Why Can I Honk/Lock the Car but not Connect?

[PianoAl]

It's interesting that even when the app is not connecting to the car, I can still make the car honk, lock, etc. So, why would one thing have trouble connecting but no the other? When the car honks, something physical in the car has gotten the message. Can't that "connection" be used to get the car to wake up?

 

[Resist]

If you look in your phone's Bluetooth settings, you'll see that has several connections to your car. That's why when Tesla had that server outage, people could still use some functions.

 

[poppopmike]

On a related connectivity issue.
The car is in my own garage, charging cable attached. I approach it with my android phone. Try to push the button on the cable. Nothing. But I can pop the trunk, which means the car has recognized me, but only partially - good to open the trunk but not good to disconnect the cable. This has been this way, on and off since I got the car in June 2019. So I got into the habit of popping the trunk, closing it, then going for the charging cable.
Crazy.

 

[jjrandorin]

On a related connectivity issue.
The car is in my own garage, charging cable attached. I approach it with my android phone. Try to push the button on the cable. Nothing. But I can pop the trunk, which means the car has recognized me, but only partially - good to open the trunk but not good to disconnect the cable. This has been this way, on and off since I got the car in June 2019. So I got into the habit of popping the trunk, closing it, then going for the charging cable.
Crazy.

"Hold" the button, dont "push" the button. In the situation you describe, holding the button (not pushing it) will work. I didnt find that out till a few months ago myself, after owning the car since dec 2018. By "hold" I mean 3-4 seconds depressed continuously.

 

[poppopmike]

I meant "Holding", not just depressing. Does not work for me.

 

[PianoAl]

"Hold" the button, dont "push" the button. In the situation you describe, holding the button (not pushing it) will work. I didnt find that out till a few months ago myself, after owning the car since dec 2018. By "hold" I mean 3-4 seconds depressed continuously.

Yes, this is a good trick when opening the door too. Hold the handle in for a few seconds, and it will usually "see" you.

 

[PianoAl]

But does anyone find it strange that it's engineered in such a way that the phone can connect to the car (beep) but not connect to the car (general app connection)?

 

[jrweiss98020]

Not strange at all. The app normally communicates with the car over WiFi, so you can do so from anywhere. However, the Drive functions "Connect" via Bluetooth, which is much shorter range and does not rely on the Internet or Tesla's servers.

 

[PianoAl]

Not strange at all. The app normally communicates with the car over WiFi, so you can do so from anywhere. However, the Drive functions "Connect" via Bluetooth, which is much shorter range and does not rely on the Internet or Tesla's servers.

I'm talking about the functions like showing the correct charge level, location, temps, etc. That is, honk, yes, show charge level, no.

>The app normally communicates with the car over WiFi

When I'm at home and the car is twenty miles away on the road with no WiFi and good cell coverage, the app connects much faster than when it's in my garage with good WiFi and poor cell coverage.

 

[GtiMart]

There might be some features of the app that can go through the direct bluetooth connection. Maybe honk is one of them. For the rest, the mobile application only talks to a Tesla service on the cloud through some REST apis. That cloud service then communicates with the car. If the car sleeps, an SMS is sent to it to wake it up. If the cell signal in the car is poor, it might never receive that SMS.

 

[p4594spa]

There might be some features of the app that can go through the direct bluetooth connection. Maybe honk is one of them. For the rest, the mobile application only talks to a Tesla service on the cloud through some REST apis. That cloud service then communicates with the car. If the car sleeps, an SMS is sent to it to wake it up. If the cell signal in the car is poor, it might never receive that SMS.

I find this happens to me after every software update.

BTW, I want to know how you make a button be sad (depressing). You press a button

 

[Randy-12]

I have read on other threads that those with Android have something called battery optimization.

Try turning off battery optimization for the Tesla App.
Others with different issues say that this helps.

I can't say if it does or not as I'm IOS and don't know Android at all.