Now You Can Control Your Tesla With Siri
If you use an iPhone and drive a Tesla, congratulations on your success. Also congratulations on your new ability to drive with your phone. Tesla’s just-released app update adds the ability to “access vehicle and climate controls from the Apple Shortcuts app.” This means you can say “Hey Siri, lock Tesla” and it will happen .
The Tesla app update will add 20 Tesla-specific shortcuts to your iPhone, which can be accessed via Siri, a widget, or by tapping them in the Shortcuts app.
Which Tesla controls can be activated via iPhone?
Here are 20 individual Tesla commands you can use if you set them up in shortcuts first.
- Camp mode
- defrosting
- Dog mode
- Preliminary vehicle condition
- Seat heating setting (seat position and heating level)
- Set temperature (select climate temperature)
- ventilation windows
- Set media volume
- Emission test
- Close all windows
- flashes of light
- horn
- Lock/unlock
- Open Frank
- Open/Close the charging port
- Open/Close Door (Model X)
- Open/close rear trunk
- Guard mode
- Set charge limit
- Start/stop charging
Using shortcuts to create custom macros for your Tesla
If you want to dig deeper, Shortcuts’ ability to automate multiple steps across apps allows you to change your driving experience in limitless ways. You can create a label called “rock out” that automatically plays, say, Steely Dan (that’s what people who drive Teslas listen to, isn’t it?) and cranks up the volume to maximum while giving you direction, for example, to nearest Olive station. Garden (this is where people who drive Teslas eat, right?).
Or you can say, “Siri, the haunted car!” and the headlights flash, the doors open and the trunk opens. It’s actually called “franc” and I didn’t know it until today.