Tesla owner gets stranded after forgetting keys, losing cell service

[Skipdd]

Fast forward to some point in the future, when level 5 autonomy is widely available. And people are using cars as a service (CaaS). How will the car you summon to take you somewhere know you are the "authorized" user? Will you have an ability to restart the car if for some reason it turns off during your trip. Presumably the technology to do this will happen at some point...because it will be needed. So eventually you won't need keys to "start/drive." For now, agree with others, it's silly to go w/o them.

Just another perspective..

 

[NikeWings]

Biometrics baby!

 

[Andyw2100]

Fast forward to some point in the future, when level 5 autonomy is widely available. And people are using cars as a service (CaaS). How will the car you summon to take you somewhere know you are the "authorized" user? Will you have an ability to restart the car if for some reason it turns off during your trip. Presumably the technology to do this will happen at some point...because it will be needed. So eventually you won't need keys to "start/drive." For now, agree with others, it's silly to go w/o them.

Just another perspective..

xkcd: Driving

 

[zambono]

From Tesla owner gets stranded in the desert after relying on phone to start the car

Even if you own a Tesla, you should still carry your car keys at all times.

Tesla owner, Las Vegas investor and entrepreneur Ryan Negri learned that the hard way as he got stranded with his Tesla six miles from home near Red Rock Canyon, Nevada. Negri used the Tesla mobile app to start the car at home, and didn't bring his keys; but when he had to stop and restart the car to adjust a dog seat, there was no cell service, so the start-with-phone method was useless.

"Need to restart the car now, but, with no cell service, my phone can't connect to the car to unlock it. Even with cell service, the car would also need cell service to receive the signal to unlock," Negri described the event on Instagram.

To start the car, Negri's wife Amy had to walk 2 miles to get cell service, then call a friend to take her home and pick up car keys.

Negri told Mashable via a message that he was aware that the mobile app won't start the car without cell signal, but he simply forgot about the poor cell signal in the vicinity.

"Forgot when you get out of the drivers seat, you have to re-initiate the sequence to unlock keyless driving. After I adjusted the dogs bed, I got back in and I had access to the cars display panel and all options besides to drive! I could even play music from my phone because my phone was synced via Bluetooth," he said.

And even though everything ended well, it was still a pretty dangerous situation. "We got out of the car and waited on the side, because it was a thin 2 lane road and it just didn't feel safe. Something worse could have happened," Negri told us.

While taking your car keys when you go for a drive seems like quite an obvious precaution measure, the technology that makes our lives easier can sometimes make us forget the simplest of things. Sure, it's nice to be able to unlock and start your Tesla with a phone, but car keys are still a very valid addition to your pocket necessities.

While acknowledging that not taking the keys was definitely his fault, Negri suggested that Tesla should add a password-protected way to start the car from the mobile app even when there's no signal.

I heard this idiot criticized Tesla for not knowing how the mobile app works, or mobile service for that matter. There are many posts in TMC of known dead spots

 

[zambono]

It wasn't long ago that Americans crossed the country in wagon trains, traveling for months without a link back to society, facing peril at every turn—quite literally relying on raw courage, wits, and resolve to merely survive.

Have we really become such a society of helpless, pampered infants that this event is viewed as anything other than "doofus forgets his keys and gets locked out?"

Let's not forget the doofie who run into walls and living rooms