pair with the vehicle. I immediately went to what was causing it and one of the first variables I arrived on was the fact that she uses an older Samsung Galaxy 42mm smartwatch that she loves. I use a smartwatch too but mine is newer and uses a newer BT protocol. Her's is the older BT 4.2 protocol which handled communicating with multiple devices much more poorly than newer BT protocols. Being as the newer BT is backwards compatible it may mean that it sort of forces her phone to communicate in an older BT protocol which could potentially be causing the handshake issue we were seeing. I suspected that at the time we began seeing issues and I'm not entirely sure that isn't the continued cause of our issues.

Just a data point to add as, even if it's a Tesla bug, it could play a part in the issues we're all seeing. I'd be curious if anyone else ever connects to older BT protocol devices. Either way, if this worked w/o issue before then it's a definite bug introduced by Tesla in how their firmware handles such things that should be easily corrected if they knew about the issue and could narrow down the causation since the previous firmware version.

 

[Ryujin27]

I was able to get my phone as a key reset up today however it took uninstalling the Tesla app, unpairing the devices, forgetting the phone in the Bluetooth in the car, and then 3 restarts on both devices (phone and car) in order for it to work. After the 2nd restart I was ready to give up, because I had tried to pair the car and the phone for bluetooth, and the car saw the phone but the phone threw and error that said "Can't connect to Tesla Model Y". I tried many times, and then just figured I'd restart both the car and the phone, once the phone rebooted, it instantly asked for permissions on Bluetooth and connected. After that, the set up for phone as key worked. We'll how long it lasts ...

Thanks for the insights.

 

[LeeH21]

Had same issue last night. Went to dinner and then could not get back in car. Turning Bluetooth off and on was no help. Treid several times to reconnect and always got the error on the app. After trying everything seperatly with no result - disconnected, reinstalled, and rebooted EVERYTHING then tried - it connected. We'll see how long it lasts - fingers crossed. 2019 Model 3 - first issue with this. Galaxy Fold 4.

 

[suyoungman]

We've been havi

Had same issue last night. Went to dinner and then could not get back in car. Turning Bluetooth off and on was no help. Treid several times to reconnect and always got the error on the app. After trying everything seperatly with no result - disconnected, reinstalled, and rebooted EVERYTHING then tried - it connected. We'll see how long it lasts - fingers crossed. 2019 Model 3 - first issue with this. Galaxy Fold 4.

Been having same issue with our cars; 2 X's and a S, and our devices are Zfold3 and Zfold 4. Restarting the phones have always worked for us.

 

[turnbowm]

We also ran into phone key problems after the latest (2023.6.11) update. Had to remove and reinstall Tesla app on both iPhones and do the 2-button reboot (car). Things have been fine since.