Can someone explain "Summon" to me

[timvracer]

With the 8.1 upgrade, and my phone app, I see I have the "summon" feature available to me. However, I cannot really find any information on what it actually is, and what it will or won't do.

I have a narrow entry/exit into my garage, and have to pull it in very slowly/carefully to avoid objects left and right. The sensors on the car keep me informed of where I am at, and based on those, I can pull in exactly where I want to be (12 inches from the front wall).

So will Summon do this for me? Will it pull in and out of a narrow space using its sensors to ensure the car is positioned correctly and not hit any obstacles?

I guess I am just trying to understand exactly what the feature does and does not do.

 

[Altes]

second that... I have a super narrow space (4 in either side with mirrors folded. will it steer?

 

[eye.surgeon]

Yes.

There is a setting that allows it to operate with minimal clearance. In the normal setting it will stop if objects are as close as your garage walls will be.

 

[animorph]

Try it out. It moves fairly slowly, so you should be able to stop it if it doesn't look right. Check the response time in a clear area to get an idea.

 

[ZERO260]

Summons will move your car forward or backwards roughly 40 feet and will stop. I would drive in the garage an use the key fob to exit the car in reverse until you are comfortable trying to let it go in forward.

To use the fob instead of phone....press and hold the roof (top) of fob until the lights start blinking several times. To exit in reverse press the trunk area of the fob. To move car forward after lights start blinking press the forward hood area on fob.

If you have home link program it will open the door automatically and then exit the garage. I'm not brave enough to try this yet. I did not want to wreck my car and door at the same time. I prefer to just open my door manually.

 

[chillaban]

In general, summon moves the car in a straight line, but it will attempt to turn the steering wheel a little to adjust for side obstacles or correct an off-center parking position. But in general, you want to position the car such that it could complete the maneuver without moving the steering wheel at all.

The most useful case for Summon is pulling into a spot that there's no way you can get out of the door if you did it yourself. I usually position the car ~50% into the spot, then back straight out, get out, and let Summon finish the job.


Summon moves at around 1mph, and either touching the door handle or the remote fob during the sequence will immediately abort. I highly recommend keeping a good eye on the car while Summon is in progress, as I have had a case with AP1 where it suddenly started turning towards a wall for no reason.

 

[oktane]

I find summon to be entirely useless, since it always wants to steer into the side of my garage. Not sure why. Haven't tried in a parking space. No way I'd park so close to another car or wall that I couldn't get in/out without summon. It just doesn't work as advertised, and probably never will.

Weren't the AP2 cars supposed to have "advanced summon" that could basically steer itself around a corner into the garage, etc?

 

[Windy City S]

I use to back in and out of my one car garage every day. I totally agree, like mentioned above you want to park as straight as possible so the car has to do little to nothing steering wise. I went into the settings menu and enabled the "tight or narrow" clearance and adjusted the amount of distance I wanted it from the wall to ensure it was parked with the right amount of clearance for the door to close along with the proper clearance in front/back as I choose to back mine in. I advise to watch and monitor closely with the fob in your hand to abort at any moment if at all necessary. Hope that helps!

I would definitely not use to park close enough between two cars as you can bet the car next to you does not offer the same feature and your car will be the one paying the price as they try to enter or exit theirs.

 

[John G]

Do to the curved front end I ended up putting a 5 gallon bucket in front of the bumper. This lets the car pull in further to the garage without worry. I have min distance set at 8in and garage wall is about 4 feet from bucket. Center of car stops 8" from bucket. Car cannot travel further or side of bumper would hit toolbox in path of front bumper curve.

 

[Alan Sherman]

There are 3 ways to initiate Summon, and I've found the feature to be quite accurate and reproducible: Key Fob, Shift Stalk park button and Tesla App. When I arrive home, the car opens my garage door automatically as I turn into my driveway. I put the car in Park no more than 25 feet from its parking place in the garage. Before I exit the car, I hit the button at the end of the right located "gearshift" stalk TWICE. A picture of the car appears on the center screen. You select "forward" and then exit the car. Within 5 seconds from when you *sugar* the door, the car begins to drive into the garage. It parks itself in the EXACT same location every single time. It's very accurate and reproducible. You can perform the same maneuver by the method described by ZERO260 above, using the key fob. You hold the top of the car button until the headlights and taillights flash, and then hit the hood for forward or the trunk for reverse. I see that there is a third way to do this with the app...but I haven't tried it. I understand that eventually, you'll be able to summon the car from a circular driveway to the garage and back, but I don't believe that is enabled in software yet. If you enable it, the car will also open the garage door and shut it, but like ZERO260 above, I have thus far not been brave enough to enable it.

