Driver profiles -- still crazy after all these years

[EVRider-FL]

I've been a Tesla owner for 8+ years. In late 2016, Tesla added the ability to associate driver profiles with key fobs, and eventually, phone keys. Despite how long we've had this feature, it's never worked reliably in my experience.

Here's our current setup:

• My car is a 2023 Model S, which my wife doesn't drive, and her car is a 2023 Model Y, which both of us drive.
• Both cars are associated with my Tesla account, and my wife is set up as an additional driver for the MY only.
• Both my wife and I have cloud profiles that we use in the MY, and I have a local profile that I use in the MS. I also have access to my cloud profile in the MS, but I don't use it there. My wife's cloud profile is not visible in the MS.
• We don't use Easy Entry for any profile.

Here are the issues:

• When I get into my MS, it often selects my cloud profile instead of the local profile, even though the latter was associated with my phone key. I re-associate my local profile with the phone key when this happens (Controls > Locks), but the issue will recur. There's no way for me to remove the cloud profile from my car, and I don't want to use that profile in both the MS and MY because some of the settings are different.
• When I get into my wife's MY, even when my wife isn't with me, sometimes the car selects her profile instead of mine. When I switch back to my profile, I usually get prompted to link my profile with my phone key, which I do. Nevertheless, the problem will recur at some point. Note that we had this problem in my wife's previous car, a 2018 Model 3, even before we started using cloud profiles, so it's not a cloud profile issue.

I know that others are experiencing similar issues. Unlike SpaceX, driver profiles are not rocket science, and it shouldn't be a big deal to make them work correctly 100% of the time. If Tesla provided a real bug reporting system, problems like this could be reported and tracked, but the voice activated bug reports are primarily for Tesla Service, and Service can't fix software issues. It's frustrating that we have no way to get bugs like this addressed, unless one of the people that Elon follows happens to tweet about it.

 

[EVRider-FL]

Am I the only one seeing these issues?

 

[Marty3SR+]

Am I the only one seeing these issues?

Well, probably not, but I never did. In fact, I just discovered the cloud profile today, and it was not set up for me at all, so I would have noticed if it had ever been chosen. I never knew anything about this "feature", and it seems to have only been added fairly recently.

My wife is the main driver for her commute. Up to now, she has been using my account, and her phone is logged in as me. Every once in a while, the car chooses my profile instead of hers, but only when my phone is somewhat close by. She just picks her profile on the screen, and all is OK - no prompts for anything.

So, when I saw that I had two profiles, I played around a bit, and deleted my local profile, thinking the cloud profile was the "correct" one - which it probably is since we only have the one Tesla. Along the way, I saw how I could invite a driver, so I experimented and invited my wife, logged out of her phone's app, and accepted the invitation on her phone, logged in to her own account, and now she too has a cloud profile. And an extra entry for her phone for some reason. I'll see if I have caused any unknown problems by doing all this.

I will admit that the whole process is pretty obscure. I'm pretty technically inclined, so I've been able to figure out how to do things, but I can understand why a lot of people probably don't have a clue about how to add locks and phones and profiles; now, having two profiles will probably confuse a whole new set of people.

 

[EVRider-FL]

Cloud profiles have been there for almost two years, but you have to explicitly create your profile, it doesn’t happen automatically. When you create it, you can choose to migrate settings from an existing profile.

I created my cloud profile last year when I replaced my 2018 Model S with a 2023, just to transfer some of my settings to the new car. I had to create the profile in my wife’s 2018 Model 3, because the 2018 S didn’t support them. Once I got the new car and transferred my settings, I created a new local profile for the S, because I wanted to continue using my cloud profile in my wife’s car (we sometimes rent Model 3s when traveling) and I didn’t want any changes in the S to impact my cloud profile. I deleted my local profile in the 3 because I didn’t need it there anymore, and I still use the cloud profile in my wife’s new Model Y.

Driver profiles are useful, but they would be more useful if they didn’t have the quirks I described earlier.

 

[E90alex]

What settings get transferred that you don’t want when you use cloud profiles on the S? I thought it’s supposed to remember settings for each model of car.

 

[EVRider-FL]

What settings get transferred that you don’t want when you use cloud profiles on the S? I thought it’s supposed to remember settings for each model of car.

I was mostly concerned about having seat/wheel/mirror positions in one car messing with the other, even though in theory this shouldn’t happen across different models. I’m very picky about my seating position. When my Model S switches to my cloud profile by mistake, the seating position is wrong. If the car always selected the correct (local) profile, it wouldn’t be an issue.

