# bug with locking M3



## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

my wife just found a bug on our M3. (2019.8.5.3aaa23d)

This morning she had to tap her card to drive the car, usually the phone does it's thing, but she didn't have her phone close enough or whatever when she unplugged the charger. In fact, I may have tapped the car myself late last night to look at something in a rare phone-free moment for me, leaving the car unlocked for her. Regardless, she had to card-tap the console to drive the car.

when she walked away from the car today the car did not lock (as per the manual, walk-away does not work when the car has been unlocked with the card), but when she approached the car the mirrors were unfolded and the phone app said unlocked.

Neither she, or I could lock the car with our phone app. The phone app was connected (because I could confirm that she had set sentry mode) but if either of us pressed the phone "lock" icon, or the "lock" button under controls, the icon would toggle to locked, and then toggle back to unlocked in 2 or 3 seconds. This was reproducible on either of our phones.

here is the bug: Why on the planet of Elon would the car not be lockable with the phone app? I don't care if the car ishas been unlocked with the card or the phone or the fob, if it is parked and able to be locked, then the phone app should be able to lock the car.

I've attached a picture of an unlocked car in sentry mode....


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

lance.bailey said:


> my wife just found a bug on our M3. (2019.8.5.3aaa23d)
> 
> This morning she had to tap her card to drive the car, usually the phone does it's thing, but she didn't have her phone close enough or whatever when she unplugged the charger. In fact, I may have tapped the car myself late last night to look at something in a rare phone-free moment for me, leaving the car unlocked for her. Regardless, she had to card-tap the console to drive the car.
> 
> ...


send a quick email to tesla with your description you wrote here, to the email address included at the top of this section ([email protected] ). They will not get back to you immediately (or even quickly), but eventually someone will read it and respond.


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## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

lance.bailey said:


> The phone app was connected (because I could confirm that she had set sentry mode) but if either of us pressed the phone "lock" icon, or the "lock" button under controls, the icon would toggle to locked, and then toggle back to unlocked in 2 or 3 seconds. This was reproducible on either of our phones.


Very strange. It sounds to me like the API call to lock the car failed somehow, which is why the "locked" icon toggled back to the "unlocked" icon after a few seconds. If all other commands through the app failed, I'd blame it on the API gateway, but both you and your wife were able to connect to the car, and you could activate Sentry Mode, so the cause must be different.

FWIW, Sentry Mode has caused some strange issues for other people when it comes to locking/unlocking the car (notably, the HAL eye remaining frozen on the screen if you unlock and open the car too quickly), so I'm wondering if the fact that Sentry was active had anything to do with it. By any chance, did you try disabling Sentry Mode and then re-try locking the car?

Either way, as Melinda suggested, send your writeup to the ServiceHelpNA address. *Try to include the date and time that you were having the issue as well*, so that they can pull the logs from the car and see what was going on internally while you were trying to lock it. (When I emailed ServiceHelpNA a while ago about a charge-complete notification issue, the first question they asked me was for the timestamp of when the issue last occurred.)


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## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

Thanks guys, i'm going to have to do that. Fortunately the uncropped screengrab has the timestamp on it 

One last data point, is that when she got in the car, before we had figured out that the card had been the last unlock, she had to hard reboot the screen as it was dark and unresponsive.

I did not try removing sentry mode to help locking the car. In a separate thread I noticed that sentry mode stopped my update (silently) so I should have been clever enough so try that. sigh.

to honest though, I have never received any "direct" response from emailing Tesla. The closest i have gotten was after a ... spirited ... feedback response about the local service team which garnered an email from service in about 30 minutes. probably just coincidence.

However, and FWIW, the local service team here is the one shining star in the world of Tesla communication. I'm tempted to email them, but I hate bugging good people to get around the "less good".


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## Ed Woodrick (May 26, 2018)

If I remember correctly, using the card keys evokes a slightly different behavior with the car locking, but I don't remember what it is.
Take the time to fix/understand the phones. Try bringing the phones out of the purse and pocket for a few seconds. Look at the phone and see if it shows connected. And most of all, since it looks like you are parking the car in a public spot, make sure that you hear the beep and the mirrors fold.

When I approach my car, it is relatively common that the car doesn't unlock. I just hold the door handle open, turn around and viola, it opens. My body mass is in the way with my phone in my back pocket. In a woman's purse, there's all sorts of things to block the signal. Try to stay away from using the card keys.


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## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

A wise man never comments about the contents of a woman's purse. My wife wishes I were that wise man, but I am not 

the key cards different behaviour is that walk away lock doesn't. The problem is not that I don't understand the phone or the app, the car was unlocked with a card, and did not walk-away lock when my wife parked the car. all that is correct, documented and understood behaviour by the car. 

My kvetch is that I or my wife should have been able to lock the car via the phone app, even if it had been unlocked via the card. Otherwise there is no point in having a lock button (two actually) in the app.

you are right about listening for that beep - it is something that I always do, but then I also look for folding mirrors and when I'm on the train platform often check via the app that the car is locked. OCD about locking my wife's car should be understandable - hah.


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## Long Ranger (Jun 1, 2018)

lance.bailey said:


> One last data point, is that when she got in the car, before we had figured out that the card had been the last unlock, she had to hard reboot the screen as it was dark and unresponsive.


I'm suspicious that the inability to lock via the app may have been due to this state that the car was in and not related to using the keycard. Have you been able to reproduce the issue, or was it a one time occurrence?



lance.bailey said:


> as per the manual, walk-away does not work when the car has been unlocked with the card


 I don't think that's entirely true. It doesn't really matter how the car was unlocked, what matters is whether your phone is connected when you walk away. Walk away lock doesn't work if you just have a keycard or fob in your pocket with no phone (or you have a phone that isn't successfully connected via Bluetooth for some reason). I can unlock with keycard, connect my phone to the car, and walk away lock works fine.


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## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

hey @Long Ranger

i did try to reproduce the situation last night, but was unable to. I want to try again under a more similar situation, but not when I'm dashing to the train in the morning. It's on "the list" for the weekend 

interesting observation about the phone connecting for the drive after a card unlock alleviating the need for a card tap to drive and invoking walk away locking. come to think of it, that seems like a familiar situation, I think that the same has happened to me.


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## Dr. J (Sep 1, 2017)

@lance.bailey I don't use my phone as key (I use the far superior-ahem-key fob), so I'm not qualified to advise, but isn't "PHONE KEY - Disconnected" meaningful? Is that the root of the problem?


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## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

yes, it likely is, usually I can connect to the car with the phone - even if there are miles between the two.


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## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

Dr. J said:


> @lance.bailey I don't use my phone as key (I use the far superior-ahem-key fob), so I'm not qualified to advise, but isn't "PHONE KEY - Disconnected" meaningful? Is that the root of the problem?


Tapping the "Lock" or "Unlock" button in the app should work regardless of whether the "phone key" (i.e. the phone's Bluetooth connection with the car's door sensors) is connected, so I'm not sure that it's the core problem here... but it could have been a symptom of whatever funky state the car was in.


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## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

got my response from Tesla support. the question I asked was a direct cut and paste of my first post in the thread.

Telling me to reboot the screen when I could not remotely lock the car with the phone app is so off the mark I would not be able to believe it in a division other than Tesla support. Sorry, that is harsh, but it is truly the most polite I can be to a response like this.



> Thank you for reaching out to us about your car not locking properly.
> 
> The first step if there is a malfunction or something not working as it should is to do the reboots on the vehicle.
> 
> ...


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