Tesla’s Smart Summon Is The Personal Jockey We Need

Manouvering out of tight parking spaces can be a hassle if you are carrying heavy items. It will be a challenge to meander past other parked cars, walk towards the boot, and manually load them. Besides this, you’ll also need to hope that the adjacent cars haven’t parked too close to your own vehicle.

There will be a struggle to keep the door open as wide as possible while you squeeze yourself into the cabin. It’s an extremely inconvenient and undignified way of getting into one’s vehicle. What’s worse is if it’s raining and there are puddles of standing water around your car.

This is a non-issue for Teslas equipped with the Smart Summon feature. It allows drivers to command the car to drive autonomously toward them. The feature is accessible via the Tesla mobile app and is only available if your phone is within 65 meters of where your Tesla is parked.

The car uses its array of cameras to figure out the best feasible way to get to the driver’s location. However, for it to work, the driver needs to download the latest version of the Tesla mobile app and make sure that the phone has network service and GPS is enabled.

In addition to this, the vehicle’s cameras should have already been fully calibrated beforehand and the car is left in Park. Smart Summon will not work if the car is left charging or any of the doors are open. Smart Summon maneuvers the Tesla out of parking spaces and allows it to drive and turn corners at a low speed till it reaches the driver.

The car uses the phone’s GPS location to figure out where the driver is standing and autonomously drives itself there. For the feature to work successfully, the driver must maintain a clear light of sight between them and the Tesla.

Smart Summon is only available to owners who have purchased the optional package. To activate the feature, press Smart Summon on the app. It will then show a map with a blue circle that represents the maximum distance that it can be (65m) from the driver for the feature to work. The blue dot represents the driver’s location while the red arrow represents the vehicle.

Tesla recently released an update as reported by notateslaapp.com for Smart Summon, which it officially calls Actually Smart Summon. This includes bug fixes, summoning sounds, and several other features. It also brings the total range the car can travel to 85m.

When using Smart Summon, users can choose between two modes: Come to Me or Go to Target. The former gets the Tesla to drive to where the driver is, while the latter allows the car to drive to a chosen location within the range.

Smart Summon is only available in certain markets and regions, which for the moment, excludes Malaysia. The company would probably need to jump over a few regulatory hurdles before it’s allowed to make its way here.

That said, the feature could be a Godsend in situations where you’re unable to get to your car. In fact, many would agree that you can’t put a price on having it drive to a more convenient spot where you can get in at your leisure and not inconvenience other drivers in the process.