Mobile app assistance please

[Murray C.]

Hoping we can get a bit of help with some questions about the Tesla Mobile App. As new owners of a pre-owned 2019 Model 3 dual motor AWD, we've used the app very little to date, and we appreciate your patience and understanding.

My wife and I both have our own Tesla accounts and have the mobile app installed on both our Google Pixel 3a XL android phones.

Here goes: If we arrive at our destination and leave together with our authenticated phones, will the Walk-Away lock function work properly? Out of curiosity, what determines which phone sends the activation signal? If one of us returns alone, will their phone function properly as an unlock key?

If one of our phones (or both) are not authenticated, can we still use them for opening the trunk/frunk, flashing the lights, and honking the horn. Assuming the latter two are intended to assist with locating our car in a crowded parking lot, what is the range? What is the purpose of the START icon?

If anyone has any special considerations, tips, trouble shooting notes, or suggestions, for using the app, please share.

Thank you all
Murray and Sandy C.

 

[Darmie]

Before we get to far. I'm thinking that there should be only one tesla account for your car. There's also a new feature that was added to chose under bluetooth to select one phone as a priority phone.
You and your wife should have seperate profiles. Under the lock section of the car settings, select your phone and select your profile. Select her profile under her phone. Again, this is under the lock section of the car settings.The walk away fuction will work fine and use the phone that is associated with the profile you see on the screen. That should help identify what phone is doing what. Any phone can use all app features if you are logged into your account. There is also a section under the tesla.com to give someone access to your tesla account if you are looking for a family member to have access as well.

You can't use any app functions until you log into the tesla account on your car. Once your phone or any phone has account access on the app, you can then do all that you was mention. You can even use summon as well. Purpose of start is to allow you to drive the car with out having a phone or tesla RFID or key fob near by. Feature is good to use of you want your neighbor to move your car for you while you are not near by. You allow them to drive the car by selecting the start. They have 2 minutes before the authonication goes away. Hope this helped some.

 

[Akikiki]

@Murray C., @Darmie, is correct. You are thinking the presence of the app on the car has something to do with the authenticated function you get with the phone as a key. Do yourself a favor. At home, do some experimenting. Make sure you have your Key card just in case. But on one phone, delete the app. Then use that phone to open/unlock the car and start the car to drive away. The app had nothing to do with it. Make sense?

Now, do you have an old phone? A spare - without cell service? Do NOT set this spare phone up to authenticate to the car. Try connecting it to WiFi, and downloading the app. Log in to the app, try some stuff on the car, honk, lights, unlock. See? Use the app, unlock, start, drive the car.

Lock the car. Walk across the street where you can see the car, but are out of range of the car. Ask the wife to try to open the car as you use the app to unlock, and start the car so she can drive.

The whole point of all this is to get familiar with how easy it is to recover from a lost key card, cell phone, or neighbor helping you.

One last idea. If you lose your phone, but not your car. Ask a stranger, borrow their phone, download the app, login, unlock, start your car, and before you return the phone, delete the app. But then drive home. If you stop and get out of the car, you can't start it again without going through all those actions again.

Think this through so it doesn't require thinking to get in and drive your car. Keep that old spare cell phone, or a burner phone with no cell service where you can find it to use under WIFI or authenticated as a backup method to get in the car. You will thank yourself later.

 

[jjrandorin]

Hello @Murray C.

The TL ; DR version of this long post below is this. If you setup the phone as key feature on both yours and your wifes phones, either will be able to enter the car passively, and the car will lock when you both walk away.


A few things to unpack here.

1. its totally possible for you and your wife to both have separate tesla accounts to drive the car. You set the second account up as as an allowed driver, as @Darmie says. This works, but there is an important consideration here that not many know about. Only the "main" account shows the "roadside assistance" link in the app. A secondary driver can call for roadside assistance if they are listed with tesla as having access to that, but the link for it will only show up in the tesla app of the main account.

I have experience with this personally, myself, as I was trying to get that road side assistance link to show up in my wifes tesla account. I have nothing to hide, but like to setup separate accounts rather than share one as an "IT best practice" .. I work in the IT industry like a lot of tesla owners.

2. It was sort of talked about up thread, but the "phone as key" function is a separate function from the regular bluetooth connection to the car. I have never had an issue with my wife and I both walking away and the car locking. The car uses " BluetoothLE" to connect using the phone as key function, which is a specific, short range version of bluetooth. In fact, when you connect "phone as key" you have to connect the phone to bluetooth again in order to stream music, etc because they are different.

Any phone that is setup as a key previously will function to open the doors etc. when it gets in range of the car. I dont think its fully correct to say that the tesla app has no part in it... because people with multiple tesla's have to ensure that the car they want to open is the "highlighted" one in the tesla app for the phone as key function to work as far as passive entry.

What IS correct however, is that it is fairly easy to get into the car using other means. As mentioned, you could download the tesla app on a friend / neighbors phone, and click the unlock button in the app, and even start the car using that app..... HOWEVER none of those features are actually using the specific passive entry of "phone as key". Neither does setting a priority bluetooth device have anything to do with phone as key. It only controls which device is the one that is used for streaming music, or calendar, etc access on the cars screen.

3. As far as all of your questions regarding "if the phone is authenticated"... you setup the phone as key once, then that phone is authenticated as a key whenever it is in range of the car (within a couple of feet on the outside). As long as you only have one tesla vehicle, it will be the selected vehicle in the app, and the phone can be used as a key.

Because of the limited range of Bluetooth LE, if the phone is in a back pocket (or a purse) and is not "close enough" to the car, you may have to take it out of that back pocket, or out of that purse, but it will work.

 

[Darmie]

There are some other options as well. You an always purchase the 3/Y key fob for a peace of mind.
Model 3/Y Key Fob
Another option is a RFID ring. Kind of weird if I might say but just showing some other options.
https://www.amazon.com/COLMO-Access...t=&hvlocphy=9027633&hvtargid=pla-962735453647

 

[Akikiki]

@Darmie, everything is relative. After reading this, I suspect the using the RFID ring looks normal or tame. "Armed with an arm" (I didn't show its direct link, because I didn't want to scare the children.)

 

[Wfrager]

I love my key "ring." It's awesome.

 

[Murray C.]

Thanks folks for taking the time to respond.

A question about Walk-Away Door Locking: It's a great feature that I will no doubt use much of the time, but I anticipate wanting to turn it off in some situations. However, even when I toggle off the feature, it continues to function - not locking until I move away from the car. I have to disable the phone as a key before I am able to lock the doors with the button on the phone while standing beside the car. I must be missing something...?

Murray C.