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by davis_m 2447 days ago
All of the videos I have seen of the summon feature have been pretty bad. A lot of time the vehicle can't seem to figure out what to do. I imagine that will get better with time, but if I had a Tesla I wouldn't be using it now.

I'm surprised they released the feature as-is.

4 comments

There is a selection bias towards the videos posted and shared the most. That being, the videos showing things going wrong are spread more.

I've used mine a few times and had no issues. One of the times, a cop stopped and watched as my car made its way towards me. He then waved and moved on.

Many others have had no issues with it as well. it is "beta", and yeah, you need to have common sense when using it of course.

The headlines going around when it first came out of "Tesla smart summon gets into accident" was so misleading. It was another driver not looking when backing out and backed into the Tesla. That happens thousands of times daily in parking lots all over. Parking lots are a terrible, unsafe place to begin with.

I've used it three times so far. In all cases, it was an area with no traffic and I was very close.

One time I stopped the car out of an abundance of caution.

It's really a party trick more than a complete feature.

If you use it with a little common sense, it works great. I just got the software update today and tested it out in a parking lot that had minimal foot traffic, worked perfectly.
I am pretty happy with mine. It isn't perfect, but it obviously isn't the nightmare that a lot of people with no actual experience with it are claiming.

Tesla will have tons of data to improve it in the short term.