Passive entry theft is quite common. The method is used for stealing cars and it works for the Tesla Model S as well. An owner got his car stolen from right outside his house and he has now published the surveillance video online so that we can all see just how the thieves were able to do this.
The video shows the thieves using a tablet to likely capture the passive signal from his keyfob. They then use the data to open the vehicle and drive off. It actually took them longer to unplug the charging cable than it did to open the door because they couldn’t figure that out.
Tesla does provide features to deter passive entry theft but the owner of this vehicle wasn’t using them. The “PIN to drive” feature is meant to prevent this from happening. It requires a code to be entered before one can drive off with the car after the door has been unlocked.
The owner didn’t disable passive entry either, that’s the feature which opens the car when you walk up to it with the fob, despite the fact that the car was parked outside his house. A “Faraday pouch” wasn’t used to store the fob as well which would have blocked the signals and thus not allowed the thieves to intercept them.
The lesson to take away from this is that if you’re not keeping your Tesla in the garage overnight, it would be best to enable the PIN to drive feature and disable passive entry.