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Is it possible to use a phone’s hotspot?

it is possible, but -- in it's current form at least -- kind of buggy.

once upon a time you could easily weather your tesla to your hotspot but some hackers were able to gain control of a car thru the wifi connection so Tesla placed some limits on this. the rest of the board members can tell you a bit more about this b/c i'm fuzzy on the details.

generally what happens today is that if you are in park and tethered the connection will break a few seconds after you drive away. it is still possible to tether long distance but requires a bit of patience and is hit-or-miss. in my experience, if you continue to download data through the tethered connection without too much of a break, said connection will be maintained. on Columbus day I stayed tethered for around an hour and a half driving home from my summer home and I downloaded a software update in the process. so I can confirm it is possible.

unfortunately, downloading slacker songs does not pull enough data to maintain a connection long term. i'm not sure if Spotify is more data intensive but will be running tests over the next few weeks to see.

it's buggy and my not be a workable solution for many.. but it can work.
 
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Is it possible to use a phone’s hotspot?

Yes, you can hotspot your phone and connect your Tesla to it. I had the unfortunate lose of internet due to a cut cable by road crew the same day I got V10 update notice. I had to hotspot my phone and did the software download that way. worked without issue.

As for hackers able to access your hotspot via WiFi just put a password on it like any other WiFi setup.
 
Yes, you can hotspot your phone and connect your Tesla to it. I had the unfortunate lose of internet due to a cut cable by road crew the same day I got V10 update notice. I had to hotspot my phone and did the software download that way. worked without issue.

As for hackers able to access your hotspot via WiFi just put a password on it like any other WiFi setup.
The concern was the car auto joining malicious networks with names likely to be saved like “Tesla Guest”
 
Yes, you can hotspot your phone and connect your Tesla to it. I had the unfortunate lose of internet due to a cut cable by road crew the same day I got V10 update notice. I had to hotspot my phone and did the software download that way. worked without issue.

As for hackers able to access your hotspot via WiFi just put a password on it like any other WiFi setup.

cool i was thinking of using my phones hotspot when and if Tesla makes only watching youtube/netflix via wifi connection.