Locking and Driving Question

[atvrida92]

Hello everyone! New M3P owner here. Hopefully not a dumb question, but I'm a little concerned about something that happened today..

First time driving the car today, went to discount tire to swap my stock summer tires for winter tires. I get out of the car to walk inside and see the mirrors close and the horn go off so I know the car locked. Discount tire guy asks for the key and I realize I left the card keys at home, so he told me I could just drive it into the bay when ready. I get a text from Discount that my car is in queue. After waiting a while in the lobby, I get a text that my car is being worked on. Thinking that can't be, I turn around and look outside, and to my surprise, my car is not sitting where I parked it, but instead it is in the bay getting tires swapped. At the time I'm thinking that I left my key card on the center console by accident and that's how they were able to get in the car and DRIVE it with it being locked with my phone in my pocket... Well, I get back in the car and notice my key card is not in the center dash. So somehow, while I was sitting inside discount tire approximately 100-150ft (not parked close, more like across the parking lot) someone got into my car and drove it!

Any idea what happened here? Do I have an incorrect setting selected? Do they have a generic key? Does my phone being approximately 125ft away allow the car to be opened and drive!??

Thanks in advance!

 

[stopcrazypp]

Could they have unlocked and moved the car when you weren't too far away (like when you were still walking away)? Even with the car "locked," if your phone key is close enough, they can just pull on the door handle to unlock it again.

The other possibility is you had a door ajar that prevented a lock, but then you said you saw the mirrors fold and horn go off, so that is unlikely to be the case (as that doesn't happen if there is a condition preventing walk away lock from working).
Model 3 Owner's Manual | Tesla

One other possibility is that you (or someone with your account also) accidentally unlocked it with the app, although starting the car would need a second button press (so seems unlikely).

Another possibility is that somehow the location was boosting your bluetooth signal, and given the proximity detection is based on signal strength, it may have thought your phone key was much closer than it actually was.

 

[Stew-2]

PIN to drive is a good idea

 

[Clover]

Posabilities:

1. Gnomes
2. Portal gun
3. I picked it up while you were not looking and carried it. (Don't worry, I set it down nice and wore gloves)
4. They drove it while you were not looking
5. Big oil
6. David Copperfield
7. CIA won't let me discuss it
8. You were still high, niiiiice
9. Chuck Norris
10. New teleport feature (Details TBA soon)

 

[atvrida92]

Stopcrazy, nobody went even close to my car until I had sat in the shop for about 30 minutes. Door wasn't ajar because of the mirrors turning in.. I did play around on the app when I was inside, turning on sentry mode and considered turning on valet mode (didn't because I figured I would drive it in)...

I do wonder if it's my Bluetooth range. My Google pixel 6a seems to pick up Bluetooth signals from all over the place. And even in my house when I'm two stories above my car it says "connected" (I'm in a townhouse and the first floor is the garage, so I'm directly above the car on the third floor). Is there any way to adjust the sensitivity on the car so I have to be closer for it to function?

 

[atvrida92]

PIN to drive is a good idea

I thought about this, but I do appreciate the ability to just get in the car (with my phone) and drive away... I might give the pin a shot though for the time being until I figure this out..

 

[stopcrazypp]

I thought about this, but I do appreciate the ability to just get in the car (with my phone) and drive away... I might give the pin a shot though for the time being until I figure this out..

You can turn off Bluetooth also on your phone. That's what I do by default as I don't normally have bluetooth on in my phone to save battery. Unfortunately there is no setting in car or app to adjust the sensitivity.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

Yeah, the walk-away lock with honking and mirrors folding doesn't mean that it's "locked", it just means that did lock. But it will always be "unlocked" and drivable anytime your phone signal is strong, and there's no visible indication of this status other than within the app.

This is a fundamental drawback to using anyone's random phone as a proximity key. Fossil car makers use precisely calibrated keyfobs to ensure consistent results and those fobs operate in a nice open 125MHz frequency band. But for your phone to work well as a key, Tesla needs to develop range sensitivity calibration tables for every phone imaginable, so you may notice the behavior change with software updates to either your car or your phone. And even still, 2.4GHz Bluetooth is a very crowded band and the signal itself is very sensitive to buildings, cars, rain, people, etc. whereas 125MHz is not.

 

[Mario Veras]

Are you sure your key card was home? What I think happened was that the key card was in the center console and somehow it fell off under the seat. Very easy for this to happen if you just leave the card on the console.

When you walk away, even if you are able to unlock the car, you can’t just drive it. The phone must be very very close or inside the car for it to allow anyone to drive it.

Mine does not unlock unless my phone is literally within a few feet.

 

[Mario Veras]

Yeah, the walk-away lock with honking and mirrors folding doesn't mean that it's "locked", it just means that did lock. But it will always be "unlocked" and drivable anytime your phone signal is strong, and there's no visible indication of this status other than within the app.

This is a fundamental drawback to using anyone's random phone as a proximity key. Fossil car makers use precisely calibrated keyfobs to ensure consistent results and those fobs operate in a nice open 125MHz frequency band. But for your phone to work well as a key, Tesla needs to develop range sensitivity calibration tables for every phone imaginable, so you may notice the behavior change with software updates to either your car or your phone. And even still, 2.4GHz Bluetooth is a very crowded band and the signal itself is very sensitive to buildings, cars, rain, people, etc. whereas 125MHz is not.

I’m going to test that idea. There’s no reason for the car to automatically unlock to someone who pulled the door handle even if it detects your phone. What I consider correct and easily achieved is detecting your phone’s strong Bluetooth signal as a method to detect proximity. Bluetooth dies off rather quickly and the circle where the signal is strong is very small.

