Ongoing Tesla API Connection Restrictions Impacting Third-Parties
In Short
Tesla has temporarily restricted connections to their servers in order to stabilize server load. This has ultimately impacted all third-party services resulting in a degraded experience until resolved.
While a temporary solution has been implemented, issues with vehicle data updating may still occur. We expect for Tesla's functionality to be fully restored within the following week.
To help make up for this inconvenience, we are offering premium trial extensions and a one-month premium membership credit upon request. Please contact our team at [email protected] to inquire.
Explanation
On September 10, 2020, Tesla began to restrict connections to their Tesla API from the major cloud providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Azure, and many others. This was initially noticed by our team along with other services and work began to investigate the root cause.
We're currently working on restoring stability due to excessive errors. It appears that connections to Tesla's APIs have been limited for all services running on @awscloud.
— Teslascope (@teslascope) September 10, 2020
Updates will be provided as progress is made.
We reached out to our neighboring third-party services and were able to confirm that their services were also experiencing excessive errors and timeouts. With this in mind, it was determined that Tesla was beginning to restrict connections exclusively for major cloud providers.
There is an ongoing widespread communication issue between third party services and @Tesla. Server side communication with vehicles in @TezLabApp will resume as soon as this is resolved on the Tesla side.
— TezLabApp (@TezLabApp) September 10, 2020
We are aware and are actively monitoring the situation.
Speaking to two sources close to Tesla, we have confirmed that these connection restrictions were ultimately due to Tesla attempting to prevent distributed attacks (ie: DDoS) against their servers, which would impact the performance and stability of the Tesla mobile app for customers. It is important to note that these forms of attack are not uncommon, but still risk degrading the experience for others.
To circumvent these restrictions, Teslascope, in addition to most third-party services, have implemented temporary solutions to allow for the continued updating of vehicles. Due to the nature of these solutions, issues with vehicle data updating or otherwise vehicle interactions may occur for some of our members.
We've successfully implemented a temporary solution to allow for Tesla Account authentication and vehicle polling to resume on our service.
— Teslascope (@teslascope) September 10, 2020
We will continue to monitor the situation along with its impacts on our neighboring third-party Tesla services and community projects.
We are continuing to monitor this situation closely and will update when more information is available.
To help make up for this inconvenience, we are offering premium trial extensions and a one-month premium membership credit upon request. Please contact our team at [email protected] to inquire.