As the title states. I have a Model Y that I leave at my vacation condo for myself and my family to use. It frequently sits for a month or two at a time without driving. The past few years I haven't had any issues. I leave it at 50% and plugged in with the normal mobile connector. I most recently drove the car in late February and set up my phone as the phone key and did all the software updates to get it up to date. I somehow lost my phone key connection in my app (I signed out and back in and it still not reconnecting) Now when I am on my car in the tesla app, I have lost all ability to set my charge level, security settings, etc. Is there any way I can remotely disable the Phone Key so that I can get these controls back in the app?
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Vacation Condo Vehicle; Lost Phone Key connection, now can't control charging/security/etc
- Thread starter TonyJames
- Start date
Phone as key settings dont have anything to do with remotely connecting to the car to perform these functions. Phone as key is a bluetooth local connection to the car. You dont need the phone setup as a key in order to do the things you are mentioning. You can even remote start the car without the phone being setup for the phone as key function.
What it sounds like to me is that your car itself has lost connection to the internet. Those functions require the car being able to reach Teslas servers. I have no idea how you have your car connected at your vacation home, but if you connected it to your vacation home wifi, and that went down, that could cause what you are experiencing.
My initial thought with no other information is the above... that you have your car setup on your vacation homes wifi, and that wifi is down so the car cant reach Tesla's servers (it wont try to swap to cellular if it has a wifi connection, at least I dont think it will).
If you have the car connected to that homes wifi, and you have the ability to troubleshoot that wifi connection, start with that, would be my suggestion. It definitely isnt "phone as key" though.
hmm that is certainly possible. I have my car connected to the building's wifi now (condo, car in the parking garage, but wifi is available in common spaces) It used to be on cellular only (previous years) until it bothered me I couldn't do the updates over cellular so I put it on the building wifi. The other thing I'm thinking about is that I have a car cover on it now and perhaps it's interfering with the cell service, but that would be a huge coincidence because it's been working fine for the past 2+ months with it on. I'm betting on wifi being the issue, but confused why it's not failing over to cellular. I might have someone in the area that can drive to the car and see what it's saying on the screen.
Thank you
Thank you
I disagree with this statement. I agree that the phone key operates via bluetooth direct to the car while the app functions go through internet via Tesla server to the car.
However, what I see between my two phones and my iPad, all where I have the Tesla app installed and can connect to the car, is that I can only control charging via my phone that is set up as my key. My iPad, which is not set up as a key, can connect to the car, I can see the current state of the car and SOC, but I cannot reset the SOC, schedule charging, or any of the type of control functions which is what I understand that @TonyJames is asking about.
This is quite different from my old mid-2016 MS90D which did not have the phone key capability. There I was able to control all the charging details via either of my phones or my iPad. That was important for me as I spent about 4 years on assignment overseas and would use my iPad to remotely manage charging on my car back at my home as I would be away for roughly 3 months at a time. Now with my new 2023 MS LR that has phone key capability, the capability of the app to manage some of these charging settings is only enabled if the device is configured as a phone key.
Thats interesting. maybe something changed and I havent paid attention. I have an android phone with the tesla app on it but not setup as a key and I used to be able to control everything with it, but I havent checked in at least a year or so.
Exactly my problem. My Model X which is my DD has phone key setup and I can see everything. The frustrating things are that 1) I did set up Phone Key successfully a few months ago, 2) I was able to see my car a few days ago and to my knowledge, nothing changed, 3) now I can't control anything about the car.
It still could be the internet connection, so hard to know without eyes on the car.
silentsnow31802
Member
I believe something has changed recently.
I have a car on my account that is not used by me so phone key is not setup. I used to have full control over it. Remote start, charge level adjust, and other things. Not too long ago I checked the car and most of the controls are gone. I can no longer remotely unlock or start the car. Even when standing right next to it.
OP is probably having the same issue. Lost phone key so lost ability to do a lot of things remotely.
EVRider-FL
Well-Known Member
Yes, Tesla changed the app last year so that certain control features are disabled if the device is not configured as a phone key. You can set up the device as a phone key to get those features, then disable the phone key setting but keep all the features. That’s what I had to do on my iPad.
I also had set my iPad up as a phone key, so had controls on it, but then turned phone key off. Now with phone key off I no longer have any of the controls. So I find it curious if you still have controls available on your iPad even though you have phone key turned off.
@TonyJames - If you open the app on your phone do you see it connect and show you the current SOC and location of the car? If it does, then the car have internet connectivity. It you don't see current SOC and location, then yes, something would seem to be an issue where your car does not have internet connection or has gone totally off-line for some reason.
If I could get someone physically to the car with a normal Tesla card key, can I have them set up their phone as the phone key and then disable phone key in the car? If so what is the process for disabling the phone key? I will have to be walking a 70+ year old non Tesla driver over FaceTime through this process so I’d love to know what I’m looking for.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Any help would be greatly appreciated
You can not change the SOC setting, you cannot manually start charging, you can not unlock doors, etc. All you see is what the photo posted by @TonyJames shows.
EVRider-FL
Well-Known Member
How did you turn off the phone key? After I set it up, I disabled it under the Security & Drivers section of the app, and I still have my controls. App version 4.33.0 on iOS. I did NOT delete the phone key in the car under Controls > Locks.
