Tesla To Offer Bluetooth Authentication (Instead Of Key Fob) For All Existing Model S & X Vehicles #ElonTweets
Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted out news this week that the company is working on offering owners of existing Model S and X vehicles what Model 3 owners can use to get into their cars — their phones.
As he has a long track record of doing, Elon took to Twitter to respond to customer ideas for improvements to their cars. This time, Elon shared that all Tesla Model S and X vehicles would soon work without a key fob if it detected the owner’s phone via a bluetooth connection, much like the Model 3 does right from the factory.
For those worried about security, he added that the feature would not be set as enabled by default but must be enabled by the owner before being activated. The future feature is only the latest in a long list of incremental features that Tesla has rolled out to add functionality to vehicles already on the roads via its over-the-air updates — a feature electric car drivers and potential drivers hugely value and desire.
With our Tesla Model S, we were thrilled when it was not only able to open our garage door with the built-in button but when, after a firmware update, it was able to open our garage door when it was close enough, thanks to an intelligent operating system and the onboard GPS.
The ability for Tesla’s vehicles to get better over time flies in the face of traditional vehicle ownership, where the only thing the vehicle does over time is deteriorate. They lose value over time, require more and more maintenance, and the tiny in-dash navigation is less and less relevant as new roads are added and things change. That’s perhaps a large part of the reason Tesla’s vehicles hold their value so well and are in such high demand. I know that is a large factor for me as our family patiently waits for our Model 3 with the standard battery pack.
While Elon may have pulled out of President Trump’s advisory board, they both share their affection for Twitter as their primary microphone to the world. Having said that, it is arguably more appropriate to tweet about a new bluetooth feature than to send out tweets that have the potential to start wars.
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