Can I trust Summon?

[lenbtc]

I'm in the middle of purchasing a new home which has a very narrow driveway. When pulling in and out of the garage, the Model S has about 6 inches of space on each side between the neighbors house and mine.

Can I trust the Summon feature to pull in and out of my driveway without scraping up against either house? Should I be watching the car when using the feature?

I know that Summon is still in beta which is why I am worried.

Thanks!

 

[Brettski]

I would not "trust" summon at this point. I like it, and it's occasionally useful.... but in my few months with the car I have observed it can turn driving 15 feet in a straight line into an inordinately complicated maneuver..... lots of wheel turning, pauses, etc. Sometimes it just quits. So again, I may use it here and there but I always watch it, ready to abort. I also don't trust it to control my garage door opener on completion, as it has occasionally stopped half in and half out of the garage.

 

[murphyS90D]

The mirrors stay folded during summon. Did you include that fact in the width measurement?
You should always be watching the car when using summon.
It is your responsibility to abort the operation if it looks like it is doing something wrong.
Make sure there are no obstacles like bicycles, trash cans, or anything else that can be "seen" by the ultrasonic sensors.

 

[MP3Mike]

Can I trust the Summon feature to pull in and out of my driveway without scraping up against either house? Should I be watching the car when using the feature?

You can trust it, but you will likely regret it. People have reported it working fine for months, and then one day for some reason it takes a hard turn and hits the mirror...

So you should always watch it and be ready to interrupt it.

 

[Need]

We summon our Model X out from the garage just about everyday since we got the car last year. The garage door opening is about 8 inches wider on both sides with the mirrors folded. I noticed that when the car's level changes (garage is level but drive way is sloped), the car will stop and adjust the front wheels. We kept an eye on it every time and so far it has not hit our garage opening on either side yet.

 

[mbhforum]

Trust but verify.....

 

[croman]

In 20 months of ownership I've had some near misses when using summon and my garage is tight. I just manually park. I might try smart summon if it is actually smarter.

 

[demundus]

No. Its a parlor trick and the ONE time out of 1000 it fails you'll be left holding the several thousand dollar repair bill (if you mess up your rear QP you're looking at 10K and 4 months of wait).

Not worth, based on many painful stories you can find easily on these forums from other users

 

[Joe F]

While I've not had it hit anything pulling into or out of my narrow garage, as others have noted it does do some odd steering gymnastics which appears as if it's going to run into the opening. It needs to be watched closely. However, I decided to let it do its thing once, and didn't abort it as soon as I saw the wheels turn sharply, and they turned back straight and pulled in okay. I should note my garage is cinder block and is a good surface for the ultrasonics to "see."

However, I no longer use it to park in my garage for two reasons: Twice I had the car go brain dead and not respond to the fob or phone. Not good when your car is centered in a tight garage and you have to contort yourself to get in the car. Tip if it happens: Open the door and lower the window. Makes it much easier.

Second reason I no longer use summon to park: Drive through snow or rain and put the car away wet, and the parking brakes rust solidly to the rotors, and summon may not be able to overcome the force required to force the car to move. Second time that happened was the last time I used summon for my garage parking. Instead, I pull in and park on an angle, blocking a rear door to the outside which now can't be opened, but at least I can carefully ingress/egress without too much of a problem while (barely) not hitting the wall with the door.

I don't consider it a parlor trick though, and have used it at other times and found it quite handy.

 

[EarlyM3Owner]

I use it pretty frequently like others have stated on this thread. with the new control feature on your phone, it stops immediately once you lift your finger off of the forward or reverse button. I have the setting on where I need to hold it down for it to continue to move forward. I would recommend using that setting at first so you can become comfortable with it and "trust but verify"

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

You can trust it like you would a 2-3 year old kid.

Sure they can pull it off, but you never know when they might glitch.

Occasionally I'll use it to pull into my garage when I'm too dirty to get into it. Most of the time it does just fine, but I'm still there to stop it if I need to.

