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122 points kcon | 7 comments | | HN request time: 1.577s | source | bottom

Nissan's official mobile app for their LEAF electric car doesn't have a widget for quickly checking the car's battery charge status on your phone's home screen, so for a fun side project I decided to make my own using free tools like GitHub Actions, Appium, Tailscale, and Apple Shortcuts.
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jdminhbg ◴[] No.43678012[source]
Nobody wants to hear it in 2025 but this is one of the reasons Tesla is still a much better experience than most of the legacy car manufacturers. Car People like to think of apps as a weird Tech People affectation, but in actual day-to-day usage, they're invaluable.
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cyberax ◴[] No.43678038[source]
Tesla's UI experience is just about as shitty as of other automakers. And you don't have the escape hatch of CarPlay/AA.
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1. jdminhbg ◴[] No.43678080[source]
It really just isn't, especially when it comes to the app. I've dealt with Ford in the past and Kia in the present, and it's like having a carrier-supplied dumb phone vs an iPhone in 2007. Completely separate experience.
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2. cyberax ◴[] No.43678216[source]
I stopped using the official Tesla app entirely. It's so freaking sluggish and useless. They spent all their effort on drawing a toy car with shiny animations, and neglected everything else.

E.g. if I want to turn on the seat and wheel heaters, I click on it, and then I need to wait 3 seconds to see if it actually turned them on. Or maybe they were already on, and my click turned them off instead.

The service chat section is entirely useless, and was probably written by somebody drinking bong water. And you _have_ to use it. Tesla even sends you freaking text messages with just a link to the app instead of actual text of the updates.

And I once spent 20 minutes trying to find how I can remove a guest driver from my account. Turns out that there's a small gray button "Manage Drivers" at the very bottom of the screen, past the odometer data.

Sorry. But Tesla is as shitty as other automakers. Or even shittier, because other automakers don't force me to talk with their service centers solely through their crapps.

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3. jdminhbg ◴[] No.43678241[source]
> and then I need to wait 3 seconds to see if it actually turned them on

If you want to unlock a Kia with the app, first you need to pay $15/month, and then you need to press and hold for one second the unlock button, after which you have a 30-50% chance of the unlock request going through. To let you know that it went through, you will receive an email. It's the most user-hostile app I still have on my phone.

So no, Tesla is not as shitty as other automakers. The bar is so much lower than you can imagine.

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4. cyberax ◴[] No.43678333{3}[source]
I had remote unlock for my Chevy Volt in 2012. It was as fast as Tesla's.

So yep, Tesla sucks. Other car makers can suck a bit more, but that doesn't make Tesla any better.

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5. jdminhbg ◴[] No.43678375{4}[source]
Even this example is terrible, I don't "remote unlock" my Tesla, it's just unlocked when I get close to it. It used to be 95% reliable (not great), but now that they added an Apple Watch app, it's 100% reliable (either my phone or my watch unlocks it via proximity).
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6. cyberax ◴[] No.43678477{5}[source]
I just carry a keyfob. It's also helpful for opening the trunk.
7. apelapan ◴[] No.43678571{5}[source]
I wonder how much is the Tesla and how much is the phone. I used to have 98% success with just walking up to my Model Y, phone in pocket. These days it is more like 80% and sometimes it can take over a minute before the car accepts that a "key is present", even after manually unlocking with the app, sitting in the drivers seat and having an established bluetooth connection that is playing through the car speakers.