Summon Features

[outie]

A follow up re. Homelink vs Summon. I seem to recall that in Summon mode the garage door can automatically close when the car is done parking. Can this be done also when the car is not in summon mode? my homelink set-up is working fine (ie opening the door when I arrive and closing the door after I leave) but the door won't close automatically once the car is parked. Is that the expected behavior?

Closing automatically is tied to Summon, unlike automatic opening.

 

[AZ Desert Driver]

I had a lengthy "discussion" (argument) about summon-parking on another thread a few months ago. Some people incorrectly
believe that the car somehow "knows" where it is supposed to go and steers itself there. The truth is the car has no notion of a
"destination"; it simply goes forward or backward, avoiding obstacles that its sensors detect. If it detects no obstacles, it will just
travel the specified distance in a straight line. It doesn't know what a garage is, it doesn't know what a parking spot is, it has no
concept of "between" or "in the middle of". If there are obstacles on both sides with just the right spacing between them it will happen
to wind up between them, but that's not because it is "trying" to do so.

Thanks for telling me that it is not as GPS oriented as my imagination would allow. Awesome, just not freaking awesome.
OK - I think you said ...position the car in the driveway manually, line it up as perfectly as one can (every trip), and then tell summon to advance into the garage. While driving into the garage, I can see how far the front wall is (16 inches). How do I tell Summon to advance until it reaches 16"?

 

[AZ Desert Driver]

You can't. See manual:

Before activating Summon, you need to

"Position the Vehicle for Parking"

Before operating Summon, align Model X laterally with the parking space so Model X can move straight into the space in either Drive or Reverse.....

I thought I read the Manual cover to cover. Can you lead me back into the meat of "how to summon"...where is this written?

 

[outie]

I thought I read the Manual cover to cover. Can you lead me back into the meat of "how to summon"...where is this written?

Page 81 for Model S
https://www.tesla.com/sites/default...Manual_Touchscreen_DAS_NA_R20160317_en_US.pdf

 

[RogerHScott]

position the car in the driveway manually, line it up as perfectly as one can (every trip),

I can tell you from experience that "perfectly" is not at all necessary. I'm constantly amazed at how well it compensates for my
sloppiness. How well aligned it needs to be at the start depends mainly on how far you need to travel (shorter the better)
and how close obstacles are on either side (closer the better [to act as guides], up to a point). But, overall, there's just no substitute
for experience here. Rest assured, the failure mode is "car stops too soon", not "car rams into wall".

and then tell summon to advance into the garage. While driving into the garage, I can see how far the front wall is (16 inches).

Did you mean you can see how far from that wall you want the car to stop?

How do I tell Summon to advance until it reaches 16"?

There's a summon/auto-park configuration screen that lets you set clearance distances. In my experience these are a little
counter intuitive: if you don't strictly need to allow a tighter tolerance, don't ask for it; larger tolerances provide better guidance
as your car goes in (YMMV, of course).

 

[AZ Desert Driver]

I can tell you from experience that "perfectly" is not at all necessary. I'm constantly amazed at how well it compensates for my
sloppiness. How well aligned it needs to be at the start depends mainly on how far you need to travel (shorter the better)
and how close obstacles are on either side (closer the better [to act as guides], up to a point). But, overall, there's just no substitute
for experience here. Rest assured, the failure mode is "car stops too soon", not "car rams into wall".

Did you mean you can see how far from that wall you want the car to stop?

There's a summon/auto-park configuration screen that lets you set clearance distances. In my experience these are a little
counter intuitive: if you don't strictly need to allow a tighter tolerance, don't ask for it; larger tolerances provide better guidance
as your car goes in (YMMV, of course).

My courage is not yet high. I put on creep mode [flat garage floor, to be moved about 5 feet] hit summon/customize and inserted 20 Inches and let it move forward (with foot hovering over brake) until it got to 16" then pressed hard on brake. User error? How do I know when the car has learned its instructions?

 

[RogerHScott]

let it move forward

What, exactly, do you mean by this? If you can provide the exact sequence of steps you followed, that might help.
Btw, are your avatar and signatures both out-of-date now? Are you now one of us (one-of-us! one-of-us!)?

 

[hmmm]

Closing automatically is tied to Summon, unlike automatic opening.

That's what I thought, thanks for confirming. (I RTFM'ed ahead of taking delivery...I can't remember the last time I bothered reading a car owner's manual, but this is a different kind of car.)

It's interesting: the car knows where it is (since you can actually set scheduled charging for a specific location, such as your garage) and knows whether the door is closed or open based on Homelink data, so tying the 2 together would seem reasonably straightforward, ie provide the option to turn a feature on that meets criteria such as, for example: 1) when the car is in a given location, 2) the garage door is open 3) you lock the car, then trigger homelink within n seconds.

Or am I just lazy?

 

[AZ Desert Driver]

What, exactly, do you mean by this? If you can provide the exact sequence of steps you followed, that might help.
Btw, are your avatar and signatures both out-of-date now? Are you now one of us (one-of-us! one-of-us!)?

Why, YES I am now the owner/driver of a MS60D. Took delivery (along with a swarm of others) on Sept 30. I've been reading TMC threads so thought I was ready for this complex beast. Now that I actually have it, and try to do things that I thought I understood - I flounder.
I will update Avatar, and very carefully repeat Summon. Its raining , so not going to Summon right now!!

 

[GlmnAlyAirCar]

You make one incorrect assumption:

knows whether the door is closed or open based on Homelink data

Homelink has no knowledge of the position of the door. Triggering homelink just causes the door to go from open to close or from close to open. If the door fails to move, your Tesla has no idea. If the door reverses while closing, your Tesla has no idea.

Summon uses some heuristics to make an educated guess as to the position of the door, but that is dependent on summon being able to move the car. Since your are controlling the car during normal homelink operation, homelink-only can't make the same assumptions.

 

[UnbeknownstToAll]

I can say from experience that summoning your Tesla to back into your garage does work. You may have to train it a few times if your garage is tight or has an uneven lip, but my model S is happy to back into my garage under summon mode.

Not yet being an owner, can you briefly elaborate on how you train the car? Thanks

 

[RogerHScott]

Not yet being an owner, can you briefly elaborate on how you train the car? Thanks

I'm fairly sure it is the owner being trained, not the car. No aspect of the summon feature has any memory, so there's nothing to train.

 

[GlmnAlyAirCar]

Not yet being an owner, can you briefly elaborate on how you train the car? Thanks

Yes, there is no training. The car will move forward in a straight line, only making slight adjustments to avoid obstacles, until it reaches a barrier ahead/behind, or it moves is maximum (configurable) distance. That's all it does.

 

[Marcboy]

I can say from experience that summoning your Tesla to back into your garage does work. You may have to train it a few times if your garage is tight or has an uneven lip, but my model S is happy to back into my garage under summon mode.

I don't believe there is any training that can happen.

I have been using this feature everyday for a year +.

It works fine, used to be better than now. Sometimes for no effing reason the car does not want to move forward.

Getting out on first try works 80% of the time including opening and closing garage door

Getting in works on first try less than half of the time. For me.


It is a broken scenario anyway, because even if the car parks itself, i have to ge I. The garage to plug it in.

But I could not reliably park the car every day for that long w/o hitting something , the car is perfect at doing it.