 

[djlott]

Trust? No. Have fun with? Yes. Remember it's still in Beta and until it isn't, I wouldn't trust it too much in a narrow space. As others have mentioned, it only takes once.

 

[lenbtc]

Thank you all for your responses! Some have been quite comical.

The overwhelming answer is obviously to not trust it without watching.

Do you guys think that this will get better once the FSD features start rolling out and the car is able to use all of it's sensors?

 

[Joe F]

Crickets.

 

[TaoJones]

Thank you all for your responses! Some have been quite comical.

The overwhelming answer is obviously to not trust it without watching.

Do you guys think that this will get better once the FSD features start rolling out and the car is able to use all of it's sensors?

Not particularly. While HD mapping will be key for certain FSD features, I don't see how it will help fulfill the promise of summoning the car from garage to front door. Or from a parking garage to in front of a coffee house within a private shopping center. They/Elon got way out in front of their skis for this functionality.

Summon has gotten better handling small rises, such as when backing out of a manual car wash bay.

In any case, the extra cost of vigilance during each and every summoning is far cheaper than the cost of body damage from that 1 in 500 failed episode.

 

[ricebucket]

Summon is probably the most useful EAP feature for me, after Autosteer. The naysayers on this thread probably just haven't found the right circumstances to use it. It's far more useful than auto parking.

As with all EAP features, you must monitor it at all times.

 

[Brettski]

Summon is probably the most useful EAP feature for me, after Autosteer. The naysayers on this thread probably just haven't found the right circumstances to use it. It's far more useful than auto parking.

As with all EAP features, you must monitor it at all times.

Naysayers? Geez.

I wonder which circumstances are the “right”circumstances? In my case, I drive the car up one side of my flat driveway, and initiate summon. The car needs to drive forward about 15 feet. The transition from driveway to garage is smooth. There are at least 18” of clearance on either side. There are no bicycles, wagons or other junk in the garage to confuse the system. All the car has to do is drive straight until it’s about 24” from the wall. Sometimes it works great, but other times it looks like it’s trying to do a tango, with odd steering corrections, hesitations and frequent failure after having achieved a precarious angle to the wall. It can be the most complicated straight line you’ve ever seen.

Just my two cents. But body panel damage will cost a lot more than that.....

 

[Altes]

No

 

[ricebucket]

Naysayers? Geez.

I wonder which circumstances are the “right”circumstances? In my case, I drive the car up one side of my flat driveway, and initiate summon. The car needs to drive forward about 15 feet. The transition from driveway to garage is smooth. There are at least 18” of clearance on either side. There are no bicycles, wagons or other junk in the garage to confuse the system. All the car has to do is drive straight until it’s about 24” from the wall. Sometimes it works great, but other times it looks like it’s trying to do a tango, with odd steering corrections, hesitations and frequent failure after having achieved a precarious angle to the wall. It can be the most complicated straight line you’ve ever seen.

Just my two cents. But body panel damage will cost a lot more than that.....

My statement was on the general usefulness of summon, as I've used it in a variety of parking spots with great success. Obviously, in your particular garage, it is not working too well. That's too bad, but like the rest of EAP systems, you will need to stop using it if you find that the system does not treat that location well.

Compared to Autosteer, btw, I would trust Summon more. Summon is very slow, giving you lots of time to save if necessary. And since Summon is of short duration, you really can't get distracted in the few seconds it takes to run the feature. I wonder how many of the people here who do not trust summon would trust autosteer instead?

 

[SnowBird787]

I have had a good experience with the feature so far. I always watch it like a hawk to make sure nothing goes wrong. It once almost hit a wall with one of its turn adjustments, but to give the car some credit, it was an experiment on my part. I wanted to see how off center of the garage I could summon it in.

One way to avoid some of the stress of it turning and almost hitting the entry of the garage is to center the car in front of the garage space, get out, then summon it in. Works every time. With regards to the clearance, I have about 6 inches on either side with the rearview mirrors tucked away.