Long Range Rescue

[Krugerrand]

Dude, do you know how your phone as a key works?

Read my post again.

If I leave a device that is a key locked in the trunk, I can open the trunk. I’m not “using” the device, the car detects that it is close and lets me open the door/trunk.

Get it?

Seriously? How about you start at the beginning and reread everything.

The car WAS locked with her phone IN IT! She didn’t make that up. The car CAN LOCK with the phone as a key IN IT. YES, it CAN happen.

One more time, here are the reasons why it CAN happen;

1) The most usual way - the phone loses its Bluetooth connection to the car. This in fact happened A LOT when the car first came out especially after a car firmware update. It’s much improved now and happens far less frequently.
2) The phone runs out of juice or is in some other way compromised/broken/completely off
3) The Tesla APP bugs out,
4) The car bugs out/12v battery gives out

Get it?

 

[darth_vad3r]

Seriously? How about you start at the beginning and reread everything.

The car WAS locked with her phone IN IT! She didn’t make that up. The car CAN LOCK with the phone as a key IN IT. YES, it CAN happen.

One more time, here are the reasons why it CAN happen;

1) The most usual way - the phone loses its Bluetooth connection to the car. This in fact happened A LOT when the car first came out especially after a car firmware update. It’s much improved now and happens far less frequently.
2) The phone runs out of juice or is in some other way compromised/broken/completely off
3) The Tesla APP bugs out,
4) The car bugs out/12v battery gives out

Get it?

All of 1-4 have the same impact whether the phone is in her pocket, in her trunk, or in the front of the car, right?

LOL

It’s also possible it just locked because of a timeout with the doors/opening closing.

You might try to unlock the door the first time and it fails (this happens sometimes when using phone as a key). If you try again then it works.

Has this never happened to you?

The fact the phone was in the car has no bearing on this at all. Get it? Using your phone as a key requires the phone to be close to the car, and IN the car counts as close, or do you disagree with that?

If Bluetooth temporarily lost connection, or there was a delay car connecting to it when the door handle was attempted, then trying a second time a little bit later would have worked, even with the phone IN the car, right? Right.

Try it.

ps. How does the app bugging out have any bearing on this, doesn’t it just need to Bluetooth connect at a low level with the phone to auth unlock, without the app involvement? Does the app need to be running? I don’t think so. I’ve never tried uninstalling the app but that would be a test to try out to see if the app still needs to be there.

 

[darth_vad3r]

If the car lets you open doors because the phone is in the car, then a robber can open the doors when you are just sitting in the car with your phone.
Fortunately, it doesn't.

I don’t know what to tell you. I left my device that was a key in the trunk. It let me get in, even though it was locked (locked with key card on way out).

Maybe if you are sitting in the drivers seat the logic is different.

 

[darth_vad3r]

So I just did a little test. Non-scientific, non-exhaustive, but this is what I did:

1. I approached my locked car with device that's setup as a key
2. I opened the trunk, then I closed trunk.
3. I opened driver side door and placed device inside, then closed door.
4. Waited a while, doors didn't lock, took a short walk to kill time, still not locked (or at least mirrors not folded), so I force locked the car with my key card (mirrors folded).
5. Waited a few seconds ... was able to open the door without the key card (because my device was "near" INside the car).

Perhaps there's some other normal (non-phone-failure) scenario that triggers the doors to be locked (sitting in the driver's seat first, or a timing issue?)

Anyways, if the device that's setup to be a key is working, it seems to me that it works whether it is IN or OUT of the car.
If it's NOT working, and it's out of the car, the only benefit you'd have is to try to reset the bluetooth or the phone to try to get it to work, and to save a walk to use the phone for remote rescue ... my only point initially was that if the phone-as-a-key is near the car (IN the car qualifies) one would expect to be able to "use" that key to open the door (by simply trying to open the door handle). The fact that it is IN the car is irrelevant to whether you should try this or not.

If it failed on first attempt, it may have been a "regular" failure that many people seem to encounter occasionally. Waiting a few seconds/minute and trying again may have worked.

