How to enable additional users to access your Tesla

[jjrandorin]

This question comes up fairy often, so I thought I would provide a write up for why you would want to do this, and how.

PROBLEM STATEMENT / GOAL

I would like to have other users to have access to my Tesla, via the Tesla app, on their own smartphone. How do I do this and is there anything I need to know?

Why yes, there are a few things you would want to know, and you also want to clearly define what it is you are trying to accomplish.

If the goal is to have someone else simply drive your car a couple of times, its easier to simply loan them the keycard. They can drive the car just fine with the keycard, but do not have access to the tesla app for remote access / features. This might be, for example, what you want to do for young drivers in your home, or, a friend / neighbor etc, that you want to loan the car to briefly.

With that out of the way, now that you have determined that what you want is, to give another person access to your car via the tesla app loaded on their own smartphone, there are a couple of different ways you can go about this, along with some information you should know.

EASY WAY

Simply have them download the Tesla app on their phone, then log into it with YOUR user name and password for the Tesla app.

PROs

1. Very easy, can be done quickly
2. The person using your Tesla account has access to everything in the Tesla app, including scheduling service on the vehicle, roadside assistance, AND purchasing any upgrades available for the vehicle.

CONs

1. Less secure, you are sharing your Tesla account credentials with another person. Even if you trust them, sharing account credentials is, in general, not something to make a habit of.
2. Sometimes the app logs out automatically for various reasons, so if you log in FOR them on their phone (thus not sharing your credentials, it is highly likely that, at some point, the app will log them out. Murphy's law means that this will normally happen when it is most inconvenient for both them and you.
3. The person using your tesla account has access to everything in the tesla app, including scheduling service on the vehicle, roadside assistance, AND purchasing any upgrades available for the vehicle.
4. If you have enabled 2 factor authentication for your tesla account, this may be more difficult if (for example) you are reaching out to have a family member / friend load the tesla app to open / start your vehicle and you don't have the device with you that has the authenticator app you used with you.

OK, Reading the above, I don't want to share my tesla account credentials on another device, how can I give them access to the app without doing that?

Now that you have determined that you don't want to log into the tesla app on someone else's phone with your own tesla credentials, see below for the process for enabling them to log into the tesla app and have access to your car with their own tesla account credentials. Pro's and Con's for this approach:

PRO's

1. Not sharing your tesla account credentials with another person.
2. You still control access to whether this person has access to the vehicle or not (can revoke their access at any time if desired).
3. If app logs out, they can simply log back into it, or, even change their password without impacting you / anyone else with vehicle access

CON's

1. More steps to set up, should be done in advance
2. Secondary person needs to create a Tesla account (they may not want "yet another" log in account they have to manage)
3. Secondary accounts do not have access to the exact same things you do in the Tesla account. Specifically: SECONDARY DRIVERS DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO REQUEST ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE, OR PURCHASE UPGRADES THROUGH THE TESLA APP (caps and bold to call attention to this important distinction).

For point 3 above, the options to request roadside assistance, or purchase upgrades simply will not appear when they are logged into the Tesla app and accessing your vehicle.

For roadside assistance, even though they can not request it in the app, they can always CALL roadside assistance (make sure they enter the number in their phone as a contact. For the US this number is 877-798-3752, no idea what it might be in other countries, but find out and give it to them if this applies to you. For scheduling service, they should likely leave that to the primary driver (likely you). For purchasing upgrades, its doubtful you want someone else to be able to do that, so I dont consider that much of an issue.

With that out of the way, how do you do it? Here is what you need to do:

PRE-REQUISITES

1. Have person who you want to give access to, create their own tesla account before starting this. A tesla account can be created easily, without having any tesla products to put in the account. Do this BEFORE attempting to grant access. Once the person you want to give access to creates their own tesla account, have them give you the email address they used when creating that account.

2. Recommendation: Follow the steps below on a computer, instead of a phone. These instructions (below) assume accessing the tesla account from a computer / getting the computer version of the tesla website, not the version that may present on mobile devices.

