Tesla server outage left some drivers unable to unlock their cars

Musk has promised to take measures to ensure 'this doesn't happen again'

Hundreds of Tesla drivers were locked out of their cars on Friday after the carmaker's mobile app suffered an outage.

Some drivers voiced their complaints on social media, saying they were seeing a server-related error on the Tesla's phone app, preventing them from connecting to their cars.

According to the outage tracking site DownDetector, the reports of the outage jumped around 15:00 ET (20:00 GMT) on Friday.

About 500 people had reported the issue at around 16:40 ET (21:40 GMT), although the number of such reports had dropped to just around 60 about five hours later.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to one driver from South Korea, saying he was checking on the issue.

The user said he was experiencing a "500 server error" to connect his Model 3 through the iOS app in Seoul, South Korea.

Musk later said that company's mobile app was coming back online after a server outage. He blamed the issue on network traffic.

"Should be coming back online now. Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic."

He apologised to users and promised to take measures to ensure an incident like that is not repeated.

Tesla's mobile app enables owners to use their phone as a key to unlock and start their Tesla vehicles. In case a user doesn't disconnect from the mobile app, they should still be able to use the mobile phone as a key through the Bluetooth connection.

Outages of Tesla's systems are relatively uncommon, although there have been examples of such outages in the past. Last year, Tesla experienced a complete outage of both its internal systems and customer-facing servers for several hours.

"Technology makes things convenient, but relies on a server working 100% of the time," Stuart Masson, editor of The Car Expert website, told the BBC.

"It's the same as leaving the house without my credit cards, expecting to pay for things with my smartphone. If we are reliant on one mechanism all the time, we can be caught out."

Professor David Bailey from the Birmingham Business School said, "Tesla is a bit of a victim of its own success".

"It encourages its customers to use the cutting-edge technology it creates, and sometimes that will go wrong."

"Although of course you can use a key to open the car too, the natural instinct of many Tesla drivers, who are buying one of the most high-tech models in the market, is to rely on the technology."