Tesla car owners report server-related issues, complain of getting locked out of vehicles

On Friday, Some Tesla owners reported on social media platforms that they were locked out from their vehicles and further experienced a server-related fault in their company's phone app. Drivers became impatient as they could not use their Tesla app to unlock or start their electric cars, the NPR news website reported.  After Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk came to know about the issue, the disruption was repaired within hours. 

The automobiles of the Tesla company are equipped with edge-cutting technology, wherein one feature enables the user's car to operate using a smartphone. This effectively makes the need for keys to be insignificant. Yet, they might be needed until a server fault occurs. Further, drivers from all across the United States, Denmark, Germany, as well as the United Kingdom reported the difficulties they are facing while using the Tesla app, indicating that the problem occurred globally, NPR reported. 

Elon Musk's response to the complaints

Following a complaint report, Elon Musk has personally replied to a driver from South Korea, writing on Twitter, "Checking." As per BBC, Musk later stated that the Tesla app was again returning online. Tesla's CEO, tweeted late Friday night that the issues were being fixed and claimed that the problem was due to network load. In the tweet, he has written, “Should be coming back online now. Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic.” He even apologised and wrote, “we will take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.” 

500 Tesla car owners complained about the app error

Furthermore, a huge number of complaints were seen on social media. As per the outage tracking site DownDetector, roughly 500 users had reported a problem on the app around 16:40 ET (21:40 GMT) on Friday. There were slightly over 60 complaints of an issue five hours later, BBC reported. 

Meanwhile, Stuart Masson, editor of the website The Car Expert, told the BBC that the application of Tesla is not just the only way to have accessibility to the vehicles. "There will be a secondary mechanism to get in or out of the car beyond the app, the difficulty will come for drivers if they are not carrying it. Technology makes things convenient, but relies on a server working 100% of the time." 

Apart from carrying keys to unlock a vehicle, as per Tesla's website, Users may contact roadside assistance, when they are locked out from their car or unable to connect to the Tesla app. However, the simplest solution for drivers is always to switch to utilising the vehicle's key fob or key card. 

In addition to this, according to the car news website Jalopnik, a Tesla user in California complained that he could not move his electric car into neutral after it stop working in the middle of a highway in September, NBC News reported. 

(Image: AP/ Twitter/ @tesla)