WORKFLOW

1. Navigate to tesla.com website. Click TESLA ACCOUNT in upper right hand corner. Sign in to your Tesla account
2.Click the MANAGE button under the picture of your car
3. Next to the words CAR ACCESS click the little arrow that signifies there is a drop down menu
4. Click the small link that says ADD DRIVER (its in a somewhat small font)
5. Enter first name, last name and email address of the person you want to grant access to. NOTE: This should match the information used by the person previously to create their tesla account above, in PRE - REQUISITES.
6. Click SAVE
7. Now, have person you just added on the website log out of the tesla app on their phone, wait about 30 seconds to 1 minute, then log back in

They should now see your vehicle in their account. if not, it may take a bit longer for sync time to happen, so have them try logging out and back in again in a few minutes.

To revoke access, remove them as an additional driver by walking through the same workflow but removing them.

OK Thanks, but I really want them to have their own account but have everything in the app like I do, is this possible?

Like many things tesla, there does not seem to be a simple answer to this. I have contacted Tesla myself several times as I wanted my wife to have her own Tesla account, but have access to roadside assistance in the app. Each time, I have been told that they are unable to add her account as an "additional primary account".

Saying that, I believe others have had more luck than I have, in possibly getting this done. You can try contacting Tesla if this is your goal, and if successful in getting a person added as an additional primary driver, to access your vehicle, with their own tesla account, and having the missing service and roadside assistance selections in their app, please post a reply and what you did to accomplish this.


EDIT: As pointed out by @yeahthatguy below, Scheduling service now appears in the secondary users tesla account. Roadside assistance and purchasing upgrades still do not, at least as of 03/29/2021. Post edited to reflect current state.

EDIT 2: Due to tesla website redesign, the click by click instructions in this post may no longer be correct. The general idea is still correct, but you may need to fish around for the settings a bit.

EDIT 3: As of tesla app version 4.0.0-644 (on iOS) which I was able to download on 08/15/2021, secondary users have roadside assistance in the tesla app now!

EDIT 4: As with many things Tesla, the workflow for this has changed. You now add additional users in the Tesla App, vs. the above instructions which were for previous versions of the Tesla Website. If you access the tesla website now, it will direct you to the app for additional users.

Because of the many changes to the workflow, I no longer feel this is "sticky thread" material. The decision making process is the same on whether or not you want to add users, but the number of changes has made this less relevant. I will be removing the "sticky" status from this thread and let it rise or fall on its own.

 

[JCtx]

Great info, but having done this myself, just wanted to add something VERY IMPORTANT to consider, before granting access to anybody thru the Tesla app: Whoever has access to the car thru the Tesla app, can see exactly where the car is at all times (and no, you CANNOT disable that feature). And you'd never know if that person was 'spying' on you. So you might think twice who has access to the car. And if you're 'forced' to give access to another person, and don't want them to know where you are 100% of the time, you might opt to buy a fob for you instead (or just use a card all the time). Oh, and they can also see how fast you're going at any time, lock/unlock the car, open the trunk, and even activate the horn, or stop charging, if they feel 'pranky'. Ha ha. Just wanted to point all of that out. Hope it helps.

 

[yeahthatguy]

OK, Reading the above, I don't want to share my tesla account credentials on another device, how can I give them access to the app without doing that?

Now that you have determined that you don't want to log into the tesla app on someone else's phone with your own tesla credentials, see below for the process for enabling them to log into the tesla app and have access to your car with their own tesla account credentials. Pro's and Con's for this approach:

PRO's

1. Not sharing your tesla account credentials with another person.
2. You still control access to whether this person has access to the vehicle or not (can revoke their access at any time if desired).
3. If app logs out, they can simply log back into it, or, even change their password without impacting you / anyone else with vehicle access

CON's

1. More steps to set up, should be done in advance
2. Secondary person needs to create a Tesla account (they may not want "yet another" log in account they have to manage)
3. Secondary accounts do not have access to the exact same things you do in the Tesla account. Specifically: SECONDARY DRIVERS DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO SCHEDULE SERVICE, REQUEST ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE, OR PURCHASE UPGRADES THROUGH THE TESLA APP (caps and bold to call attention to this important distinction).

