Fellow Tesla fans,
Thought I'd pass along a tip after a brief moment of panic last night.
During my car's 24k service the tech replaced the key as he said it wasn't working properly. That's the good news. As is standard practice, you supply both keys when you come in for service.
The bad news is that they were on the same keychain. Now you're probably wondering why that's a problem?
The issue is that the "new" key works to unlock the doors if you depress the physical button on the key. But it doesn't work with either the proximity sensors in the car to open the doors NOR does it work to allow you to drive away. The older key seemed to work. Making matters worse, I had left the keys together as I was heading to a dinner before I got home and had both in my pocket. For some reason on the way back I decided to put one of the keys away in my bag, which is shielded. I placed the other in my pocket. Car doesn't open. I realized I could open the doors finally with the physical button and tried the other key and drove home.
Upon getting home I called Ownership: we tried resetting the security module, swapping batteries between keys, and isolating if it was a proximity sensor on one side or the whole car. It turns out the key is defective in the most bizarre way; it acts as if the battery is dead yet works just fine with physical button presses to open the door. If your key does get into this failure state, holding it in the place documented in the manual for starting when the fob batter is dead will work here as well.
I suspect the tech didn't notice it as they probably had both keys on one chain, so the handles auto-presented and they likely just tested the buttons on both keys. Caveat emptor: that won't catch all failure states, as you can see above. There's a workaround, but it was a little unsettling at first.
Hope that's helpful for someone!
Matt
Thought I'd pass along a tip after a brief moment of panic last night.
During my car's 24k service the tech replaced the key as he said it wasn't working properly. That's the good news. As is standard practice, you supply both keys when you come in for service.
The bad news is that they were on the same keychain. Now you're probably wondering why that's a problem?
The issue is that the "new" key works to unlock the doors if you depress the physical button on the key. But it doesn't work with either the proximity sensors in the car to open the doors NOR does it work to allow you to drive away. The older key seemed to work. Making matters worse, I had left the keys together as I was heading to a dinner before I got home and had both in my pocket. For some reason on the way back I decided to put one of the keys away in my bag, which is shielded. I placed the other in my pocket. Car doesn't open. I realized I could open the doors finally with the physical button and tried the other key and drove home.
Upon getting home I called Ownership: we tried resetting the security module, swapping batteries between keys, and isolating if it was a proximity sensor on one side or the whole car. It turns out the key is defective in the most bizarre way; it acts as if the battery is dead yet works just fine with physical button presses to open the door. If your key does get into this failure state, holding it in the place documented in the manual for starting when the fob batter is dead will work here as well.
I suspect the tech didn't notice it as they probably had both keys on one chain, so the handles auto-presented and they likely just tested the buttons on both keys. Caveat emptor: that won't catch all failure states, as you can see above. There's a workaround, but it was a little unsettling at first.
Hope that's helpful for someone!
Matt
