Answers

Physically, yes — anything that can unlock and start the car can drive it, and a key card left at the counter grants exactly that with no expiry and no notification. Legally it is a different matter: a shop holds your car as a bailee and owes a duty of reasonable care, and driving it beyond what the job requires is outside that duty. What you actually control is whether the trip leaves a record.

See key cards at the shop.

A key card left at a shop keeps full, permanent drive access until you delete it from the car's Locks screen — there is no expiry and no notification. A Tesla stores up to 19 keys, so a card left in March is still a valid drive credential in November. Ask for the card back at pickup and remove it from the key list while you are standing at the car.

No. There is no remote wipe for an NFC key card. Keys are added and removed only from the vehicle's touchscreen under Controls > Locks, using the trash icon next to the key. Any product claiming otherwise is describing something Tesla does not offer.

Only if you granted the vehicle_location scope through Tesla's own authorization screen, and only for as long as that grant is live. Without it, no location-based feature works at all. With it, a responsible shop product should be reporting on-lot versus off-lot and after-hours movement — not showing staff a live map of your car.

GuestLot’s lot watch reports counts and timestamps only. That constraint is listed on the limits page.

They are separate systems and neither one is a substitute for the other. Valet Mode caps speed at 70 mph, limits power, locks the frunk and glovebox, and hides your profiles and key list. Service Mode is a technician state entered on the touchscreen or over a cable — no app can set it, because Tesla's Fleet API has no command for it.

Full breakdown: Valet Mode vs Service Mode.

Usually not for a long stay. Sentry Mode sounds a loud alarm when triggered, which is a genuine complaint from crews working around parked cars, and it draws roughly 250 to 300 watts — about a mile of range per hour. It also auto-disables around 20% state of charge, so on a multi-week job the protection you think you have quietly ends.

Yes, slowly, and on long collision jobs it is a real problem rather than a theoretical one — owner forums carry threads about cars sitting at body shops for months with both the high-voltage pack and the 12V battery dead. Ask the shop what its charging plan is before a multi-week stay, and whether anyone will be notified if the state of charge falls.

Two paths, either one works. Open your Tesla Account and go to Security > Third-Party Apps, then revoke the app; or open the car's Locks screen and delete the app's virtual key. Revoking a scope also automatically removes any telemetry configuration that depended on it, and you never need the shop's permission to do it.

Step by step: give a shop access to your Tesla — and take it back.

Yes, but with less in the record. Check-in, the job policy, key custody, and the hand-back all work from the counter. Telemetry does not, because Tesla requires the owner to authorize through their own account and add a virtual key to the car — a shop can never connect a customer's Tesla unilaterally.

The visit proceeds as a paper-grade custody record and the receipt says so. GuestLot prints 'not recorded' rather than implying a watch it did not have. Roughly speaking, you keep the intake, the custodian trail, and the hand-back; you lose the odometer delta, the lot watch, and the movement timeline.

No. It is awareness software, not a security SLA. It cannot immobilize a car, it cannot prevent a technician from driving one, and it does not replace cameras, fencing, or your alarm contract. What it does is make the visit legible after the fact and end access at pickup.

The whole list of things it will not do: limits we will not hide.

No software can. What changes is that the trip is no longer invisible: an after-hours lot exit and an odometer delta land in the visit record, and the owner receives the same record at pickup. In the widely reported joyride cases, the evidence came from the vehicle or the owner — this simply puts a copy on the shop's side too.

The case pattern: a customer car was damaged at your shop.

A shop holding a customer's vehicle is a bailee with a duty of reasonable care. Once the customer shows the car was delivered undamaged and returned damaged, most US jurisdictions apply a presumption of negligence and the shop carries the burden of proving it exercised reasonable care. This is general information, not legal or insurance advice.

Timestamped intake condition evidence from before the work started, an odometer reading at drop-off, a named custodian for the key, and a movement record for the visit. Broker guidance is explicit that thorough intake documentation helps establish what damage was pre-existing, which is critical when coverage depends on negligence.

If you hold customers' vehicles, general liability alone does not cover them — garage keepers is the line that responds to damage to cars in your care, custody, and control. Which form you carry decides when it pays: Legal Liability only on negligence, Direct Primary regardless of fault, Direct Excess after the owner's own policy. This is general information, not legal or insurance advice.

Forms, limits, and exclusions: garage keepers liability.

The owner authorizes before the appointment instead of at your counter. The access stays dormant, activates when the car reaches the shop, and auto-revokes at pickup. It removes the most awkward two minutes of the intake, where a service writer asks a stranger to log into their Tesla account in the lobby.

Yes, and there are two normal ways to let one. Hand over a key card, which is a full drive credential that works exactly as it always does. Or enable Valet Mode, which still lets the car be driven but caps it at 70 mph, reduces power, locks the frunk and glovebox, and hides your profiles, key list, and saved Home and Work destinations. PIN to Drive is automatically disabled while Valet Mode is on, so an attendant will never be asked for a driving PIN.

The full restriction list: Tesla Valet Mode at a valet stand.

Nobody can answer that cleanly, and we will not pretend otherwise. Field reports conflict about what Sentry does during Valet Mode, the long-running Tesla Motors Club thread on the question never resolved it, and Tesla publishes no canonical statement about the interaction. GuestLot claims no Sentry behavior on a receipt — where Sentry data is absent, the receipt reads 'not recorded' rather than a zero.

That is not a question software can answer, and anyone selling you a guarantee is selling you something. What you can control is what an attendant is able to do and what gets written down. Valet Mode limits speed and power, locks the frunk and glovebox, hides your home address and garage remote, and keeps your key list out of view. A custody record adds the other half: when access started, how far the car moved, whether it left the lot, and when access ended.

Three things. The guest pre-authorizes from the reservation link on the way in, so the handoff at the curb takes seconds instead of minutes. Any exit from the lot fence alerts immediately, because unlike a body shop a valet stand has no legitimate reason to move a car off site. And retrieval closes the window into a receipt the guest opens from a link, with the miles, the exit count, and the exact time access ended.

Written out on the valet operators page.

A location is live the same day, and a single check-in takes about two minutes: VIN, owner mobile number, expected pickup time. There is no hardware to install, no cabinet to mount, and nothing to wire into your DMS before you can run the first car.

$179 per month for Standard and $349 per month for Pro, per location, flat. There is no per-vehicle charge, so a slow February and a full December cost the same. Pro adds the Service Mode checklist and BenchNote, which decodes the VIN and pulls NHTSA recall data at intake.

Full breakdown on pricing, and the per-vehicle comparison on GuestLot vs Standard Fleet.

No, and by design they never will. Owners authorize through Tesla's own screen, not through a GuestLot login, and the report they receive at pickup is a private link rather than a portal. Nobody should have to create an account with a vendor they have never heard of to find out what happened to their own car.

The vehicle and a partial VIN, when access started and when it was revoked, miles driven during the visit, after-hours lot exit count, Supercharger session count, and the closing timestamp. Anything that was not recorded says 'not recorded' rather than showing a zero, because a zero and a blank are different claims.

See every field, on two real receipts.

Never. We collect only what the custody job requires, we do not sell or share vehicle data with data brokers or consumer reporting agencies, and the consent window ends at pickup. Connected-car enforcement over the last two years has been aimed squarely at companies that did the opposite.

Written out in full on the privacy page.