It’s not inconceivable that the car could use a BLE connection with the app to be unlocked and started, at least as a backup when it can’t reach a cell tower.

Having no mitigation at all for the car not reaching the Internet on its cell connection is negligent. Even a hidden screen that lets you put in a one-time use startup code in the case of emergencies would have helped.

My understanding of the situation is the following:

1. The car must connect to home via cellular to authenticate/receive updates over some regular cadence (days? hours?) 2. Once that is complete, the user can authenticate over phone to the service via any connection (ie airbnb wifi), then unlock the car with bluetooth 3. The situation here occurred after going beyond cell service range for the car. It tried to connect home, failed, and as a result, refused to honor the phone's unlock the car itself had connected to home over cellular

All while they were on the phone w/ Gig Car customer support. I'm pretty confused about the sequence of events here.

I use Mint Mobile here which is a MVNO that uses T-Mobile. I don't get cell reception at my house. But my sister uses AT&T and gets full bars here while my phone is dead. And by dead I mean it doesn't even connect.

So maybe went Gig went cheap when choosing a cell partner.

Having a good enough signal to make a call is not the same as having good enough signal to push data, and if the car expected to move a megabyte of json over LTE to get started, it would explain the behavior just fine.