Tesla drivers say they were left 'stranded' last night after the carmaker's app went down.
Car owners took to social media to complain about an error message on the mobile app that was prevented them unlocking their vehicles.
The Tesla app can be used as a key to allow users access to their cars.
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One user called David, @poseyedon on Twitter, said: "I’ve been stuck away from my home unable to start my car for 6 hours now. What sucks is no updates or comms from Tesla."
Maddy Hill, @maddyhillatx, tweeted: "Hey Tesla, do you want to fix your servers so people can like…… get into their cars and not be stranded."
Another customer, @dictionaryhill, commented: "Just tried to unlock my X with app can't connect."
Tesla CEO Elon Musk eventually provided an update to car owners via Twitter.
Tagging Musk in a tweet, electric car owner Jaehwan Cho said: "I’m experiencing 500 server error to connect my Tesla Model 3 on my iOS app in Seoul, S.Korea. Seems like this is a worldwide issue."
Musk responded minutes later saying he was "checking" the issue, before telling the complainant after around five hours that the system was "coming back online".
He added: "Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic. Apologies, we will take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again."
The Tesla app is not the only way users can access their vehicles.
There is a secondary key mechanism that can be used to get in or out of the car - but users complaining about being left stranded did not have the devices on them.
Stuart Masson, editor of The Car Expert website, told the BBC: "Technology makes things convenient, but relies on a server working 100% of the time.
"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."
