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Obvious features/functions that weren't obvious to you

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I'm probably going to get chastised for this, but I don't come to a complete stop before shifting from Drive to Reverse, or Reverse to Drive at low speeds. Not exactly an obvious "features/functions" that weren't obvious to me, but happy the vehicle allows me to do it.

Old habits die hard.

Does that even matter in an EV? Wouldn't you be just gaining a split second of regen by doing that vs risk of wear in an ICE car's transmission?
 
Just tested this today- not sure if this applies to android, but with iOS, you need to have the Tesla app running to open the door. If you’ve recently restarted your phone, it won’t open the door until you open the app. Maybe obvious but I finally had the car not open for me after a month of flawless performance and it’s because I recently restarted my phone. It’s not enough to have the app installed- it must be running in the background
Just tested it this morning - restarted my phone and did not open the Tesla app. Car still unlocked with no problems.

On iOS it's impossible to keep apps running in the background.
 
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Sadly Homelink is an extremely basic protocol that has no way to include door status.

Actually the protocol may allow that. On our 2017 Lexus ES there are small Up and Down lights in the rear view mirror that blink red while the door is moving in the specific direction and the appropriate light turns green once the door has either fully closed or fully opened. It does not seem the blinks and solid green light are based on elapsed time or guess but rather on the actual state of the garage door as the button to open and close is the same.
 
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Tap the T logo once, open the Easter egg tray at the top and tap the icon of Starman. That will open the sketch pad.
Is there a way not to have the Easter egg tray open itself every time I click on the T? I usually don't go there for Easter eggs so don't know why they would open that every time. What's the point of a tray that is always open? Bad design.
 
Is there a way not to have the Easter egg tray open itself every time I click on the T? I usually don't go there for Easter eggs so don't know why they would open that every time. What's the point of a tray that is always open? Bad design.
It didn't always open automatically. For a release or two, it stayed closed and you had to "discover" it. I guess some people couldn't figure it out so they changed it to always open. I really wish it was not automatic.
 
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Just tested it this morning - restarted my phone and did not open the Tesla app. Car still unlocked with no problems.

On iOS it's impossible to keep apps running in the background.

That's interesting. I'll have to test it again.

That's not true about keeping apps in the background- if you double click the home button you can see all the apps that are currently running. If they are actually doing anything is up to the individual apps.
 
That's interesting. I'll have to test it again.

You're right- I restarted and it hesitated, but still opened. More data points needed. Also interesting, when I restarted my iphone, all the apps that were open before I restarted were still there!

Also, I manually closed all the open apps and the car still opened. Ignore what I said earlier- thought I had a possible solution.
 
That's interesting. I'll have to test it again.

That's not true about keeping apps in the background- if you double click the home button you can see all the apps that are currently running. If they are actually doing anything is up to the individual apps.
This is a common misunderstanding. In iOS, that action is not (and has never been) showing you all apps that are running. It is merely showing you previously used apps, ordered by most recent to the right. Some of them may be running in the background (and only things like audio-playing, navigation, etc apps are ever allowed to run in the background with iOS). There is no way to tell from this list of apps which are still running, which are still loaded (ready to be used again without reloading) and which were merely used and now unloaded. (Side note: it’s not helpful to your battery life to make a habit of dismissing all apps since almost all of them are not still running and you will unnecessarily force them to be reloaded the next time you launch them.)
 
I tried to use auto open for a few days and gave up- it just didn't work reliably for me. As most things with this car, it will probably improve over time. I find it not that hard to hit the popup when it appears when I'm close.
I find it is quite reliable. I would echo what someone already said – you need to change the location and/or distance setting for where you want it to send the open signal. You don’t want the location to be right at the door.
 
This is a common misunderstanding. In iOS, that action is not (and has never been) showing you all apps that are running. It is merely showing you previously used apps, ordered by most recent to the right. Some of them may be running in the background (and only things like audio-playing, navigation, etc apps are ever allowed to run in the background with iOS). There is no way to tell from this list of apps which are still running, which are still loaded (ready to be used again without reloading) and which were merely used and now unloaded. (Side note: it’s not helpful to your battery life to make a habit of dismissing all apps since almost all of them are not still running and you will unnecessarily force them to be reloaded the next time you launch them.)

A couple things.

1. In settings, you can select which apps can refresh in the background - Setting > General > Background App Refresh. Make sure Tesla is set to allow.
2. Also in Settings, under Battery - it shows you which apps are refreshing in the background. (but yes, it is not necessarily showing which are refreshing actively).

