Tesla drivers say they were locked out of their cars after the automaker’s app failed.
Dozens of owners have posted on social media that they are seeing an error message on the mobile app preventing them from connecting to their vehicles.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk personally responded to a complaint from a driver in South Korea and said on Twitter: “Checked”.
Mr Musk later said the app was coming back online.
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The Tesla app is used by motorists as a key to unlock and start their cars.
Owners have posted a variety of complaints on the internet about being unable to use their vehicles.
“I take an hour away from home because I usually use my phone to start [my] car,” one owner tweeted.
About 500 users reported a bug in the app at around 4:40 PM ET (9:40 PM GMT) Friday, according to outage tracking site DownDetector. Five hours later there were just over 60 error messages.
“Sorry, we’re going to take steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” tweeted Mr Musk.
However, the app isn’t the only way to access the cars, Stuart Masson, editor of The Car Expert website, told the BBC.
“There will be a secondary mechanism to get in or out of the car beyond the app. The difficulty will come for drivers not wearing it,” he said.
“Technology makes things convenient, but it relies on a server that is 100% working. It’s the same as leaving the house without my credit cards and expecting to have to pay with my smartphone. If we are all the time rely on a mechanism, we can get caught. “
Birmingham Business School Professor David Bailey has written extensively on the automotive industry. He also drives a Tesla and saw the breakdown on Friday.
“Tesla is kind of a victim of its own success,” he told the BBC. “It encourages its customers to use the cutting edge technology it creates, and sometimes it goes wrong.
“Although you can of course open the car with a key, the natural instinct of many Tesla drivers who buy one of the high-tech models on the market is to rely on the technology.”