The ugly side of technology: Tesla app outage locked owners out of their cars

Tesla's app server went down, leading to a worldwide app outage that left owners unable to connect to their cars, mostly those who have been dependent on their phones instead of their keycards.

Tesla Inc, the Elon Musk-owned electric vehicle company that is known for making some of the most technologically advanced cars in the world have been facing wraith of its very own advanced technology of late. After a series of autopilot crashes, now a worldwide outage has left Tesla users locked out of their vehicles. Tesla's app server went down this week, leading to a worldwide app outage that left owners unable to connect to their cars. For those who have been mostly dependent on their phones instead of their keycards, that means being locked out of their vehicles.

Electrek first reported the issue after receiving complaints from Tesla owners on Friday night, and for a while, it seemed like the problem only affected drivers in North America. But then, an owner from Seoul, South Korea tweeted at Musk about getting a server error on their app, to which the Tesla CEO replied that he is "checking" it out. Other tweets show owners calling for roadside assistance and delaying their plans for the night.

The outage came shortly after the automaker rolled out an update to its application, which Electrek said includes a feature that Tesla had issues implementing. Being locked out of vehicles could be an ongoing problem as automakers move to cloud services and increase reliance on smartphone apps, the report said.