 

[ohmman]

I use summon to open my garage, pull the car out, and come around front to pick me up. You know, like this:

Chief executive Elon Musk said the electric-auto maker’s software update to its Model S sedan later this year [published: 2015] will enable the car to drop off its driver, park itself, and then pick up the driver later.

“Press [a] ‘summon’ button and your car will come and find you,” Musk told reporters. “Press that button again and it will put the car in your garage.”

 

[KrenGrl]

Well I learned something here. Tesla summon is like when I summon my husband and he ignores me
or he is VERY SLOOOOOW to respond.

 

[timvracer]

Thanks all for your responses. I got mine to work effectively. I wish I could specify less than 8 inches, as I need it to go another 4 inches. It is misreading my shelves for some reason and stopping about 14 inches in front of them instead of 8. But whatever, it is close enough, and it works great. I have to squeeze between 2 cars in the driveway (my wife's and my son's), and then in the garage there are 2 bicycles in stands to the left and right of the Tesla (I have to park between them).

Right now, I only use it to enter. I have tried to use it to back out, but it doesn't understand things like mirror clearance, and it struggles backing out between the 2 cars in the driveway. I will keep working on it, even just parking into the garage, it's pretty cool.

 

[John G]

Did you try backing it in?

 

[pault72]

I have a 2 car deep garage spot and park the car deep in the garage. I had the Homelink set to automatically open the garage door when I back out. It opened the garage door and as I was backing out it thought I was out and started to close the garage door! The door hit my rear trunk and stopped. Made a scratch on my trunk. Not very happy camper! Now I have the Homelink to NOT automatically open or close the garage door. It also didn't always automatically close the garage door either as I was leaving.

 

[Paladin732]

For some reason autopark (double tapping park button) and the keyfob don't work for me. Is that because I have continual press turned on? (It's an AP2 car)

I've found it to be incredibly useful with the app (I use the third party app I found on this forum, the main app sometimes is cranky with proximity), as we have a shared driveway with 6 houses on it, so it's difficult to get in and out of the garage. (Most people have hit their garage a few times learning how to do it)

 

[AllenWong]

For some reason autopark (double tapping park button) and the keyfob don't work for me. Is that because I have continual press turned on? (It's an AP2 car)

I've found it to be incredibly useful with the app (I use the third party app I found on this forum, the main app sometimes is cranky with proximity), as we have a shared driveway with 6 houses on it, so it's difficult to get in and out of the garage. (Most people have hit their garage a few times learning how to do it)

I can confirm that if continuous press is turned on then the autopark via double-tapping the park button will not work. Also after you double tap the park button, you're supposed to choose the direction on the touchscreen and then autopark will happen after you exit from the car. I'm going to also assume that continuous press also disables the keyfob from using a Summon. This is information for an AP1 car in the U.S. I'm not sure how it applies to AP2 in the U.S.

Which 3rd party app are you using btw?

 

[Paladin732]

I can confirm that if continuous press is turned on then the autopark via double-tapping the park button will not work. Also after you double tap the park button, you're supposed to choose the direction on the touchscreen and then autopark will happen after you exit from the car. I'm going to also assume that continuous press also disables the keyfob from using a Summon. This is information for an AP1 car in the U.S. I'm not sure how it applies to AP2 in the U.S.

Which 3rd party app are you using btw?

"Dashboard for Tesla"

 

[timvracer]

Follow up on Summon -- WARNING, it does not see curbs!! I learned the hard way, and now I have a damaged underside on my front bumper from SUMMON driving right up onto a curb. I should have known better, but got lulled into a false sense of security because I have used summon so often to park. However, in this case, there as a bumper that is high enough to damage the front bumper, but low enough that radar doesn't see it.

BE CAREFUL WITH CURBS!!!!! My PPF helped reduce the damage, but it could have been worse. It lifted the front end of the car, and interestingly enough the car detected it and automatically went into "JACK MODE". Nevertheless, I had to reverse and pull the car back which is what did the most damage (pulled up the PPF and scratched it further).

Argh.. my only solace is that all the damage is not visible unless you get down to ground level and look underneath. However, it could have been much worse (like pulling the bumper off).

With all the tech and sensors on this car, you'd think it could protect itself from driving onto a curb like that.

 

[Tam]

..."JACK MODE"...

1) I sound like you have Air Suspension. In retrospect, would you think you could raise the height all the way up and that could prevent any further damage?

2) Could it be that Tesla might be able to deal with curbs/parking lot cement blocks in future: They might be too low for cameras and radar to detect but what about all those ultrasonic sensors?