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Keyfob software update notification

dbsb3233 said:
So do I. Many of us have gone through so many batteries so quickly that there's no way it's a coincidence. Dozens of us didn't just happen to buy bad replacement batteries.

Something in this thing is draining batteries fast. Fortunately it's an easy fix (buy a dozen batteries and replace them monthly). Hope I don't wear out the tabs cracking this thing open every month.
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I am not convinced this is true. Every single time I have needed to simply remove and reinsert. The battery wasn’t dead.

I’m not convinced people aren’t replacing batteries that aren’t dead, just because they don’t know the issue is simply removing and reinserting.

Shouldn’t be the case, but I don’t think it’s actually killing batteries.

dbsb3233 said:
In addition to it being a battery killer, it's slow. Every time I approach the car it's a last-second (at best) unlock. It's the type of thing you never have to think about in any other car. But in this car you have to think about it everytime -- pausing and watching and hoping the door handle presents, often having to stand and wait while your passengers stand there looking at you thinking "well, are you gonna open the damn door for me?". It's just another annoying thing. Long list.
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You may have a bad fob, if my theory is right. Again - ours is not a last second unlock, at least with my fob.
 
borski said:
I am not convinced this is true. Every single time I have needed to simply remove and reinsert. The battery wasn’t dead.

I’m not convinced people aren’t replacing batteries that aren’t dead, just because they don’t know the issue is simply removing and reinserting.

Shouldn’t be the case, but I don’t think it’s actually killing batteries.


You may have a bad fob, if my theory is right. Again - ours is not a last second unlock, at least with my fob.
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I've done 3 battery replacements so far. Each time I've measured the voltage on the new and replaced batteries. The new are always about 3.3V. The first 2 replaced were 2.7V. Last week's measured 2.9V. One time I even let the replaced battery sit for a day and measured it again (still 2.7V) just in case there was some lingering effect from having just pulled it from the fob. So it does appear the batteries are actually being drained. I haven't tried just putting the same one back in, but they do measure low voltage (I'm using an actual voltmeter, not just one of those cheap battery testers.)

Could be a bad fob. How soon do your door handles present when approaching your car from a distance? If I'm walking directly to it from out of range, at best they present just as I'm about to reach out and grab it. Almost never 2-3 seconds prior like most cars. When I'm walking around the garage, the mirrors and handles are going in and out frequently, presumably because I keep entering/leaving fob detection range. The same thing happens with our Macan EV, and prior to that out Mach-E. The fob range in the Gravity seems similar to those. But the Gravity seems to have a bigger delay in actually presenting handles and opening mirrors than the others. And simply struggling to recognize the fob as consistently (25% of the time I have to pull the fob out and hit the button, which sometimes doesn't work either without 10-20 second of fiddling/shaking). That could be part of the problem - the motion sensor often not triggering dependably to wake it up when needed (to activate fast) and putting it to sleep when needed (to preserve battery).
 
dbsb3233 said:
...Something in this thing is draining batteries fast. Fortunately it's an easy fix (buy a dozen batteries and replace them monthly)...
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Have you tried getting a replacement fob?
 
dbsb3233 said:
My fob used to work fairly dependably. Seems to be getting progressively worse though. We just returned from Europe for 2 weeks. Got in the car and got a "low fob battery" message on the dash (it was last replaced 2 months ago, and the fob software updated then). Next day after the dash message the fob wouldn't work at all. Pulled the battery (measured 2.9v) and replaced it, and it works again, albeit with more delay than before. It used to present when I got just up to the car (like 3 feet away). Yesterday I had to stand there for 5 seconds. Checked for fob software update but it said it was already up to date. (That reminds me... I better order a 20-pack of fob batteries from Amazon today. Looks like I'll need to replace them monthly.)

Representative of so many nagging problems with this car. I'm not quite to the point of wishing I hadn't bought it, but it's getting there. 😕
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hi, the first advice I retrieved from the forum was keeping the fob napping in a faraday (signal-blocking container) pouch far away from communicating
 
My original fob (only ever really used one of the two) worked near flawlessly for 6+ months prior to 3.5.1. I always had the approach lock/unlock enabled amd it was perfect. I also only replaced the battery once during this time and that was when I received a notification that its voltage was getting low. After getting 3.5.1, it has been very hit or miss but not usually each time but more in week or longer stints. It'll work well for a week or so and then hardly work at all for the next week or so and then back to working.
After checking against the service bulletin, I had one of my fobs replaced at my last service visit a month or so ago but not sure which one it was. Since my service visit, my fob behavior has continued to be intermittent over longish stretches.
It almost seems like 3.5.1 fixed some fobs that were not working very well prior and made the ones that were working well before, worse.
My current fob has been in a working well state the last few days but once it reverts to not working, I'll swap with my other fob and see how it behaves.
 
All this inconsistency is them desperately trying to use software to work around a terrible mistake in the hardware, either/both in the car and in the fob itself.

When they launch phone as a key, let's see if it's unreliable. If the car side of UWB is bad, the phone will likely turn out pretty unreliable as well.

All this delay to launch phone as a key smells to me they really botched things on the car side.
 