You step away from your car by 10 feet and the car should still pick up a weak Bluetooth signal from your phone, but it should not be able to unlock if someone pulls the door handle. Again, this is how I think it should work, not how Tesla designed it. So I’m going to test that idea.

There’s no need to design a special proximity system for this. If the car picks up a very strong Bluetooth signal from your phone, that should mean your literally standing next to it and doors should be accessible to anyone pulling the handle.

I used to own a Prius Prime and I was amazed how accurate it worked with the key fob. But as you stated, that is a much better system. I would step away inches from one of the doors and it would not unlock if the handle was pulled. It would only open whichever door it detected within a few inches. So if I moved from the driver door to the trunk, the driver door would not open but the trunk would open. I don’t think this level of accuracy can be achieved with Bluetooth but something relatively safe can be done.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

Yeah my Lexus fob is so perfectly sensitive that the engine won’t start if the fob is on the roof or even held out the driver’s window. But sometimes I’ll get into my Tesla with my iPhone 13 in my pocket and it’ll detect my wife’s iPhone 12 inside the house and select her profile instead.

It’s just a much harder problem to do precise proximity detection with 2.4GHz because that frequency is extremely sensitive to blockage from your body and has a nasty tendency to bounce around off everything. The old 125MHz fob is more like FM radio in that the waves just pass straight thru most things.

 

[PianoAl]

Here's what I would do. Go with a friend to the tire place and reconstruct the situation. Park in the same place, go into the lobby, check for locking, and sit where you sat before. Have your friend go and try to open your car door.

You could do a similar experiment somewhere else.

 

[father_of_6]

6. David Copperfield

It's #6 for sure. Don't waste any more time on this mystery. It's always Copperfield.

 

[father_of_6]

I also appreciate the simplicity of just getting in the car and driving without the need for a physical key, but I enabled PIN to drive early on in my ownership after having read some horror stories.

One owner's car was stolen because his bedroom was above his garage, so his phone was in close proximity to the car. Presumably the garage door was left open, otherwise he may have heard it.

Anyways, he had no clue his car was gone until he received a phone call from the police that they found his car abandoned on the road a few miles from his home.

I'm guessing that the thief made the mistake of opening the door, which threw it into park, and without the phone key present the thief was unable to get it back into drive.

Once you get used to typing a PIN it's minimal hassle for the peace of mind it provides.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I also appreciate the simplicity of just getting in the car and driving without the need for a physical key, but I enabled PIN to drive early on in my ownership after having read some horror stories.

One owner's car was stolen because his bedroom was above his garage, so his phone was in close proximity to the car. Presumably the garage door was left open, otherwise he may have heard it.

Anyways, he had no clue his car was gone until he received a phone call from the police that they found his car abandoned on the road a few miles from his home.

I'm guessing that the thief made the mistake of opening the door, which threw it into park, and without the phone key present the thief was unable to get it back into drive.

Once you get used to typing a PIN it's minimal hassle for the peace of mind it provides.

For me, turning off Bluetooth on the phone is easier and prevents people from getting into the car in the first place.

 

[Mario Veras]

I just think that Tesla can easily improve the security of Bluetooth by reducing the response threshold of the car to the intensity of the Bluetooth signal. Easy fix with software update in my opinion.

 

[father_of_6]

I just think that Tesla can easily improve the security of Bluetooth by reducing the response threshold of the car to the intensity of the Bluetooth signal. Easy fix with software update in my opinion.

When I first got my car, phone as key worked flawless for 2 weeks... then I installed an update and it was very unreliable for a very long time. It's back to working fairly reliable at this time, not sure when that happened.

I suspect this is tricky, and knowing how far away someone is based on signal strength might be phone model dependent. Probably they could build their own matrix of signal strengths based on the signal strength *while driving* for a duration of time, since the car would know that the phone is inside.

My guess is... the software devs at Tesla are spread thin, and there are many things they could (and definitely should... e.g. manual wipers) improve, but the priority of a given feature is subjective.

Crossing fingers they leave phone as key alone... it's actually working right now for me.

 

[father_of_6]

I just think that Tesla can easily improve the security of Bluetooth by reducing the response threshold of the car to the intensity of the Bluetooth signal. Easy fix with software update in my opinion.

Also, there are still edge cases to this. The driver could be on their couch in an NYC brownstone next to a window, with the car just 10 feet away parked at the curb.

If you could know the exact distance based on signal strength, and you tweak it down to several feet, then you introduce a problem due to the polling threshold. The car is only polling for that Bluetooth signal every X seconds. I've had *many* experiences standing at the car pulling the door handle for 10 seconds. I'd rather it unlocks at 30 feet and I get in and type a PIN number.

 

[Mario Veras]

Also, there are still edge cases to this. The driver could be on their couch in an NYC brownstone next to a window, with the car just 10 feet away parked at the curb.

If you could know the exact distance based on signal strength, and you tweak it down to several feet, then you introduce a problem due to the polling threshold. The car is only polling for that Bluetooth signal every X seconds. I've had *many* experiences standing at the car pulling the door handle for 10 seconds. I'd rather it unlocks at 30 feet and I get in and type a PIN number.

The polling interval can be left alone. That’s not the problem. I have had the issue where I’ve pulled the door handle and the car won’t unlock but that has to do with my phone not waking up fast enough. I was able to fix this by changing the Location Services permission for the Tesla app to “Always” instead of “While Using”. I haven’t had that issue anymore after the change.

 

[father_of_6]

I was able to fix this by changing the Location Services permission for the Tesla app to “Always” instead of “While Using”. I haven’t had that issue anymore after the change.

Is that iPhone? I don't have that option on Android. Other apps have that option (Location "Always"), but the Tesla app doesn't... maybe it doesn't ask for that permission, so it's not an option.