In addition to battery fires and fires that are difficult to extinguish (see 1, 2), various unfortunate incidents and issues have been and continue to be reported about Tesla Electric Vehicles (EVs). Mechanical problems as well as software problems don’t seem uncommon (see 1, 2) and some have led to recalls (see 1, 2) and/or bad reviews. In August, the U.S. government started investigating problems associated with the auto-pilot feature (see 1, 2). In September a lawsuit was filed by police officers injured by a Tesla being operated in auto-pilot. Over the weekend, Tesla owners were locked out of their cars due to reportedly a crashed app.
Tesla Owners Left Stranded In Cold After Smartphone App Crashes Over Weekend
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…that is, unless you are a Tesla owner stranded in the freezing cold unable to get inside your vehicle.
Tesla owners got a nice early holiday gift this weekend when several owners reported not being able to get into their car due to “500 server errors” popping up on their Tesla smartphone apps.
The error left some owner stranded in the cold over the weekend, StreetInsider wrote on Monday morning.
One Tesla owner from South Korea wrote “Still stuck in Seoul” on Twitter after the error popped up and he didn’t have access to his Tesla.
I’m experiencing 500 server error to connect my @tesla Model 3 on my iOS app in Seoul, S.Korea. Seems like this is a worldwide issue. @elonmusk
— Jaehwan Cho 조재환 (@hohocho) November 19, 2021
Downdetector showed a “large spike in reported Tesla server problems at around 5pm on Friday,” StreetInsider wrote, noting that it was unknown how many Teslas were affected by the outage and exactly how many people wound up locked out of their cars.
Tesla owner Zachary Kiefer was stranded outside of his vehicle for hours, the report said. The app started working again before a AAA assistance tow that he called arrived.
“I was pretty disappointed. They just didn’t seem to care,” he said of Tesla’s customer service.
In response to the outage, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted: “Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic. Apologies, we will take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
Whatever you say, Elon…
Should be coming back online now. Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic.
Apologies, we will take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2021
Article: Smartphone app error locked Tesla owners out of their cars for hours