I’m having all the same Key FOB problems mentioned by others with the addition that when I picked up my Gravity a month ago, the 2 brand new FOBs they gave me with the new car had OLD firmware in them. Spent a week with that before I discovered the FOB FW update. Seems like the delivery people could at least provide the latest firmware for something that is a known problem.
Reading this forum reminded me of something related. The batteries used in the FOBs come with a coating of icky tasting stuff on them to try to prevent children from swallowing them. This causes a problem in Apple Air Tags so Apple says that the batteries should be washed before using them in an Air Tag. I’m trying this on mine and I’ll update in a day or two.
 
Slimeytoad said:
...The batteries used in the FOBs come with a coating of icky tasting stuff on them to try to prevent children from swallowing them. This causes a problem in Apple Air Tags so Apple says that the batteries should be washed before using them in an Air Tag. I’m trying this on mine and I’ll update in a day or two.
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Remember to put in new batteries in your fobs after updating their software. Older fob software drained the battery rapidly.
 
DeaneG said:
Remember to put in new batteries in your fobs after updating their software. Older fob software drained the battery rapidly.
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...and at least in some cases, the newer software too.
 
Slimeytoad said:
Reading this forum reminded me of something related. The batteries used in the FOBs come with a coating of icky tasting stuff on them to try to prevent children from swallowing them. This causes a problem in Apple Air Tags so Apple says that the batteries should be washed before using them in an Air Tag. I’m trying this on mine and I’ll update in a day or two.
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The email they recently sent, which I can longer seem to find, had a note about only using a certain brand battery without the child safety coating as it was the only one they had validated as working (or some similar wording).
 
Slimeytoad said:
I’m having all the same Key FOB problems mentioned by others with the addition that when I picked up my Gravity a month ago, the 2 brand new FOBs they gave me with the new car had OLD firmware in them. Spent a week with that before I discovered the FOB FW update. Seems like the delivery people could at least provide the latest firmware for something that is a known problem.
Reading this forum reminded me of something related. The batteries used in the FOBs come with a coating of icky tasting stuff on them to try to prevent children from swallowing them. This causes a problem in Apple Air Tags so Apple says that the batteries should be washed before using them in an Air Tag. I’m trying this on mine and I’ll update in a day or two.
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One day later and I'm still having Key FOB problems. Went out this morning and it took about 30 seconds of pushing buttons to finally get connected. I'm also in the habit of pulling the FOB out of my pocket and shaking it as I walk up to the car trying to wake it up.
The contacts in the Lucid Key FOB press against the battery much harder than in the Apple Air Tag, so it looks like Lucid did THIS PART of the design correctly.
 
Slimeytoad said:
One day later and I'm still having Key FOB problems. Went out this morning and it took about 30 seconds of pushing buttons to finally get connected. I'm also in the habit of pulling the FOB out of my pocket and shaking it as I walk up to the car trying to wake it up.
The contacts in the Lucid Key FOB press against the battery much harder than in the Apple Air Tag, so it looks like Lucid did THIS PART of the design correctly.
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I’m sad that removing the battery coating didn’t resolve your problems.

I’m starting to suspect the module(s) that listens for the key fob signal and wakes up the car is slow. @Slimeytoad or anyone else having consistent fob issues, can you try an experiment? Wake up the car via the app, first. With the car being awake, does the fob behave reliably?
 
Saksak said:
I’m sad that removing the battery coating didn’t resolve your problems.

I’m starting to suspect the module(s) that listens for the key fob signal and wakes up the car is slow. @Slimeytoad or anyone else having consistent fob issues, can you try an experiment? Wake up the car via the app, first. With the car being awake, does the fob behave reliably?
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That would not explain why my fob works fine and why my wife’s has issues.
 
borski said:
That would not explain why my fob works fine and why my wife’s has issues.
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The last time my fob did not work to open the door, it also did not work once I used the phone app to unlock the doors. I had to eventually use the remote drive option in the app to drive the car. Sometimes the fob will eventually let me drive after using thw phone app to unlock but it can take a few minutes to recognize and go into gear.
 
DeaneG said:
Please let us know the outcome.
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My Gravity is back! They addressed every single item which was 12-14 things and all were fixed which is amazing.

The key fobs: both were inspected and one (mine) was part of a batch that was designated to be replaced. So that got replaced with a new fob. The other fob (my wife’s) did not get replaced.

Interestingly the fobs work perfectly now. No issues with autolock or unlock, no problems opening trunk or trunk, and no detection errors. Had the car for about 5 days now. So far so good!
 
borski said:
I am not convinced this is true. Every single time I have needed to simply remove and reinsert. The battery wasn’t dead.

I’m not convinced people aren’t replacing batteries that aren’t dead, just because they don’t know the issue is simply removing and reinserting.

Shouldn’t be the case, but I don’t think it’s actually killing batteries.
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100% this. Its just a reboot.
 
RajD said:
My Gravity is back! They addressed every single item which was 12-14 things and all were fixed which is amazing.

The key fobs: both were inspected and one (mine) was part of a batch that was designated to be replaced. So that got replaced with a new fob. The other fob (my wife’s) did not get replaced.

Interestingly the fobs work perfectly now. No issues with autolock or unlock, no problems opening trunk or trunk, and no detection errors. Had the car for about 5 days now. So far so good!
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I suspect we will see a lot more fobs replaced with similar reports. Do keep us updated though as to how your fobs go.
 
Is the fob update for Gravity only? Anything for Air?
 
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