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Never drive away without the key card!

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Me too everytime.
I don't think understand the reliance on the mobile phone.
Someone posted a couple of days ago their bluetooth failed so they couldn't unlock the car. - another reason!
I've never had a keyfob fail even when the battery was low!

First off, my phone has never failed to unlock my car in 18 months of use. However, phones get lost, stolen, broken, or just run out of battery, so I do use a card key or keyring as backups. Both better than the key fob for me, since I no longer carry physical keys to anything, and I dont want more stuff to carry in my pockets.
 
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I have to say this thread has surprised me. Considering how open to new tech you must be to get a Tesla in the first place I am surprised how many people aren't happy with the Mobile phone + key card (or ring) as a backup option and chose to spend extra on a key fob.
Its just one more anachronism to have to carry / lose as far as I am concerned. Each to their own I guess.
I suppose for those of you who are fans of the fob its probably less of an issue. You can just get the guy who walks in front of your car with the red flag to carry it (he says while deciding never to log onto this thread again to view the replies :D )
 
I have to say this thread has surprised me. Considering how open to new tech you must be to get a Tesla in the first place I am surprised how many people aren't happy with the Mobile phone + key card (or ring) as a backup option and chose to spend extra on a key fob.
Its just one more anachronism to have to carry / lose as far as I am concerned. Each to their own I guess.
I suppose for those of you who are fans of the fob its probably less of an issue. You can just get the guy who walks in front of your car with the red flag to carry it (he says while deciding never to log onto this thread again to view the replies :D )

It's just about choosing the best solution to fit with the way each of us lives our lives, isn't it? If someone uses a phone all the time, then it makes sense to use that as the key. For someone that rarely uses a phone, then having to own one, and have it turned on, in order to be able to use the car is a PITA.

I've nothing against phones, and am far from a Luddite (right now I'm writing some code to link several home made networked wildlife cameras to a home assembled file server). Plus, just for the record, I owned a transportable phone in 1990, that looked like a desktop handset (must have weighed around a kilo), so I was probably a fairly early adopter of mobile phone technology. My phone used always to be on, pretty much wherever I went, and was indispensable for the best part of 25 years. For the first few years after I retired I used the phone a lot, so when we moved somewhere with no signal it was a real PITA for the first few months. I can't magic up a phone signal here (although I've tried, with an expensive external antenna and repeater box), so we've just had to get used to not using one.

One consequence of this is that 99% of the time both our phones are turned off, and so would need to be turned on if they were the only way of using keyless entry. The fob just makes life a lot easier for us, as it's always on, and works in exactly the same way as a phone, except I don't need to remember to charge it. If my house keys are in my pocket, then the car just unlocks as I walk up to it, hard to get much simpler than that.

There's now also a bit of an age-related issue, in that for the past couple of years I've found that I can't read a phone screen without putting on reading glasses. Might sound trivial, but it's a PITA having to dig glasses out just to be able to see the phone screen (my normal eyesight is fine). After a while, this gets a bit like other things affected by poorer near vision. I've found I tend to not bother doing, or using, anything that needs me to put reading glasses on unless it's fairly important.

Thankfully, Tesla have had the wisdom to give us choices, so we can choose what best fits our own personal circumstances. It's not really a question as to which solution is better at all, it's about which is the most convenient for each of us. What's most convenient for one person may well not be at all convenient for another, which seems fine if we can all get something that just works.
 
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It's just about choosing the best solution to fit with the way each of us lives our lives, isn't it? If someone uses a phone all the time, then it makes sense to use that as the key. For someone that rarely uses a phone, then having to own one, and have it turned on, in order to be able to use the car is a PITA.

I've nothing against phones, and am far from a Luddite (right now I'm writing some code to link several home made networked wildlife cameras to a home assembled file server). Plus, just for the record, I owned a transportable phone in 1990, that looked like a desktop handset (must have weighed around a kilo), so I was probably a fairly early adopter of mobile phone technology. My phone used always to be on, pretty much wherever I went, and was indispensable for the best part of 25 years. For the first few years after I retired I used the phone a lot, so when we moved somewhere with no signal it was a real PITA for the first few months. I can't magic up a phone signal here (although I've tried, with an expensive external antenna and repeater box), so we've just had to get used to not using one.

One consequence of this is that 99% of the time both our phones are turned off, and so would need to be turned on if they were the only way of using keyless entry. The fob just makes life a lot easier for us, as it's always on, and works in exactly the same way as a phone, except I don't need to remember to charge it. If my house keys are in my pocket, then the car just unlocks as I walk up to it, hard to get much simpler than that.

There's now also a bit of an age-related issue, in that for the past couple of years I've found that I can't read a phone screen without putting on reading glasses. Might sound trivial, but it's a PITA having to dig glasses out just to be able to see the phone screen (my normal eyesight is fine). After a while, this gets a bit like other things affected by poorer near vision. I've found I tend to not bother doing, or using, anything that needs me to put reading glasses on unless it's fairly important.

Thankfully, Tesla have had the wisdom to give us choices, so we can choose what best fits our own personal circumstances. It's not really a question as to which solution is better at all, it's about which is the most convenient for each of us. What's most convenient for one person may well not be at all convenient for another, which seems fine if we can all get something that just works.

