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No offense, the current card/phone setup is utter *sugar*
- Thread starter TeeEmCee
- Start date
...so why do you continue to post about how you expect it to be unreliable and buggy? the X fob is basically the same thing the 3 fob will be and works just fine...
is this a real question? the card you have to get out and tap on the door both when you get in and get out of the car, and occasionally on the console to drive the car away if you take too long when you enter. let me tell you how much fun it is when you get out the card (because the phone key doesn't work, as usual) to unlock, then put the card away, sit down, get out your phone for a bit to find something you want to listen to, then press the brake... "tap card to allow driving." now you have to get the card out again, tap the console, then put it away again...or leave it sitting on the console and hope you remember to take it when you exit the car.
if you really can't see how that's worse than 100% hands free not having to get anything out of your pocket ever (which is the way i'd guess every other $60k car on the market works), then i'm not sure why we're even having this discussion...
VLTWGGN
Member
Tbh, iPhone X has never failed me in just over 6wks of ownership. I always either have my phone, my wallet, or both on my person so I really dont need/want a fob. It’s one more fat piece of plastic I’d need to carry in my pocket.
I’ll still get one though since I think it “completes” the car.
I suppose each person is different, though.
I’ll still get one though since I think it “completes” the car.
I suppose each person is different, though.
jgrgnt
Member
RayK
Active Member
So, I have a Samsung Galaxy J3. It's been 100% reliable. As a phone. Not as a car key. I've never activated it for use with my car. If I did activate it and on the oft chance that something did go wrong and it wouldn't work as intended, I don't want to have to dig down deep into the bowels of the Android system settings and toggle stuff on or off. Or turn on and off airplane mode. Or re-boot the phone. Or any of the other workarounds that have been mentioned in various threads. A corollary to Murphy's Law would say that the phone-as-key would fail at the worst possible time so I took a proactive path and refused to take part in that game.
I've used the keycard since day one. It's been 100% reliable. The car doesn't auto-lock or auto-unlock. It locks and unlocks ONLY when I want it to. When I unlock the car in the morning I put my briefcase in the back seat and then climb in to the driver's seat. Foot on the brake within 30 seconds and I'm ready to go. If I'm a little slow or get distracted, a simple tap of the keycard behind the cup holders and again I'm good to go. The only "problem" I had once was when I wanted to open the passenger door but I had to go around to the driver's side pillar first.
As I understand it a fob should work the same as, if not better, than a phone. It still relies on BLE but it would only have ONE function; to communicate with my car. It won't have to multitask and handle phone calls or texts. It will not have an endless number of apps installed in it which could potentially interfere with its main purpose. It would not have to endure the endless OS updates which can break things which worked perfectly before (do you hear me AT&T? Live FM on the NextRadio app was killed by an update). Yes, it will have a battery. Hopefully a common lithium coin cell that will last 5-7 years and not some special, proprietary design. I wish it would be like my BMW fob and get wirelessly recharged when it's in the ignition but I guess you can't have everything.
I'm planning on getting 3 fobs. One for each of the drivers in my house. And another keycard to go with the original two.
I've used the keycard since day one. It's been 100% reliable. The car doesn't auto-lock or auto-unlock. It locks and unlocks ONLY when I want it to. When I unlock the car in the morning I put my briefcase in the back seat and then climb in to the driver's seat. Foot on the brake within 30 seconds and I'm ready to go. If I'm a little slow or get distracted, a simple tap of the keycard behind the cup holders and again I'm good to go. The only "problem" I had once was when I wanted to open the passenger door but I had to go around to the driver's side pillar first.
As I understand it a fob should work the same as, if not better, than a phone. It still relies on BLE but it would only have ONE function; to communicate with my car. It won't have to multitask and handle phone calls or texts. It will not have an endless number of apps installed in it which could potentially interfere with its main purpose. It would not have to endure the endless OS updates which can break things which worked perfectly before (do you hear me AT&T? Live FM on the NextRadio app was killed by an update). Yes, it will have a battery. Hopefully a common lithium coin cell that will last 5-7 years and not some special, proprietary design. I wish it would be like my BMW fob and get wirelessly recharged when it's in the ignition but I guess you can't have everything.
I'm planning on getting 3 fobs. One for each of the drivers in my house. And another keycard to go with the original two.
diamond.g
Active Member
My mobile tech claims they sent fobs to employees for testing this past week. So should be soonish?
Because everyone keeps bashing BLE as the tech behind it (saying it is unreliable). I don't think that is true. I think that it works just fine (as evidenced by the X). I also think Tesla thought they would have FSD by now and have the car sharing network up and running, which is why they didn't do fob's initially. They also probably tested mainly on Apple devices or a few newer Samsung devices and found that they worked most of the time (possible the testers found it worked all of the time but we don't know) and called it good for going with no fob. There are still things that BLE is going to have issues with, like microwaves can mess with the signal, as can WiFi, as can your body. I am mainly about making sure folks do not think this will be like their Prius fob (315 mhz in the US) and work through like everything, lol, that was all. Shoot I have already said I am getting one for my wife as she runs her phone to 0 often and won't carry the key card.
As an aside, has anyone noticed that according to the FCC docs the 3 fob puts out less power than the X fob. I wonder why that is.
timk225
Active Member
It's worse in two ways.
1. It would be even LESS convenient for me to have to dig the card out of my pocket all the time. It's been in my pocket ever since May and I have to reach in, feel for it, pull it out, no, not the ATM card, put the ATM card back and try again while I have my hands full of supermarket bags and am standing beside my car in the rain, in the parking lot like a jackass, finally find the key card and swipe it to get in.
2. I shouldn't have to. No other car I have ever owned needed a "backup" key card.
Here is the door opening and engine starting procedure, along with all the complications there could possibly be, when I had my 2011 Challenger R/T for 3 years:
1. Put my key fob with 2 other keys attached in my pocket when I get dressed to go somewhere in the morning.
2. At the end of the day, take my keys out of my pants pocket and put them on my computer table.
I'd say then that in your case if they would allow you to unlock the car from both the drivers side pillar as well as the passenger side pillar that the key card would be a more perfect solution.
for me, the fact that the car doesn't auto lock after you exit the vehicle If unlocked with the key card is a problem. I have become spoiled by the Model S auto present and auto lock features and would be disappointed if I had to give them up.
lairdb
Member
Okay, I kinda get that -- I thought you were advocating for a mechanical key. (Which, speaking of 'No other car I have ever owned needed a "backup" key card', is what your Challenger key fob has -- a backup mechanical key.)
Yes, thank you, it was a real question -- I thought timk225 was advocating for a mechanical key, and I don't see how the card is worse than a mechanical key. AFAIK, there are quite a lot of cars out there, including at the higher end of the market, that don't have walk-up-unlock.
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I figured out my problem... in the gear icon in the Locks menu, I did not have the autolock enabled. Now it's working as I expected. Although, I noticed it locks after exit from the car after some delay regardless of whether I've walked away or not.
nobody is doing that...we're saying it's unreliable because tesla doesn't control both ends of it. they have no way of making sure that the stack is the same on both sides because of the hundreds (thousands?) of different phone manufacturers and operating systems that are out there. it's not the technology itself, its the fragmentation of android (to go along with iOS as another completely separate operating system) in particular that is the problem.
diamond.g
Active Member
Unlocked when you approach it? The car's mirrors should be folded in and should not unlock on approach until you actually open the door. Unless there is an option to disable that behavior - I thought Tesla made that change and it wasn't optional.
