Tesla owners around the world couldn’t unlock their vehicles on Nov. 19 due to a server issue.
Electrek reports that Tesla owners in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia discovered they could no longer connect to their vehicles via the company’s mobile app. Some could still unlock their cars using the phone’s Bluetooth connection, but others couldn’t access the vehicles at all.
“The Tesla mobile app is an important part of the Tesla ownership experience,” Electrek says. “Phones are used as a key to unlock and start Tesla vehicles and Tesla owners can access a lot of controls through the mobile app.”
BleepingComputer says multiple Tesla owners complained about not being able to unlock their vehicles because of this server outage. They should have been able to use their key fobs, but for people whose key fobs are broken or malfunctioning, Tesla’s mobile app was their only option.
The app seemed to go back online on the evening of Nov. 19. Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted:
This isn’t a new problem for Tesla. Some of its customers were locked out of their vehicles in September 2019, and the company experienced similar issues in September 2020. Perhaps the bigger surprise is that this outage occurred in mid-November instead of some time in September.
