Automation triggers

Every automation rule in the Car App is read in four parts:

When (the trigger) → If (an optional sensor condition) → And only if (extra checks) → Then (the action).

The trigger decides when the rule is even considered. The condition and the checks decide whether the action then runs. This page describes the four triggers you can pick, so you can tell which one fits what you want. For exact timings, edge detection and the reasons a rule can stay quiet, see Automation triggers in detail.

Ignition

Fires when the car enters the state you chose — ACC, ON, or Remote ON.

You pick the target state under When state becomes. The rule fires on any real change into that state, no matter which state the car came from.
OFF cannot be chosen. A car that is fully off cannot carry out an action.
Only genuine changes count. The very first state the app sees after it starts is taken as a starting point, not as a change, so a rule does not fire simply because the app restarted.
Rules that fire on ON or Remote ON wait out the Pause after the car starts setting before the condition is checked, because a car that has just woken up needs a moment to report its readings. A condition that was already true at the moment of start still counts, even if it turns false while the pause runs.
Brief flickers are ignored — the state has to settle before it counts as a change.

Good for: start-up routines. Steering-wheel heating when the car is started in the cold, opening the sunshade after start-up, preparing the cabin on a remote start.

Sensor

Fires the moment a reading crosses your condition — that is, when the condition goes from not-true to true.

A sensor and a threshold are required for this trigger; the condition is what makes the event.
It fires once per crossing. While the condition stays true, nothing more happens.
It re-arms only after the condition becomes false again. So “battery below 20%” fires once as you drop past 20%, and can only fire again after the level has risen back above it.
A sensor the app has not seen a value for yet cannot have crossed anything, so the first reading never fires a rule. This is what stops a parked car from firing “seat belt unfastened” rules every time the app starts.

Good for: reacting to a change in the car. Charge level dropping past a point, a belt being unfastened, the gear selector moving into reverse, cabin temperature passing a limit.

Time

Fires at a wall-clock time, on the weekdays you tick.

Set the time under At, and tick the days it may run on.
No days ticked means the rule never runs. An empty set is silence, not “every day” — you will be warned when saving.
It fires once per scheduled time. A rule set to 07:30 runs once that morning, not once a minute until 07:31.
It works while the car is parked — the schedule does not depend on the car being on.
If nothing was running exactly at the scheduled minute, the rule may still run up to ten minutes late, and is skipped after that. Preheating the cabin at 07:35 instead of 07:30 is useful; doing it at 14:00 would be a surprise.
If you edit the rule to an earlier time that has not run yet today, it can still run today.

Good for: morning preheating, scheduled charging routines, a weekday-only warm-up.

Data available

Fires when the car gets a working network connection — Wi-Fi or mobile data.

It only applies while the car is on. Network reconnections while the car sits parked do not fire these rules, so you do not get a repeated action every time the car finds your home Wi-Fi overnight.
The condition is optional here: leave it out for “as soon as there is a connection”, or add one to narrow it down.

Good for: anything that needs the internet to be useful right after you set off.

What applies to every trigger

If (condition) — optional for Ignition and Data available, required for Sensor. One sensor compared against one value.
And only if (checks) — any number of extra state checks. All of them must hold at the moment the trigger fires. If a reading needed by a check is unknown, the rule does not run: a check exists to prevent an action in the wrong conditions, so “we do not know the outside temperature” is not read as “it is warm enough”.
Pause before action — a delay between the trigger firing and the action running. Useful to sequence two rules that share a trigger.
Duration — some actions can revert themselves after a set time, so heating or climate switches itself off without a second rule.
Running a rule by hand ignores the trigger and the checks — you are the trigger — and it does not count as the rule’s scheduled run, so a Time rule you test by hand still runs at its own time.
A disabled rule is never considered by any trigger.