For point 3 above, the options to schedule service, request roadside assistance, or purchase upgrades simply will not appear when they are logged into the Tesla app and accessing your vehicle.

For roadside assistance, even though they can not request it in the app, they can always CALL roadside assistance (make sure they enter the number in their phone as a contact. For the US this number is 877-798-3752, no idea what it might be in other countries, but find out and give it to them if this applies to you. For scheduling service, they should likely leave that to the primary driver (likely you). For purchasing upgrades, its doubtful you want someone else to be able to do that, so I dont consider that much of an issue.

With that out of the way, how do you do it? Here is what you need to do:

PRE-REQUISITES

1. Have person who you want to give access to, create their own tesla account before starting this. A tesla account can be created easily, without having any tesla products to put in the account. Do this BEFORE attempting to grant access. Once the person you want to give access to creates their own tesla account, have them give you the email address they used when creating that account.

2. Recommendation: Follow the steps below on a computer, instead of a phone. These instructions (below) assume accessing the tesla account from a computer / getting the computer version of the tesla website, not the version that may present on mobile devices.

WORKFLOW

1. Navigate to tesla.com website. Click TESLA ACCOUNT in upper right hand corner. Sign in to your Tesla account
2.Click the MANAGE button under the picture of your car
3. Next to the words CAR ACCESS click the little arrow that signifies there is a drop down menu
4. Click the small link that says ADD DRIVER (its in a somewhat small font)
5. Enter first name, last name and email address of the person you want to grant access to. NOTE: This should match the information used by the person previously to create their tesla account above, in PRE - REQUISITES.
6. Click SAVE
7. Now, have person you just added on the website log out of the tesla app on their phone, wait about 30 seconds to 1 minute, then log back in

They should now see your vehicle in their account. if not, it may take a bit longer for sync time to happen, so have them try logging out and back in again in a few minutes.

So interesting observation with my recent delivery; my wife was the initial "shopper" when we first looked at Tesla, went to a local showroom, did a test drive and I went to the mens room while my wife proceeded to close the deal. They took all of her info (name, phone number, etc) and away we went. Car is titled under both our names and our financing has us both listed as guarantors. All pre-delivery stuff was done under her info, nothing was tied to me. After the car was delivered and available in her account via the desktop website, I went through the process of "adding a driver" just as you've outlined above. No issues, got synced up quickly and I have been using the app on my phone since. However, as a secondary driver I AM able to schedule service through the app BUT not able to purchase upgrades. Unless I am misunderstanding, at seems they might have made scheduling service available through the app for secondary drivers?

 

[jjrandorin]

So interesting observation with my recent delivery; my wife was the initial "shopper" when we first looked at Tesla, went to a local showroom, did a test drive and I went to the mens room while my wife proceeded to close the deal. They took all of her info (name, phone number, etc) and away we went. Car is titled under both our names and our financing has us both listed as guarantors. All pre-delivery stuff was done under her info, nothing was tied to me. After the car was delivered and available in her account via the desktop website, I went through the process of "adding a driver" just as you've outlined above. No issues, got synced up quickly and I have been using the app on my phone since. However, as a secondary driver I AM able to schedule service through the app BUT not able to purchase upgrades. Unless I am misunderstanding, at seems they might have made scheduling service available through the app for secondary drivers?

Thanks for that feedback. I will go check on my wifes phone and see if this has changed. If so that would be a HUGE win. Do you also have roadside assistance in your version of the app?

EDIT: I can confirm that the service selection now shows up in my wifes tesla account. No idea when this changed, but I will amend my instructions above, thanks for the heads up. In my wifes case, however, roadside assistance still does not show up in her tesla app (and thats the one I wanted most to be there, actually).

 

[yeahthatguy]

Thanks for that feedback. I will go check on my wifes phone and see if this has changed. If so that would be a HUGE win. Do you also have roadside assistance in your version of the app?

EDIT: I can confirm that the service selection now shows up in my wifes tesla account. No idea when this changed, but I will amend my instructions above, thanks for the heads up. In my wifes case, however, roadside assistance still does not show up in her tesla app (and thats the one I wanted most to be there, actually).