I'm not trying to take away from OP's rescue story here. Remote rescue is a real (awesome) feature that we have available to us... but if this scenario happens, I think you should try opening the door a few more times before calling for a rescue.

The reason I jumped on this thread right away btw, is because this happened to me in reverse essentially. Instead of a "remote rescue" I setup a "local theft-target" by accidentally leaving an iPad setup as a "backup key" in the trunk of a "locked" car while inside a restaurant.

My first thought upon realizing what I'd done was "doh, someone could have just opened the trunk and stolen the iPad, that was dumb".
My second thought was "oh crap, someone could have just stolen the car!" LOL.

I know the key in the trunk worked to get in, because the main device-as-a-key was not with me when I returned to the car with just the card key to undo my mistake. Sure enough I approached the "locked" car (with no device on my person) and was able to open it as if it was really unlocked the whole time. Anyone else could have just done the same thing! Not SMRT

 

[Leafdriver333]

So I just did a little test. Non-scientific, non-exhaustive, but this is what I did:

1. I approached my locked car with device that's setup as a key
2. I opened the trunk, then I closed trunk.
3. I opened driver side door and placed device inside, then closed door.
4. Waited a while, doors didn't lock, took a short walk to kill time, still not locked (or at least mirrors not folded), so I force locked the car with my key card (mirrors folded).
5. Waited a few seconds ... was able to open the door without the key card (because my device was "near" INside the car).

Perhaps there's some other normal (non-phone-failure) scenario that triggers the doors to be locked (sitting in the driver's seat first, or a timing issue?)

Anyways, if the device that's setup to be a key is working, it seems to me that it works whether it is IN or OUT of the car.
If it's NOT working, and it's out of the car, the only benefit you'd have is to try to reset the bluetooth or the phone to try to get it to work, and to save a walk to use the phone for remote rescue ... my only point initially was that if the phone-as-a-key is near the car (IN the car qualifies) one would expect to be able to "use" that key to open the door (by simply trying to open the door handle). The fact that it is IN the car is irrelevant to whether you should try this or not.

If it failed on first attempt, it may have been a "regular" failure that many people seem to encounter occasionally. Waiting a few seconds/minute and trying again may have worked.

I'm not trying to take away from OP's rescue story here. Remote rescue is a real (awesome) feature that we have available to us... but if this scenario happens, I think you should try opening the door a few more times before calling for a rescue.

The reason I jumped on this thread right away btw, is because this happened to me in reverse essentially. Instead of a "remote rescue" I setup a "local theft-target" by accidentally leaving an iPad setup as a "backup key" in the trunk of a "locked" car while inside a restaurant.

My first thought upon realizing what I'd done was "doh, someone could have just opened the trunk and stolen the iPad, that was dumb".
My second thought was "oh crap, someone could have just stolen the car!" LOL.

I know the key in the trunk worked to get in, because the main device-as-a-key was not with me when I returned to the car with just the card key to undo my mistake. Sure enough I approached the "locked" car (with no device on my person) and was able to open it as if it was really unlocked the whole time. Anyone else could have just done the same thing! Not SMRT

You had the key card with you while the phone key was in the car?
Try leaving the card in your bedroom and do it.

 

[darth_vad3r]

You had the key card with you while the phone key was in the car?
Try leaving the card in your bedroom and do it.

LOL. Why would I want to have that long of a walk if it didn't work? The key card has no proximity features

 

[darth_vad3r]

ps. How does the app bugging out have any bearing on this, doesn’t it just need to Bluetooth connect at a low level with the phone to auth unlock, without the app involvement? Does the app need to be running? I don’t think so. I’ve never tried uninstalling the app but that would be a test to try out to see if the app still needs to be there.

Well, uninstalling the app seems to make it not work at all ... so I suppose that uninstalling removes whatever low level bluetooth hooks are there that the car communicates with. Whether the OS layer handles this, or the app is responsible for part of this handshaking even when it is not running, I am not familiar with enough to say. It's definitely plausible either way, so ya, I'd say if the app 'bugged out' it's possible that would cause the device to not work as a key. It's also plausible that the OS handles the handshake that the app has told it to, and it would require an OS level problem for the device to fail to work as a key, not an app level problem.