Having said that, I have forced closed the app and still manage to get in the car as it is the Bluetooth connection although I think my calendar does not update with the app closed (unless it is a coincidence).

20181106_200407000_iOS.png
20181106_200934000_iOS.jpg
 
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Mostly described correctly. The apps that show when you bring up the list of "running" apps on the iPhone are those that have an open state. So they will go back to where they were the last time they opened. They will unload when enough newer apps have been opened and need that space. But reloading and going directly to where they were frozen is FASTER and better for the battery than having the app initialize on opening and run the shutdown procedure when you force them to quit. That's why Apple doesn't want people forcing apps closed as a habit. They know it will knock their advertised battery life if people are avoiding one of their battery saving strategies. I know it can be useful to force quit *if you are having issues*, but the iPhone is faster and uses less juice if you just flip away from apps you are done using for now.

As to why the car opens when the app is forced closed, I believe that's the new Bluetooth stack we have had for a few operating systems now, I think registered Bluetooth devices are communicating from right after boot. I no longer have to launch the Kevo app to get into my cabin either. It used to be an ordeal to get the phone and the lock to talk, but these days I can just walk up to the house and touch the lock. The phone talks to it and the lock opens. Living the dream.

-Randy
 
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Ugh, that is so counter intuitive to my "turn the light off when you leave the room" self. Almost as hard as plugging my car in every few days to charge when I'm still above 50%. The future is hard...

That's because the room has a motion detector now. When you leave, the current state is remembered, and doesn't pull any power. When you return, the light setting are recovered and everything goes back to the way it was.

As opposed to restating an app, where it's like checking into a hotel.

The mobile device model is different from the classic Windows/Linux app models. With the classic mode, a application has to be loaded into ram from the hard drive and executed. With a mobile device, there is no hard drive, so the application is executed in place.
 
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I couldn't find any mention of this in the manual anywhere. Today, while I was driving at highway speeds and occasionally pressing the left stalk button in for a single wipe (because the auto wipers get totally confused in light snow), I accidentally pressed the right stalk button instead. There was a chirp of an alarm and, thankfully, nothing else. The car didn't try to put itself in park or even slow down in any noticeable way. Later, when I could safely try it without anyone behind me, I tried it again and saw that the screen was saying "Emergency brake activated" (or something to that effect). I found that a quick press of the button enables the emergency brake, but thankfully only for a split second. When you hold the button in, the e-brake will apply lightly at first, and then rapidly build to a powerful deceleration.

I just thought I would share this, as it could be handy to know in an emergency if the main brake system fails. Per the manual, "the parking brake operates on the rear wheels only, and is independent of the pedal-operated brake system." It's obvious from using the car and reading the manual that this button applies the brake to park, but it was not obvious at all (to me at least) that the button could be used in this manner while driving.
 
I'm probably going to get chastised for this, but I don't come to a complete stop before shifting from Drive to Reverse, or Reverse to Drive at low speeds. Not exactly an obvious "features/functions" that weren't obvious to me, but happy the vehicle allows me to do it.

Old habits die hard.
Lol! I don't even like rolling backwards for a split second while in Drive, I can't imagine doing this on the regular. I'm sure the behavior is fine though. Does it even have a chance to activate brake hold? If not you'd probably save wear and tear on the brakes and brake pads ;)
 
I discovered "player park" today :)
Assume you've discovered by now parallel auto park works considerably better with v9. But did you know auto park also works on perpendicular spots?! I discovered it by accident. Slowly pulled past a spot and noticed the auto park button when I put it in reverse. The three point turn was amazing and it flawlessly puts you in reverse player park position AKA super charger style.
 
A new tip found in v9:

Since v9 map moved the button of switch forward position to top right, it might be more clumsy to pinpoint and click when driving.
Especially when you zoom in/out the map then you want it to back to forward position.

I found you can just double click the title area of navigation to have the same effect of that button.
1st click is to zoom out and show whole route, 2nd click is to back to forward navigation.
So a quick double click will do the trick.

IMG_1276.jpg
 
Not necessarily a feature, but it makes me smile. I discovered today that hard acceleration is enough force to trigger my phone's "lift to wake" feature when it is sitting on the charging pad :).

More of a feature, I also discovered that when auto high beams turn on in a situation where I don't want them on, I can push the left stalk away from me and they will turn off without disabling the feature in the menu. I don't know yet if they just turn off for a few moments, or for the remainder of that drive. I'll try to update this when I have time to figure that out. The owner's manual mentions the opposite scenario (where they're enabled but off and I want them on), but I didn't see mention of this.