Tesla App Access Denied? Do This!

Last updated Aug 4, 2024

You see a dreaded notice that your Tesla App Access has been denied. This notice worries you because until now, you had enjoyed opening your phone for tesla services.

The Tesla app allowed you to access and to communicate remotely with your Tesla electric vehicle model or control your Tesla energy products from anywhere in the world.

Now that your Tesla app access for your vehicle has been denied you can no longer to you use the following features directly from the app:

Gaining access to vehicle and climate controls by:

locking and unlock your electric vehicle with phone key
opening and closing charge port, trunk and frunk
managing climate controls including cabin temperature, heated seats, preconditioning and defrosting your vehicle during winter.
and checking for software updates.

Remain charged through:

Checking your range remotely. Range is the approximate distance your Tesla can travel on a single charge.
Setting your charge limit. Charge limit helps lessen overcrowding at high-usage Supercharger sites. It is set at 80% when not using a Trip planner.
Viewing your charging history.
and locating charging stations near you while driving.

Understanding the charge statistics for your vehicle based on the charging type via:

scrutinizing your vehicle’s charging behavior
noting the likely savings
observing average costs spent.

Handling Tesla payments and account information by means of:

making payments
tracking your charging patterns
monitoring Shop order history.
Using the Wallet to view, add and remove payment methods to your Tesla Account.

Scheduling Service and Roadside Assistance through:

planning service
tracking your appointment status
requesting roadside assistance in seconds if you find yourself in emergency situations,
and accessing diagnostic and location data anytime anywhere.

Purchasing upgrades and accessories which help to improve additional features and functionalities to your vehicle. You can do this by:

1. buying over-the-air upgrades

2. paying for subscriptions

3. and finding the latest accessories for your vehicle.

The Tesla app allows you to have control over your Tesla energy products at your fingertips, remotely and in real time.

If you have received an alert that says Tesla App Access Denied you can no longer:

Operate and tailor your Powerwall to meet you your energy requirements through:
applying several Powerwall control modes and features to satisfy your particular energy needs.
customizing the charging and discharging of your Powerwall with Self-Powered Time-Based and Storm Watch control modes
Follow up on Energy Production displayed as a real-time power flow that shows how your Powerwall, grid connection and solar system are collaborating to provide energy to your home. You can access this on app when you are:
observing your solar system’s energy production
and noting your home energy usage.
Establish backup reserve during grid outages via:
enabling your Powerwall to supply backup energy protection in case of a grid outage.
adapting your reserve percentage as per your personal energy needs and security outlook.

troubleshoot and get help for your solar panels, Solar Roof or Powerwall on the mobile support page through:

accessing owner documents
going through the frequently asked questions section
and perusing through the additional support articles for more information

Now that you have seen how useful the Tesla app is for vehicle and energy products owners, you can now understand how serious the Tesla App Access Denied error is.

The next section will help you understand the causes of this warning and how you can resolve it.

Why is My Tesla App Access Denied?

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The reason why your Tesla app access has been denied is because of the following.

1. Your Tesla electric vehicle has not yet been delivered and your Tesla Account for your vehicle is not enabled

If you have made an order and are preparing to take delivery of your Tesla Vehicle, you can only open your Tesla Account and explore videos from the app but not access other features.

Tesla app can only be connected to a vehicle that is in the owner’s hand and has an individual enabled Tesla account.

Fix 1 – As soon as vehicle is delivered, open account and download your own individual Tesla app. To learn more about Tesla app download read this article.

2. Your energy products have not been installed and powered on and cannot connect to the app.

Fix 1 – install and power on solar panel, solar roof, or Powerwall etc.

3. A software update may have affected your Tesla app

The iOS or android models phone software you are using may have been updated to a new version which is not compatible with Tesla app software.

Fix: Wait for Tesla to release an over-the-air update that will improve compatibility

You may have tried to access Tesla app when an update was being made.

Fix 1 – Wait for software version to take effect and try later.

4. Are you on the latest Tesla App version

To confirm which version, you have in your Tesla app look under your VIN on the main page. It is impossible to return your vehicle to a previous software version.

Fix – Check for available software updates and download them

5. Your VPN is interfering with app access

Tesla may be blocking traffic from some VPN servers. Your account might get flagged when you login normally and then try to login with a VPN.

But as soon as you try to login into your flagged account again, the Tesla site gets blocked until you delete your browsers cache, cookies etc.

Fix 1 – Go into your VPN settings and enable split tunneling and select the Tesla app to be exempted from the apps you want to tunnel.

This will allow that app to bypass the VPN. You will lose VPN protection when using split tunneling.

Also, your VPN and phone may be using different servers

Fix 2 – Disconnect the iPhone or Android and reconnect to a different VPN server.

Fix 3 – Turn off or disable the VPN off.

It could be because of a geographical restriction.

Fix 4 – Go into my VPN settings and changing the location of the VPN server you are going through.

Could you be using a VPN brand that does not operate well with Tesla?

Fix 5 – Change your VPN brand

6. Have you tried logging in from a web browser to verify your account is still operational?

If your account has a problem then your app access could be denied

7. You have a login credential issue.

Is your account name and/or password correct?

Did you get past the captcha? Tesla app uses a Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and Captcha and an official Tesla login form so your credentials are never sent to anyone.

It could be an authentication service issue. Tesla servers may be having a difficult time when refreshing authentication tokens

Fix 1 – Refresh the app page, wait a couple of minutes then try again

8. It could be Tesla server-side issue

Tesla servers could be down. If some servers are down access to app could be down.

This happens from time to time. It is an issue on Tesla’s side and they usually have it corrected quickly.

A content delivery network is a group of geographically dispersed servers that hasten the transfer of web content by bringing it closer to where users are.

Web applications use CDNs for better service, increased dependability, monetary value, and flexibility against cyber-attacks.

Fix 1 – Wait for servers to come back up

9. Site congestion

Site may have been overwhelmed from normal traffic and other are accessing it using a VPN.. Fix: Try refreshing the page. Clear cache and cookies and try again.

Your phone or app may have an issue

This is probably just something local that’s not playing nice with Tesla.

Fix 1 – Reboot phone then clear all temp files.

Fix 2 – On Android clear cache and local data and force quit the app then log in.

Fix 3 – Have a backup method of unlocking the car just in case

Fix 4 – Reset the app and logging in again.

If you are experiencing access issues with the app, follow these steps:

Sign in and out of the app
Power your phone off and on
Delete and reinstall the app
Log in

10. A HTTPS 403 (Forbidden) error that is iframed.

HTTPS is HTTP with encryption and verification thus is far more secure. It uses TLS (SSL) to encrypt standard HTTP requests and responses, and to digitally sign those requests and responses. This error is due to the Tesla app user having

Altered the settings
Failed to set up the proper permissions.

https will not load in iframe if the chief domain for your website is secure with SSL (https://) but the source URL for your iframe is not, and your website will show an error, or simply not display the content.

Fix 1 – update the Source URL for your iframe content with the secure (https://) version.

11. WAF issue

Tesla is known to have a high level of security on their systems and restrictive settings on their WAF or Web Application Firewall

You Tesla app access denied because you got tagged by their WAF or bot manager tool. The firewall was scanning and trying to spot suspicious web traffic.

A Web application firewall sifts and monitors HTTP traffic between a web application and the Internet and defends against cross-site-scripting (XSS), cross-site forgery, SQL injection and file inclusion attacks etc.

This may be to a proxy or NAT issue. NAT and proxy provide Internet access through private IP addresses.

NAT works at the network layer and is transparent to various applications while proxy functions at the application layer and must revert to the IP address of the proxy server stated in application programs.