Let's talk wifi troubleshooting. I've done a lot of it over years as an 'IT Professional'. Why might wifi suddenly fail on your car? Here are some reasons:
1. Someone changed the wifi password - perhaps a new router installed.
2. Wifi antenna damaged (unlikely)
3. Wifi range was marginal before, and now someone has a big truck parked between you and wifi router. Or someone moved the wifi router.
4. Someone brought in a new wifi router closer to your car than the old one, and its signal is overwhelming the desired router. (Unlikely, as the router should channel-hop to find least-used channels.
5. Wifi router turned off - power failure, someone tripped over cord, router broke, etc.
In a commercial installation, you have multiple wifi routers in a mesh such that you can connect to any of them (same password) and roam between them. However, if the one closest to your car is down, everyone else may have wifi except the devices in that garage.
Unfortunately for you, figuring out what's actually going on usually means being on site with smartphone and a wifi analyze app running. (There are many fee apps to show wifi signals). The first thing needed here is to actually confirm a valid wifi signal, and then make a connection to it (password issues).
What can be done remotely? If you don't have a lot of tech skills, maybe the best thing is to contact a neighbor there and ask if they have had any wifi issues lately.
1. Someone changed the wifi password - perhaps a new router installed.
2. Wifi antenna damaged (unlikely)
3. Wifi range was marginal before, and now someone has a big truck parked between you and wifi router. Or someone moved the wifi router.
4. Someone brought in a new wifi router closer to your car than the old one, and its signal is overwhelming the desired router. (Unlikely, as the router should channel-hop to find least-used channels.
5. Wifi router turned off - power failure, someone tripped over cord, router broke, etc.
In a commercial installation, you have multiple wifi routers in a mesh such that you can connect to any of them (same password) and roam between them. However, if the one closest to your car is down, everyone else may have wifi except the devices in that garage.
Unfortunately for you, figuring out what's actually going on usually means being on site with smartphone and a wifi analyze app running. (There are many fee apps to show wifi signals). The first thing needed here is to actually confirm a valid wifi signal, and then make a connection to it (password issues).
What can be done remotely? If you don't have a lot of tech skills, maybe the best thing is to contact a neighbor there and ask if they have had any wifi issues lately.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
That's interesting, for my android phone this is not the case at least for older versions. In fact one of the touted features of Teslas is that if you lose your keys you can install an app on a third party phone and remote unlock and remote start it in an emergency. Maybe they changed this recently.
I should note with all the talk about iPads, Tesla recently discontinued tablet support in Android, they may also have reduced functionality on iPads. Did anyone try on an iPhone and have the same thing happen (no controls if phone not set as phone key)?
I totally get the WiFi troubleshooting part of this equation. However, I was able to talk to a neighbor on the ground and they were able to unplug my car from the wall and now my car shows it’s not plugged in. If I didn’t have any type of connectivity, how would my app now know the car is now unplugged? Also strange my range is slowly dying as if sentry mode was on. (Covered outdoor parking garage so likely not cabin overheat protection)
I’m not discounting WiFi being a contributing factor (or maybe still the only!) just trying to troubleshoot from afar. I have a somewhat more tech savvy person in the area in the next day or so. I will try and send them access to my car via the app/sharing.
I’m not discounting WiFi being a contributing factor (or maybe still the only!) just trying to troubleshoot from afar. I have a somewhat more tech savvy person in the area in the next day or so. I will try and send them access to my car via the app/sharing.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
I don't think that will help. You want control on your phone, not theirs, so you would need your device at the car.
You can read the manual here. There is no such thing as "disable phone key" in general. You can delete a certain phone key, but that wouldn't suddenly put the car into a different mode and make your phone controls start working again.
Model Y Owner's Manual | Tesla
Learn about the types of keys that your vehicle uses to lock, unlock and drive.
www.tesla.com
Some obvious things to try if you haven't already:
Disable Bluetooth so the app stops trying to set your phone as phone key.
Toggle the "Phone Key" setting under "Security and Drivers"
Reboot your phone
Disconnect your phone from Wi-Fi and connect it to a data connection (I have found sometimes the app can't connect properly to the car when phone is on WiFi)
Disable any built in VPN on your phone
Log out and log in to app. Force close and reopen.
Update the app (last resort, as this might make matters worse)
Clear cache on app (again may make matters worse)
You can also have someone reboot the car if it is a car side thing.
Edit, it seems a recent update did change the behavior, now when the phone is not set up as a phone key, you lose most controls for IOS (I personally think this is a horrible change, but then it may be because of some security reasons perhaps some bad actors getting logins and messing with people's cars):
But presumably your device was already set up as a phone key, so that shouldn't apply to you.
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^^^Thanks for the tips. Yes I had my car setup as a Phone Key from my last visit where I set it up and it worked fine. I've been periodically checking on the car because a family member left the SOC at like 70%+ so I toggled on sentry mode to intentionally drain the battery down to my normal 50% while in "storage mode". Now it's just draining more and more each day and I can't seem to get it started. I think I have convinced my neighbour to go over in the next day or so. Does the android app do the same thing? My work phone is android and I never thought to try that...
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