Interesting! I admittedly didn't look for road side vs. regular service but that seems counterintuitive; unlikely a secondary driver is going to schedule and accept a bunch of electrical work (or what have you) but could definitely need a flat repair...

 

[jjrandorin]

Interesting! I admittedly didn't look for road side vs. regular service but that seems counterintuitive; unlikely a secondary driver is going to schedule and accept a bunch of electrical work (or what have you) but could definitely need a flat repair...

Right? lol. Thats why its strange to me they added scheduling service but not roadside, when roadside is the thing that would be most needed by a secondary driver. Not being able to purchase upgrades is perfect (as they likely shouldnt be doing that anyway), and scheduling service is likely something the primary driver would handle, but roadside assistance is something that any driver would want to have in there.

Especially since they push everything to the app (although calling roadside works pretty well, they are pretty responsive when you call that number above).

 

[EVRider-FL]

I didn't realize the secondary account didn't have access to roadside assistance until I read this thread. Good to know.

We purchased my wife's Model 3 via my account, and added her account as a secondary account later. At that time, there was no automated way to do it, you had to contact Tesla and request that they do it.

Is Tesla planning to offer more limited guest accounts for people who rent Teslas? The current implementation provides too much access for a renter, in my opinion.

 

[jjrandorin]

I didn't realize the secondary account didn't have access to roadside assistance until I read this thread. Good to know.

We purchased my wife's Model 3 via my account, and added her account as a secondary account later. At that time, there was no automated way to do it, you had to contact Tesla and request that they do it.

Is Tesla planning to offer more limited guest accounts for people who rent Teslas? The current implementation provides too much access for a renter, in my opinion.

I dont know if they are going to do that. We probably need to get closer to the (supposed) robotaxi life to see what they plan to do with that. Me personally, I would never rent out my primary vehicle... I would have to buy a vehicle simply for doing that, and I dont think it will pay enough for that, so I have zero desire to rent my vehicle out.

 

[EVRider-FL]

I dont know if they are going to do that. We probably need to get closer to the (supposed) robotaxi life to see what they plan to do with that. Me personally, I would never rent out my primary vehicle... I would have to buy a vehicle simply for doing that, and I dont think it will pay enough for that, so I have zero desire to rent my vehicle out.

I wouldn’t rent out my car either, but some Tesla owners are already renting out their cars, via Turo for example. It would be good for renters to get limited app functionality, for example, charging notifications.

 

[JCtx]

In my wife's case, however, roadside assistance still does not show up in her tesla app (and thats the one I wanted most to be there, actually).

Same here. She's the primary driver, as I bought the car for her. Is there a way to suggest to Tesla to add that to the app? Makes zero sense to not have it there indeed. It should be the first item added to other drivers, before service. But both should be available to 'added' drivers.

 

[CarlosFandango]

We have no problem with our teenager having access via the app, (sensible kid who won't press "buy now" as she's had plenty of explanatory parenting & aint feral) ) ..the main advantage to date from her perspective is to see where her mum is in case it means she can be picked up from 6 form (we live miles from the school) if her mum is driving nearby, saves time often several hours to catch a bus, minimum of 90 minutes)

Please bear in mind & verify my hearsay with actual fact.. by my understanding there is a 7 day cooling off / return policy on over the air PAYG car upgrades such as heated rear seats, full autonomous driving et al.

I just want heated steering & some footwell lighting (it's dark down there) & maybe some fog lights, not overly enamoured with the speaker quality in the car so not going to pay for even more dull sounding speakers & naff mp3 music coding ..currently there's nothing on offer for those, so no risk either.

 

[Prudyuk]

I am taking delivery of my M3SR+ next month. This is really useful info, but the use case I wanted to check was :

1) I am happy to have my wife logged into my Tesla App on her phone, and me logged into the same account on my phone.
2) With that can each individual phone (and card/fob) be assigned to a specific user profile within the car? I want my wife to get in with her phone / card and for all her settings/ personalisation to appear; and then when I log in with my phone/card it switches to my settings / personalisation. Is that possible?

For full info, my car is a lease, so not easy to add to Tesla Account etc.

Thanks!

