Photo: Tesla/Twitter
On November 19, Tesla owners started noticing that their Tesla mobile phone app was not working. They were getting "500 server error" all over the world. When a customer in South Korea complained about it on Twitter, Elon Musk said he would check. On November 20, the Tesla CEO confirmed the issue and apologized.
According to Musk, Tesla “may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic.” Unfortunately, he did not explain the exact cause for the outage, but it has to do with a server fail. Even the most fervorous Musk followers said this could not happen, such as Whole Mars Catalog.
Some of the affected customers said that the problem left them stranded, with no way to get into their cars and drive them. The Tesla app can replace the key fob or key card that allows people to activate their EVs. For the customers that had only their phones with them, it was not an option. Tesla fans stressed these owners could have tried to open and drive their cars via Bluetooth, but it seems that many did not manage to do that.
That was enough for a lot of trolling to follow. Mike Levine, Ford’s North America Product Communications Manager, took a Tesla fan tweet that made fun of Ford’s SecuriCode to ridicule the Tesla app outage. Levine said it would not leave anyone locked out of their vehicles, for example. Other tweets mocked what Tesla says about not being a carmaker, but a tech company. They said it is a lousy one after the outage. Others said this is why redundancy is fundamental.
Although there are alternative methods for opening and driving a Tesla, the fact that the outage was worldwide and that many drivers trust the Tesla app as their only resource for entering their cars caused a dent in the company’s reputation. If people have to carry their key fobs or cards with them, there’s no point in relying on the app.
When you remember that Tesla ranked 27th among 28 brands in Consumer Reports’ Brand Reliability Survey, that shows the company should focus on improving that as soon as possible. Now we know it should also pay special attention to the Tesla app and its servers.
Some of the affected customers said that the problem left them stranded, with no way to get into their cars and drive them. The Tesla app can replace the key fob or key card that allows people to activate their EVs. For the customers that had only their phones with them, it was not an option. Tesla fans stressed these owners could have tried to open and drive their cars via Bluetooth, but it seems that many did not manage to do that.
That was enough for a lot of trolling to follow. Mike Levine, Ford’s North America Product Communications Manager, took a Tesla fan tweet that made fun of Ford’s SecuriCode to ridicule the Tesla app outage. Levine said it would not leave anyone locked out of their vehicles, for example. Other tweets mocked what Tesla says about not being a carmaker, but a tech company. They said it is a lousy one after the outage. Others said this is why redundancy is fundamental.
Although there are alternative methods for opening and driving a Tesla, the fact that the outage was worldwide and that many drivers trust the Tesla app as their only resource for entering their cars caused a dent in the company’s reputation. If people have to carry their key fobs or cards with them, there’s no point in relying on the app.
When you remember that Tesla ranked 27th among 28 brands in Consumer Reports’ Brand Reliability Survey, that shows the company should focus on improving that as soon as possible. Now we know it should also pay special attention to the Tesla app and its servers.
Should be coming back online now. Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2021
Apologies, we will take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
The servers powering the Tesla app should NEVER go down @elonmusk
— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) November 19, 2021
The servers powering the Tesla app should NEVER go down @elonmusk
— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) November 19, 2021
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