Tesla drivers left unable to start their cars after outage | Hacker News Reader

Tesla drivers left unable to start their cars after outage

bbc.co.uk

31 pointsedward14 comments

> The app should not be the only way to access the cars though, Stuart Masson, editor of The Car Expert website, told the BBC.

Why did they pick a headline that suggested the cars were completely unusable? Just another example of the BBC's poor tech journalism to be honest.

I assume there is a proper manual key-based unlock that would've enabled Tesla owners to use their cars.

> Technology makes things convenient, but relies on a server working 100% of the time.

Some tech does, but that's far from a universal design element intrinsic to all things "technology". It's a trade-off between convenience and reliability/security.

Did they edit the article after you posted this comment? Even if they did, I can see how the tone of “should not be” (which you can’t really hear in text, of course) would mean something different than the way you understood it. This is how that sentence appears to me:

> The app is not the only way to access the cars though, Stuart Masson, editor of The Car Expert website, told the BBC.

Yes, absurd. The app “starts” the car via P2P Bluetooth, not over some HTTPS push notification.

If you want to remotely set the AC or remotely view the Sentry Mode cameras, then that’s server-based and did not work last night.

Tesla does seem to attract drivers with more money than sense. First there are the reports of various crashes where the human driver was not paying attention and was fully trusting software to drive their car, and now you have people who are fully trusting their mobile phone to give them the ability to use their car.

If someone drops and breaks their phone, and that's the only way they have access to their car, they are stuck. And accidents like that happen, even when we're careful. Thus, leaving the house with the phone as your only point of access to the car is just playing a numbers game - eventually, you will get stuck. That failure point has nothing to do with Tesla at all.

I mean the cars have keys. I carry my Model 3 key (it’s basically a credit card) with me all the time. Rarely ever had to us it, but I just prefer to have my phone. It’s nice carrying zero fobs or metal keys with me, slim wallet and my phone.

Why do owners of Tesla cars need an App to use their car? What is the advantage of needing a central infrastructure + app just to start your car?

They don't, the cars come with (RFID?) key cards that work without a server. These people had left their key cards at home and relied on their phones probably just so they could have thinner wallets. Which is pretty stupid, it means you can't even unlock your car in a basement parking garage with no signal to the car...

Non-tech people don't know that a phone might not work to unlock a car in and underground garage.

Tech people would assume Tesla built this thing to work without network availability. Maybe via Bluetooth with some key exchanges?

This assumption by coder and companies that services are always available is a nightmare. How many sites completely stopped working last time Facebook login went down? I am not saying build for every possible situation but don't assume the service you are relying on is always available.

It's not stupid. The app could easily unlock the car using Bluetooth. Why does it need a server?

Seems very fragile considering how sensitive a phone can be to water, drops, shocks, and battery failure.

Tesla's don't score very highly on reliability

https://insideevs.com/news/549130/consumerreports-tesla-reli...

I agree and I don't understand the point. There might be something that you and I don't see. Anyone has a clue on why it's important to have such a huge infrastructure just to start a Tesla car?

Be glad - you are seeing into the future.

you don't? unless they changed something, they also give you cards you can use to unlock your car.

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