Tesla vehicles have had the Summon feature for a while now, but a new update is delivering ‘Smart Summon’. This goes way beyond the first implementation which basically allowed you to drive your car forward and backwards using the mobile app to get out of a tight park or garage.
Smart Summon works by opening the app, your GPS location being detected, then by pressing and holding it requests the car to come and pick you up.
This is obviously perfect for those times where a venue has an undercover area to enter the vehicle without getting wet. It’s also just bloody cool to show your friends.
The feature is supposed to be under NDA, but some of those users who have early access couldn’t wait and have uploaded YouTube videos of it in action.
What the videos show is cars (both Model 3s) moving relatively slowly around the car park by themselves, on the way to pickup the driver. This will take some time for society to get used to, but it’s important to know the car understands it’s surroundings at all times and will stop in the event someone walks in it’s path, or another vehicle pulls out in front of it.
This technology is only possible because of 2 key advantages that Tesla has. Firstly, the decision to make electric cars. This means the electric drivetrain can be activated with a digital gear selection. Unlike traditional manual and even automatic cars where a physical shifter has to be engaged to move the vehicle, electric vehicles can be driven completely by software.
The second piece is communications. Tesla decision to embed a SIM card inside every vehicle, again proves to be a smart one. This means the 3G/4G connection can talk to Tesla’s cloud, which receives secure commands via your phone and signed in mobile app. This means Tesla vehicles are truly connected cars and that enables awesome features like this Enhanced Summon.
