Cannot Connect without First Rebooting Car

[Rockster]

In recent weeks (months?) I've been unable to connect to the car using my mobile app unless I reboot the car. After rebooting, I can connect instantly.

I've verified this behavior in a controlled situation where I was standing very near the car, could not connect with either of two phones, rebooted the car, and then could connect. It's definitely not the cell signal nor the phone.

Has anyone else seen this?

(Yes, the car is set to always stay connected.)

When it's 105 degrees, like it is here right now, being unable to connect to the car to turn the HVAC on is frustrating and I don't want to reboot the car every time I exit it so that I can later connect using the phone.

 

[BertL]

Hummm. You have Always Connected checked -- that's what I would have first suggested. Me too, but I have not had a situation yet where I can't connect from my Tesla App and Remote S.

The only perhaps-related oddity I have is my MS goes into a "OFF" state a lot more often since I updated to .19 a month ago (sometimes within 10-15 mins after parking). From a message that pops up on the IC, it requires my putting my foot on the brake before it comes back to life and I can drive, sometimes my CID and/or IC seems to reboot in that process displaying the Tesla T. When you have the connection failure and before you reboot your MS next time, try to put your MS in Drive or Reverse and see if you get that same message as me about your MS being OFF, then see if you can connect with your App before you put your foot on the brake and then after, before rebooting... I've not tried my App in those sequences, but maybe it will help if you have to report the problem to your SC. Good luck.

 

[Rockster]

And now, the cycle has swung the other way: I've been able to connect reliably for the past few days.

So, the original post should be amended to summarize the problem as "My Model S appears to go through cycles, lasting days or weeks, during which the app cannot connect reliably to it. During those troublesome periods, it appears but cannot be ascertained that rebooting the car restores connectivity for some short period of time."

Murphy's Law probably dictates that I'll never know the exact answer but the problem will occur in direct proportion to the inconvenience associated with being unable to connect.

 

[cgiGuy]

Mine did this for a while and I ended up having a bad cellular unit in the car. They replaced it and it has connected with no problem since.

 

[andrewket]

Are you using wifi? If yes, disable it for awhile and see if that makes a difference.

The S and X create a VPN back to the mothership. If you have a firewall on your wifi network, it may be silently terminating idle connections. I think Tesla fixed this by turning on keep alives (the car exchanges traffic every few minutes even when idle), but it's possible I'm wrong or a software release has changed the behavior.

Rebooting the MCI, or turning off/on wifi will cause the connection to be renegotiated and reset the idle timer on the firewall.