This Is My Car — Get Notified When Someone Spots Your Tesla

Thousands of Tesla Radar users spot Teslas every day. Sooner or later one of the cars being spotted is yours. From now on you can find out when that happens: prove that a car is yours, and Tesla Radar sends you an inbox message whenever someone else spots it.

The proof is built on something only an owner has: a phone key that is enrolled in the car. Tesla Radar cannot read the key of the Tesla app, but it can ask its sibling app TeslaKee, which enrolls its own key into your car with a tap of your key card. If TeslaKee holds a key for the car, and other scanners have seen that key on the car’s key list, the car is yours.

What you need

• Tesla Radar (the current version from Google Play) on your phone, with the car already in your vehicle list — it has to have been spotted by your own phone at least once.
• TeslaKee on the same phone (Google Play), with a key enrolled in the car. Enrolling takes a couple of minutes at the car with your key card; the TeslaKee wizard walks you through it.
• Your car needs to have been deep-scanned by another Tesla Radar user at some point. That is what confirms your claim, and it is the only step you cannot control. More on the timing below.
• Keep the TeslaKee key enrolled. The proof is not a one-off: it stays valid only as long as your TeslaKee key remains on the car’s key list. Remove it from the car (or from TeslaKee), and the claim lapses with the next deep scans. See Keep the key on the car below.

Step by step

1. Open the car in Tesla Radar. Go to your vehicle list, tap the car, then Edit. Under My car you’ll find the button This is my car. If TeslaKee is not installed yet the button reads Get TeslaKee instead and takes you to the Play Store.
2. Tap This is my car. Tesla Radar asks its server for a one-time challenge. That takes a second or two and needs an internet connection.
3. Confirm in TeslaKee. TeslaKee opens on top with a short consent screen: it names the Tesla Radar device that is asking, lists your enrolled vehicles with the right one pre-selected, and explains what will happen. Tap Confirm.
4. TeslaKee answers the challenge. Inside the phone’s secure element the vehicle key is combined with the challenge into a single checksum. The key itself never leaves the secure element, and nothing is sent to the car — the car does not even need to be nearby. You are back in Tesla Radar within a second.
5. Tesla Radar submits the answer. The server checks the checksum and returns a signed receipt. The My car section now shows Ownership proof submitted, and the receipt is uploaded together with your normal Tesla Radar data on the next sync (within a few minutes).
6. Wait for confirmation. The claim is confirmed once the server can match the key TeslaKee vouched for against a deep scan of your car uploaded by a different Tesla Radar user. When that happens you get an inbox message saying your claim is active. From then on, every sighting of your car by another scanner earns you an inbox message.

How long does it take?

• Steps 1 to 5: about half a minute, most of it reading the consent screen.
• Step 6 depends on other people. Tesla Radar users with Auto Deep Scan enabled read the key list of every Tesla they pass. In a busy city your car is typically deep-scanned within days; in a quieter area it can take weeks. If another scanner has already deep-scanned your car in the past, the confirmation arrives with the next server sync, usually within an hour.
• You can speed things up by asking a friend who runs Tesla Radar to enable Active Probing → Auto Deep Scan and walk past your car once. Your own deep scans do not count — that is the whole point, see below.

What you’ll receive

An inbox message per sighting, at most one every few hours, saying when and roughly where (town level) your car was seen. Sightings by your own phone are never reported, so parking next to your car does not spam you.

Who spotted it? That depends on your tier:

• Everyone gets the time and the area. The spotter stays anonymous — no device, no team, no exact position.
• Supporters also see the device name of the scanner that spotted the car — the same public name that device shows in the rankings and the activity feed. If several devices spotted it since your last message, all of them are listed. Ownership must be verified first; the subscription alone does not reveal anything.

The Supporter subscription is available from the app’s menu (Supporter / Premium); it is what keeps Tesla Radar running.

Why it works this way

Tesla Radar has to be sure a claim is real: a notification about a car you do not own would turn the app into a stalking tool. Two things, checked independently, make a claim trustworthy:

• You hold the key. The checksum TeslaKee produces can only be made with the private key that is enrolled in the car. It is a fresh challenge every time, so it cannot be copied or replayed.
• The key is on the car. Tesla Radar already knows which keys are enrolled in which cars, because deep scans read the car’s key list. Only scans by other users count, so nobody can vouch for themselves with a modified app.

If the key ever disappears from the car’s key list — say you sell the car and the new owner removes it — the claim expires by itself after the next deep scans, and the alerts stop. You can also withdraw a claim any time with the Withdraw claim button.

Keep the key on the car

This is the one thing to remember: ownership is re-checked, not granted once. Every deep scan of your car by another Tesla Radar user re-reads the car’s key list, and your claim stays active only while your TeslaKee key is on it. The moment two consecutive deep scans no longer list the key, the claim is revoked automatically and the alerts stop, without anyone having to do anything.

That is by design, and it is what makes the feature safe: a sold car stops reporting to its previous owner on its own. But it also means:

• Don’t delete the key from the car’s key list in the Tesla app (Controls → Locks) if you want the alerts to continue. Removing it there is exactly what a new owner would do.
• Don’t uninstall TeslaKee or remove the vehicle from it. The key lives in your phone’s secure element; if it is gone, you cannot answer the next challenge, and re-proving requires a fresh enrolment at the car with your key card.
• Re-enrolled? Prove again. A new TeslaKee enrolment creates a new key. The old claim lapses once other scanners see the new key list; tap This is my car again and the new key takes over as soon as it has been seen by another scanner.
• Changed phones? Enrol TeslaKee on the new phone, then prove again from the new phone. Claims are tied to the device that proved them.

If you did remove the key and want the alerts back, enrol TeslaKee again and repeat the proof. Nothing else needs to change.

Privacy

• TeslaKee never sends your key anywhere, and never talks to the car during the proof.
• Tesla Radar’s server stores the car identifier, the public half of the key and your device address — the same address it already uses to deliver inbox messages. No Tesla account, no login, no VIN is required (TeslaKee passes the VIN along if it knows it, so the app can show your model details).
• Alerts are delivered as encrypted inbox messages that only your phone can open.

Troubleshooting

• This is my car is missing: update Tesla Radar. The car also has to be in your own vehicle list.
• TeslaKee says “Request came from an unknown app”: TeslaKee only answers the genuine Tesla Radar app from Google Play. Reinstall Tesla Radar from the store.
• “TeslaKee confirmed a different vehicle”: you picked another car in TeslaKee’s list. Try again and choose the car whose edit screen you started from.
• “Proof rejected”: the challenge expired (it is valid for ten minutes) or the answer did not match. Just start again.
• No confirmation after weeks: nobody has deep-scanned your car yet. See How long does it take? above.
• Alerts stopped by themselves: your TeslaKee key is no longer on the car’s key list — most often after a key clean-up in the Tesla app or a TeslaKee re-enrolment. See Keep the key on the car above.

Questions or feedback? Get in touch via the support page.