Too long a post bloke. To have stopped at the first paragraph would of sufficed. And thats coming from me! :rolleyes:

Now. I respect that its a pita for you but these are your own unusual circumstances. Im sure when we relied on home phones we didn't just plug it in just to make a call and then unplugged it again but then again maybe you did. IMHO, you are a bit of an odd/isolated case hence your opinion is null and void :D:p

My phone has a smart case (unfolds like a book) and has spaces for cards... In there is the Tesla key card, a credit card, a debit card and a Yale keycard for the front door and all these cards bar the Yale are backups since i mostly use apple pay on my watch. Its that simple for some of us :):p
 
No one's politely and reasonably expressed opinion is EVER "null and void".

We are ALL entitled to express an opinion; those who have just a scintilla of respect for the views of others manage to do this without causing offence. . .
 
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Given the variety of responses and anecdotes in this thread, I think it’s safe to say that having the option to use a range of devices to lock/unlock your car shows how important it is to have those options when choosing a car.

Being able to use my phone to unlock the car was a key (lol) decision point for me. But I imagine if Tesla decided that they would only allow phone keys, many of us wouldn’t be Tesla owners. So choice is good and shouldn’t be used to question another person’s view on their personal security. Especially if you don’t know them.
 
Precisely my view - having a range of ways to unlock the car just makes it more attractive to a wider range of people. When looking at some other EVs, being tied to one tech ecosystem would put me off - for example, I would not buy a car that used Android as it's infotainment system, simply as I don't much like it, and if a car's going to have a mobile operating system then I'd prefer it to be iOS. Better still if the OS is agnostic, and not tied to one of the big tech semi-monopolies (Tesla using Linux was a plus point IMHO).
 
Precisely my view - having a range of ways to unlock the car just makes it more attractive to a wider range of people. When looking at some other EVs, being tied to one tech ecosystem would put me off - for example, I would not buy a car that used Android as it's infotainment system, simply as I don't much like it, and if a car's going to have a mobile operating system then I'd prefer it to be iOS. Better still if the OS is agnostic, and not tied to one of the big tech semi-monopolies (Tesla using Linux was a plus point IMHO).

Im afraid the unless rooted, whatever Tesla used used as the base OS is of not use to you or me. Having said that, my tolerance for hacking OS's has been diminished over the years and I'm more likely to oversee the cons vs. pros over a closed system as to me my life easy.

I know that at some point something has to give and succumb to demand just as apple has done more recently offering apple music and apple tv apps to third parties where as before you needed to have their own hardware to run these.

IMHO the will for these companies to lock us into their echo system does not bode well and they need to be more cooperative, cross platform with each other in order to remain competitive and reap some benefits along the way towards keeping us customers happy other than hindering progress and our/customer satisfaction.
 
My concerns over closed or semi-closed tech ecosystems has more to do with privacy and data collection/aggregation. One of my gripes with Google's version of Android, is that it tries to force users to agree to give Google a great deal of data. Using a rooted tablet with a "de-Googled" version of Android is my (not very user-friendly) way of getting around this, but if a car is supplied with Android Carplay as its infotainment OS, then it would practically force customers to agree to giving Google personal data, as well as much of the data from the car, over and above the data that they collect from a variety of sources. Whilst I accept that Google provide useful services, like mapping, I'd rather just pay for thing like this if I wanted to use them, rather than have to agree to allow my personal data to be used and sold in return for it. I'll admit this is a personal issue for me, Google acquired all my medical records from the NHS, without my consent, and now cannot/will not agree to delete them (and the data is not properly anonymised).

Getting back on topic, do all those that don't have a fob realise that it provides keyless entry, by proximity sensing, exactly like a phone? Although there is an option to press internal buttons in the fob for things like locking, opening the charge port, etc, I rarely ever use them, most of the time it's just having my house keys, with attached fob, in a pocket or bag that unlocks the car and allows it to start.
 
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Getting back on topic, do all those that don't have a fob realise that it provides keyless entry, by proximity sensing, exactly like a phone? Although there is an option to press internal buttons in the fob for things like locking, opening the charge port, etc, I rarely ever use them, most of the time it's just having my house keys, with attached fob, in a pocket or bag that unlocks the car and allows it to start.

That's the reason I prefer not to have one. But it's a personal mindset; I'm quite minimalist, so prefer to do more with less rather than have a physical manifestation of everything.
 
Getting back on topic, do all those that don't have a fob realise that it provides keyless entry, by proximity sensing, exactly like a phone? Although there is an option to press internal buttons in the fob for things like locking, opening the charge port, etc, I rarely ever use them, most of the time it's just having my house keys, with attached fob, in a pocket or bag that unlocks the car and allows it to start.
Yes, but I think this is all a case of each to their own.

The fob is not attractive to me in the least, and I certainly wouldn’t spend money on one when my phone already does what it can do. Unlike you, I almost always have my phone with me and I like using it as a key for the car.
 
Haven't seen it mentioned, I use the "Pin to Drive" feature on the car. Easy access with the phone, no driving the car away unless you know the pin. I also have the keyring because inevitably I need to move the car when my phone is charging somewhere in the house...