Strange phone key behavior

[SVMike]

A couple of days ago I had a phone key issue. I have had the same Samsung phone for years and it generally works fine.
Drove to work, no issues.
Began L2 charging, no issues.
Went to car at lunch, unplugged, driver door wouldn't open (I could see the screen showing me to tap my key card)
Took my phone out of my pocket, door still doesn't open. (I've found that sometimes this helps)
Used my key card to open the door and I drove off, got lunch, sat in car eating and started a podcast on my phone and switched my audio from FM radio to Bluetooth, no problem.
Tried to put the car in drive and it wants my key card...even though my phone was connected and playing audio via BT.
Went back to work.
Later, went to my car and everything worked normal...I never disabled and re-enabled BT on my phone or anything.
(It seems once or twice a year I have had to disable then re enabled BT to get the key to work)

Anyone know what is going on or had similar issues?

 

[jjrandorin]

Tried to put the car in drive and it wants my key card...even though my phone was connected and playing audio via BT.

The bluetooth connection for media has nothing (zero) to do with the phone as key functionality, so the fact that your phone was connected and playing media via bluetooth doesnt have any bearing on the connection as a key.

You used the keycard to open the door and drive off, and the the car likely never re connected properly to the phone as a key (the media playing isnt relevant, as I said).

When you say "later it worked properly", thats could be (stress on "could") because the car went to sleep, or because the phone was not backgrounding the tesla app, etc.

 

[SVMike]

The bluetooth connection for media has nothing (zero) to do with the phone as key functionality, so the fact that your phone was connected and playing media via bluetooth doesnt have any bearing on the connection as a key.

Yes, I know that...however I said that just so that it was clear that my phone was working, BT was on and in range. And yet the car never seemed to connect as a "key" in all that time. And without doing anything on my phone (relative to BT) it worked later.
It seems to me to be an issue with the car.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

This often occurs when the phone app has some sort of hiccup, whether it's from an app update, phone update, or some other app that has clobbered the Tesla app background activity somehow.

The solution is just to open the app. No keycard needed. I suspect you did something on your phone in the meantime which unclogged/refreshed the app.

 

[SVMike]

This often occurs when the phone app has some sort of hiccup, whether it's from an app update, phone update, or some other app that has clobbered the Tesla app background activity somehow.

The solution is just to open the app. No keycard needed. I suspect you did something on your phone in the meantime which unclogged/refreshed the app.

Yes, I've had similar glitches every few months where I've opened the app and fixed it.

In this case, as an experiment, I did absolutely nothing on my phone after the failure, except to bring up the lock screen to see the time.

 

[PianoAl]

I occasionally have these glitches.

Here's a trick that I often suggest: When you push in the door handle and it doesn't open, wait. Often, it doesn't open right away, but if you hold the handle in for 10-20 seconds, it opens.

 

[RichAZ/CapeCod]

This often occurs when the phone app has some sort of hiccup, whether it's from an app update, phone update, or some other app that has clobbered the Tesla app background activity somehow.

The solution is just to open the app. No keycard needed. I suspect you did something on your phone in the meantime which unclogged/refreshed the app.

Yeah, on rare occasions my phone was insufficient to get the car to open/start. Opening the Tesla app always sorted things out for me.

Rich

 

[philly4]

It seems to me to be an issue with the car.

While it could be an issue with the car, it is more likely an issue from the phone side. For phone key to work, the Bluetooth on the phone needs to be turned on and a "background process" on the phone needs to be running which controls the phone key's Bluetooth signals. This is most notable with recent updates to the Tesla app where many users have found after rebooting their phones they need to open the Tesla app once before phone key works. This is because the background process doesn't start running (or running correctly) until the Tesla app has been opened after a reboot.

There are several reasons why the phone side could be the culprit. Many Android phones/OSs have battery saving measures that sleep background processes as a way to save battery. The background process could also crash or have some sort of hiccup.

If you find it isn't working again, you can find with fairly high confidence what is the issue. Reboot your phone, open the Tesla app, and retry using phone key. If it then works, it's likely the phone side that is the issue. If it still doesn't work, it's probably something on the car side.

 

[SVMike]

While it could be an issue with the car, it is more likely an issue from the phone side. For phone key to work, the Bluetooth on the phone needs to be turned on and a "background process" on the phone needs to be running which controls the phone key's Bluetooth signals. This is most notable with recent updates to the Tesla app where many users have found after rebooting their phones they need to open the Tesla app once before phone key works. This is because the background process doesn't start running (or running correctly) until the Tesla app has been opened after a reboot.

There are several reasons why the phone side could be the culprit. Many Android phones/OSs have battery saving measures that sleep background processes as a way to save battery. The background process could also crash or have some sort of hiccup.

If you find it isn't working again, you can find with fairly high confidence what is the issue. Reboot your phone, open the Tesla app, and retry using phone key. If it then works, it's likely the phone side that is the issue. If it still doesn't work, it's probably something on the car side.

Thanks for the info.
Just to re-iterate. The phone worked in the morning, not at lunch after changing nothing on the phone except reading emails.
Bluetooth was running and connected to the car for audio. So it does makes sense that the back ground app could have crashed.
But then the phone key worked later without ever running the Tesla app and no phone reboot, etc.
Something similar has happened a couple of times per year and I had previously always opened the Tesla app, correcting it.
This time, as a test I did nothing on the phone between the time it was not working and when it did work.

 

[Dennis Rosche]

Tesla needs to fix this, I dropped my wife off at the hospital today for treatment and when I returned to the car it would not open. I got my key card out and it would not open the car either. I used the unlock feature on the phone app and the car unlocked but then it wanted me to tap the card on the console which i did and it still would not let me drive the car. After about 10 minutes of trying various things it suddenly worked. If the key card won't work then I think its more than a phone problem