Tesla’s Smart Summon feature hasn’t seen many improvements over the years since it was first launched in 2019, and while the promise of Actual Smart Summon (ASS) as being just around the corner, a Model 3 owner in Vancouver was able to take full advantage of the existing feature to rescue their car from a locked parking garage.
The incident took place over the weekend in Vancouver, BC, where Model 3 owner @JackyHeshi found themselves in the awkward position of having parked their car in an Impark garage without realizing that it closed at 10:00pm. With no after hours access, that meant they would have to wait until 7:00am the next morning to rescue their car.
After arriving to a closed gate, Jacky decided to try and see if they could use Smart Summon to remotely drive the car out of the parking spot and drive over the trigger to open the gate. Fortunately their Model 3 was parked close enough to the gate where they could watch the car’s progress, and as you can see in the video below it performed flawlessly. Videos from the car’s point of view were also shared on X, showing the Model 3 moved confidently through the parking garage, something that can’t always be said for the FSD feature.
#fsdbeta pic.twitter.com/pSRRRifAjn
— Jacky Heshi (@JackyHeshi) September 16, 2023
As we noted Smart Summon was first released in 2019, and while it has proven useful in certain scenarios, like this example where it was used to get a Model Y out of a flooded parking lot, the feature is very much hit (literally) or miss when it comes to reliability.
That poor reliability has led to CEO Elon Musk promising updates to Smart Summon that he jokingly referred to as “actually smart summon.” That was in September 2020 through a post on X, with Musk saying at the time the team working on the feature had a deadline of the end of the month to deliver the new feature. However here we are more than one year later and we are still waiting for an update to Smart Summon.
How often do you use Smart Summon? Let us know in the comments below.
