Was out enjoying a hike on a beautiful sunny day yesterday when a massive freak thunder and hail storm struck out of nowhere. Made it safely out of the woods but both my phone and keyfob were dead from water. With both dead, there was no way to enter the car or call roadside assistance. Luckily my daughter was able to find the spare in my house and drive half an hour to drop it off, but this is a pretty big design impediment. Going to travel with a ziploc from now on in case of unexpected showers! On the upside: called Tesla support this morning and someone picked up on the second ring and helped me trouble shoot before confirming that I needed to replace the keyfob (for $165- ouch). I pressed #2 for "vehicle and charging support", then #2 for "information about your car, or parts".
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Always carry a ziplock and share tesla roadside assistance phone number with pals
- Thread starter rikki
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Silicon Desert
Well-Known Member
Wow, really.... I can imagine the phone having water issues, but the fob too? I've dropped that thing in a sink of water accidentally and it still worked. Guess I am lucky. I'm assume you were swimming back to the car
So how did you contact your daughter. Good info. May I suggest another method so she wouldn't have to drive to you. For the future, have her put the app on her phone, so she can open the door remotely and tell the car to let you drive without the fob.
Glad to hear you got out of there without a lightning bolt in one of your orifices
mbp11
Member
Can you not hold the key fob down near the area of the lower driver's door and the falcon wing door and get the door to unlock? Then you put the fob in front of the USB ports and the remote sensor there should be able to recognize the dead fob and allow you to drive the car? I read this on one of the web sites for trouble shooting a dead fob problem
Wow, really.... I can imagine the phone having water issues, but the fob too? I've dropped that thing in a sink of water accidentally and it still worked. Guess I am lucky. I'm assume you were swimming back to the car
So how did you contact your daughter. Good info. May I suggest another method so she wouldn't have to drive to you. For the future, have her put the app on her phone, so she can open the door remotely and tell the car to let you drive without the fob.
Glad to hear you got out of there without a lightning bolt in one of your orifices
The storm was epic - buckets of water and it took a while to finally make it out of the woods. Have had the fob in rice and silicone packets all night to no avail. Such a great idea to put the app on my partner's phone! We used his phone to call my daughter. Very limited cell service but we got the message through. There might have been enough service for the app to work. I'm definitely going to do that. I love this forum almost as much as I love my X!!
I was intrigued by this and just tried it but it didn't work and the tech I spoke with this morning didn't suggest it either. He did suggest putting it in rice, which I've been doing since yesterday. When I have the service appt to replace the fob I'll ask about holding a dead fob by the lower doors and see what they say. If it is a thing, I'll have them show me using my dead fob and I'll report back!! Thanks for the suggestion!!
Silicon Desert
Well-Known Member
Hey at least you were smart enough to take your phone with you, even if it did get damaged. Once I was 2,000 miles from home, got out of the car to go in a restaurant and came out to realize my fob was not with me (yes there is a scenario where this can happen). And you guessed it, I was stupid enough to leave the phone in the car too. So I had to go in the restaurant and use their phone to call my wife in Nevada to tell her to unlock the car and turn on the feature to let me drive it.
As I recall, I only had a couple minutes to get in the car and do it after she activated it. Maybe that has changed, not sure, but the feature is still there and I'm glad I had the app on the wife's phone. The wife said "Did you do something stupid?" To which I had to reply... "Of course not. I never do anything dumb. I was just having sex with an old girlfriend and had to run naked to the car before her boyfriend caught me." !!!!!
Last comment I heard was "yea right. You aren't that lucky. Just admit you messed up." I went to church with wife and kid without bringing along my fob. "Phone app would work just fine" I thought. When we got to church, I decided to leave the phone in the car because "I'm a good boy and I don't want it to ring in church." Well gosh dang it, needless to say wife and kid were pissed at my stupid ass. I ran back inside and begged someone to let me borrow their phone, installed an app that I swore was free, which took ages because of poor cell signal. Between swearing and blaming my own dumbass, all the good of going to church got canceled out. That was a waste.
P.S.: yeah I forgot to sign out of that person's Tesla app. I got yelled at AGAIN for that too. All in all, it was not a good day that day.
P.S.: yeah I forgot to sign out of that person's Tesla app. I got yelled at AGAIN for that too. All in all, it was not a good day that day.
mbp11
Member
I made a mistake, did not read the instructions carefully. Doing a search I found this:
"The locations Tesla recommends are near the antennae and will work with a weak battery but not with a dead battery (or no battery) . There is no RFID chip or similar contrary to the belief of some. You can test this for yourself like I did by removing the battery. You cannot get in to or operate the car with no battery but as @toolmanca1 says, you can use the mobile app."
"The locations Tesla recommends are near the antennae and will work with a weak battery but not with a dead battery (or no battery) . There is no RFID chip or similar contrary to the belief of some. You can test this for yourself like I did by removing the battery. You cannot get in to or operate the car with no battery but as @toolmanca1 says, you can use the mobile app."
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