In any case, uninstall app = device no longer works as a key (can still pair as a phone/media device though )

 

[Big Earl]

I just did an experiment.
I opened the driver's door, tossed the phone in the car, and closed the door.
After a few seconds, all doors locked.
The car doesn't care if the phone is in the car or not.

I did another test.
I opened the passenger side door and entered and sat in the passenger seat.
The doors locked after a few seconds.

On the next test, I opened the driver's door and entered and sat down in the driver's seat.
I waited and waited but the doors didn't lock automatically.

Conclusion
The driver's seat has to sense body weight for it to stay unlocked.
Possibly, it is for convenience when the driver is waiting for the passengers to arrive. The driver can manually lock the doors if he is not driving away right then.

The body weight in the passenger seat didn't matter. The car automatically locked.



A work around would be to own a Apple watch like me and purchase an App like "Remote S".
I can unlock the doors with the watch app. My watch is a wifi only version so the phone has to be in the Bluetooth range for my watch commands to work. If your watch is LTE enabled, you could go for a drive without your phone because you can remote start the car with the watch app.


For the owner to leave the purse in the car expecting the car to stay unlocked while putting the cart away is not a good idea anyway because a thief could grab the purse or the car.

I went to the post office this morning and accidentally left my phone in the car. It didn’t lock.

 

[Big Earl]

If the car lets you open doors because the phone is in the car, then a robber can open the doors when you are just sitting in the car with your phone.
Fortunately, it doesn't.

It depends on the situation. If you tap the lock icon on the screen, nobody can get in from the outside.

If the car auto-locked while moving and you come to a complete stop with it still in drive and the doors locked, it will not open if you pull the exterior handle.

If you lock it with the key card but the phone is inside, it will unlock when you pull the handle. I tested this last on 2019.8.5. I have not tested it on 2012.12.1.2.

 

[Leafdriver333]

I went to the post office this morning and accidentally left my phone in the car. It didn’t lock.

because you accidentally left it in the car.

If you had come out of the post office and opened the door of the locked car.
Put the phone in the car.
Close the door.
Go back inside the post office. Get a book of stamps.
And come back out...

and.....
you would have been making a phone call to your wife or you would have been pulling out the key card from your wallet.

 

[Big Earl]

because you accidentally left it in the car.

If you had come out of the post office and opened the door of the locked car.
Put the phone in the car.
Close the door.
Go back inside the post office. Get a book of stamps.
And come back out...

and.....
you would have been making a phone call to your wife or you would have been pulling out the key card from your wallet.

Possibly. I haven’t tested that. I also haven’t tested leaving the phone in the trunk.

 

[darth_vad3r]

because you accidentally left it in the car.

If you had come out of the post office and opened the door of the locked car.
Put the phone in the car.
Close the door.
Go back inside the post office. Get a book of stamps.
And come back out...

and.....
you would have been making a phone call to your wife or you would have been pulling out the key card from your wallet.

What part of this process locks the car? I tried this and couldn't reproduce it.
Disclaimer: I may have subsituted a post office and a book of stamps for a short walk around an underground parkade

Are there any settings that affect this behaviour? Maybe seemingly unrelated ones like unlock on park?

 

[Timothyj999]

I usually have to take the phone out of my front pocket to get the car to see it, and usually to get get the car to "start" as well. So if it was my phone in a purse the car would not know it was inside the car.

Same here, which always seems weird to me. If my phone is in my hip pocket I have to take it out for it to be recognized. I thought bluetooth had way better range than that, but maybe the car requires a certain level of signal from the phone to accept it as a key.

 

[jbcarioca]

A variant on this story. Several years ago my P85D was at a service center getting the Ludicrous upgrade. I dropped the car off and travelled to Rio de Janeiro planning to pick up the car on my return. While in Rio, at the airport walking to a departure gate I received a phone call from the SC, which had lost the key. I opened my Tesla app and authorized keyless operation. Still today I am astonished that that is possible.