 

[jjrandorin]

I am taking delivery of my M3SR+ next month. This is really useful info, but the use case I wanted to check was :

1) I am happy to have my wife logged into my Tesla App on her phone, and me logged into the same account on my phone.
2) With that can each individual phone (and card/fob) be assigned to a specific user profile within the car? I want my wife to get in with her phone / card and for all her settings/ personalisation to appear; and then when I log in with my phone/card it switches to my settings / personalisation. Is that possible?

For full info, my car is a lease, so not easy to add to Tesla Account etc.

Thanks!

If you are sharing your tesla account you can still create separate profiles in the car and link your smartphones to the different profiles. That is, unless something has changed in the past few months. Thats the way I had it with my wife and I before I had her setup her own account with the process detailed in the first post.

 

[fryeBE]

We have the same problem with the car on lease.
Our fleet manager does have all the cars on their account. (Primary)
He adds a user to each car so we could access the car with the mobile app.

This is working but now comes the tricky one.
If we do supercharging... this needs to be charged to the one on the secondary account.
This ain't working. When we delete the creditcard on primary account, add one on secondary account (the driver) we'll get a warning that we don't have a creditcard linked to the car. It would be great if they can set a creditcard on the car itself so the driver could use his creditcard to supercharge or get the premium subscription.

 

[DustyRhodes]

Haven't taken delivery of our model 3 yet, but found this information very helpful. . . Thanks. Question: if my wife's driving profiles are linked to her phone and my driving profiles are linked to my phone, what happens when we go somewhere together with both phones in the car at the same time? Second, can supercharging be set up so charges go to my account when I'm driving and my wife's CC when she is charging?

 

[EVRider-FL]

Haven't taken delivery of our model 3 yet, but found this information very helpful. . . Thanks. Question: if my wife's driving profiles are linked to her phone and my driving profiles are linked to my phone, what happens when we go somewhere together with both phones in the car at the same time? Second, can supercharging be set up so charges go to my account when I'm driving and my wife's CC when she is charging?

The car will select the profile based on whichever phone it detects first. It’s not very reliable in my experience — sometimes the car selects my wife’s profile instead of mine even when she doesn’t have her phone with her (though it’s within range in the house).

Supercharging fees are always charged to the primary account associated with the car. Are you trying to keep the fees separate for business reasons?

 

[JerseyShoreMY]

The car will select the profile based on whichever phone it detects first. It’s not very reliable in my experience — sometimes the car selects my wife’s profile instead of mine even when she doesn’t have her phone with her (though it’s within range in the house).

Supercharging fees are always charged to the primary account associated with the car. Are you trying to keep the fees separate for business reasons?

Is there a way to make the supercharger fee go with the driver and not the primary account owner?
We will be renting an MY and will need to set this up on our existing app once we get the rental key card.
Once you get used to the phone key, there is no going back to the key card alone.... starting with walk away locks.

 

[DeltaOne]

The car will select the profile based on whichever phone it detects first. It’s not very reliable in my experience — sometimes the car selects my wife’s profile instead of mine even when she doesn’t have her phone with her (though it’s within range in the house).

Same experience here. Sometimes it selects the right profile, sometimes it doesn't.

We eventually had to remove my wife's phone as a car key because she likes to keep her iPhone just inside the carport door on the corner of the kitchen counter. The car was allowing the doors to be unlocked even though the phone was about six feet away and inside the house.

 

[jjrandorin]

(moderator note)

Unstickied thread for the reason I mentioned when I edited my first post in it. Posting this as a final bump to it so it doesnt get lost immediately, and can rise / fall on its own from there.

 

[EVRider-FL]

Is there a way to make the supercharger fee go with the driver and not the primary account owner?
We will be renting an MY and will need to set this up on our existing app once we get the rental key card.
Once you get used to the phone key, there is no going back to the key card alone.... starting with walk away locks.

I didn't see your reply until just now, but no, there's currently no way to have supercharging fees charged to anyone other than the primary account holder. If you rent out your car via Turo, the renter gets billed for the supercharging fees after the rental period. I expect that Tesla will make it possible to do what you're asking at some point, but who knows when.