 

[ucmndd]

When my Model S switches to my cloud profile by mistake, the seating position is wrong. If the car always selected the correct (local) profile, it wouldn’t be an issue.

Did you fix the seating position in the S and save it to the cloud profile?

We have a 3 and a Y that we both share, both with cloud profiles, and it remembers the correct seating position and settings for each car. Adjusting the seat in one car does not affect the other.

Seems to me your problems are from trying to use both.

The one issue I occasionally notice is with Bluetooth device priority. Even if the right profile is selected based on who opens the car, we have issues sometimes with my phone getting set as the “priority” Bluetooth device on her profile and vice versa. Haven’t found a reliable way to keep that from happening yet.

 

[uscbucsfan]

We just use cloud profiles and have never had an issue.

The seats are different for each Tesla I've had with a Cloud profile.

 

[EVRider-FL]

Did you fix the seating position in the S and save it to the cloud profile?

It took me a while to get the seats in the S where I want them, so I'm reluctant to go through that process again in the cloud profile. I can't "export" the seating position from my local profile. I use the S for road trips, so seating position is particular important.

However, that gives me an idea. It was easier to adjust the seats in my wife's Y, so I could delete my cloud profile in the app, recreate it in the S using the settings from my local profile (including seats etc.), then switch to that profile in the Y and readjust the seats. Once that's all working I can delete the local profile in my S. I'll gave that a shot.

 

[ucmndd]

It took me a while to get the seats in the S where I want them, so I'm reluctant to go through that process again in the cloud profile. I can't "export" the seating position from my local profile. I use the S for road trips, so seating position is particular important.

Here's what I'd try:

Set the S to your local profile and let the seat adjust to your preferred setting.
Switch to the cloud profile and immediately stop the seat from adjusting - if you provide any input to the seat controls it should stop trying to adjust to whatever the stored position is and prompt you to save the new setting. That should more or less "copy over" your local profile setting to the cloud profile.

Then I'd try out the Model Y and go back and forth a few times to make sure it's all the way you want it before you delete the local profile on the S.

 

[EVRider-FL]

Here's what I'd try:

Set the S to your local profile and let the seat adjust to your preferred setting.
Switch to the cloud profile and immediately stop the seat from adjusting - if you provide any input to the seat controls it should stop trying to adjust to whatever the stored position is and prompt you to save the new setting. That should more or less "copy over" your local profile setting to the cloud profile.

Then I'd try out the Model Y and go back and forth a few times to make sure it's all the way you want it before you delete the local profile on the S.

Interesting idea. Will stopping the seat adjustment also stop the mirrors and wheel from moving?

 

[ucmndd]

Interesting idea. Will stopping the seat adjustment also stop the mirrors and wheel from moving?

Hmm, good question. Hadn’t thought of that.

 

[EVRider-FL]

It took me a while to get the seats in the S where I want them, so I'm reluctant to go through that process again in the cloud profile. I can't "export" the seating position from my local profile. I use the S for road trips, so seating position is particular important.

However, that gives me an idea. It was easier to adjust the seats in my wife's Y, so I could delete my cloud profile in the app, recreate it in the S using the settings from my local profile (including seats etc.), then switch to that profile in the Y and readjust the seats. Once that's all working I can delete the local profile in my S. I'll gave that a shot.

I went ahead and did this, and it seemed to work:

1. First, in my wife's Model Y, I created a new temporary local profile using the same settings from my cloud profile, in case something went wrong.
2. In my Model S, I made sure my local profile was selected, then deleted (reset) the cloud profile from the app. Apparently you can do this from the driver profile settings screen in the car too (Reset Tesla Profile).
3. I tried to recreate my cloud profile from the driver profile settings screen in my S, but my account wasn't listed there.
4. I rebooted my car, after which my account appeared on that screen. I set up that profile using the settings from my local profile, then deleted my local profile.
5. In my wife's car, my cloud profile was available and correct, so I deleted the temporary profile I created in step 1.

So at this point my Model S only has one profile for me, which should eliminate the problem of the wrong profile being selected. In my wife's car, I expect that my wife's profile will still be selected incorrectly at times, but there's nothing I can do about that.

The seat/mirror/wheel positions are currently correct in both cars, but I didn't make any adjustments to those positions after recreating my cloud profile, so hopefully nothing will change unexpectedly.