In recent years, Tesla has gained a reputation for introducing innovative features and technologies to the electric vehicle industry. One of the most hyped features has been the Summon function, which is designed to allow Tesla owners to control their car remotely.
Initially, the Summon function was just for backward and forward movements, but then Tesla promised a ‘Smart’ summon function that allows the car to park itself, navigate around obstacles, and even come to the owner’s location autonomously.
Since the Smart Summon feature is part of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) package, some of these features are not fully implemented yet. For radar-based vehicles, the Summon feature was available for some time, but due to Tesla’s shift to vision-based autonomy tasks, it also disappeared.
However, in September, the company finally rolled out the Actual Smart summon feature, allowing users to remotely drive their vehicles as long as they are on private property. This update has had some impressive uses so far, but in the case of one Tesla owner, this feature turned out to be a disaster.
Full Details of the Incident
As reported by Electrek, a recent incident involving a Tesla owner in Nova Scotia, Canada, has highlighted significant issues with the vehicle’s Summon feature following a software update. The owner who was identified as Jamie reported this incident where he was unable to access his car which got stuck in a tight corridor between his house and that of his neighbor. This came about after using the firmware version v12.5.4.1 which disrupted the functionality of the Summon feature which he had used in the car for years to navigate in and out of tight spaces.
The update aimed to enhance the functionality of the Summon feature now referred to as “Actually Smart Summon.” However, it rendered the previous “Dump Summon” functionality ineffective for Jamie. The owner reported that the attempts to use the Summon feature resulted in various error messages such as “cannot find a clear path to pin” and “stopped due to unexpected error” when trying to move the car.
Jamie said that before the new update came, he was able to use the Summon feature without any issue but post-update, it only works successfully about 5% of the time, compared to a near 100% success rate before the update.
After all this hassle, Jamie contacted Tesla’s customer service several times and got basic information like ‘try resetting the software’. However, there was no such option as the rollback of the software to the previous version capable of working properly, the lack of which has been described by many users struggling with similar problems.
The “Actual Smart Summon” was introduced after a lengthy development period and is designed for operation in private spaces like parking lots. Despite its promising capabilities, many users have reported bugs and operational failures since its rollout.
Concerns Over Reliability
Recent complaints make people doubt the efficiency and security of the self-driving possibilities provided by Tesla cars. For users such as Jamie, the new update of Summon weakens trust in Tesla self-driving technology. While the feature is supposed to be convenient, an occurrence of a failure brings about anxiety and organizational challenges when reclaiming the car from some hard-to-find points.
Though Tesla owns Summon and Full Self-Driving features, it continues to improve them through over-the-air (OTA) updates. However, these systems are not perfect and when they are compromised, they will prove to be very irritating to the driver of the vehicle. The company has warned users not to rely on Summon and other similar features because they can be unreliable, especially in areas where GPS or any internet connection is not available.
In summary, Jamie’s experience serves as a cautionary tale about the complexities of software-driven vehicle features and the challenges that come with reliance on technology that may not always perform as expected.
