Summons feature flaw

[wussy]

Why wait over two weeks until the day of a big Tesla reveal to post this message?

You said your car crunched into the curb. Could you post a photo of the damage?

SHORT!

I didn’t know that there is a Tesla reveal as I don’t really follow any social media but I posted yesterday because that is when my car was returned to me by Tesla after running diagnostics to try and figure out what happened. Without a satisfactory answer I felt oblidged to make it public as I don’t want anyone to trust summon more than it should be and assume the car will actually stop when it is supposed to.
With regards to a photo, as mentioned earlier the curb was just low enough to miss the nose cone so it scraped along he undercarriage leaving only minor scratches. The sound it made was far worse than the consequence but I was relieved not to have an expensive repair bill

 

[wussy]

You can stop summon without the keyfob. Go and touch a door handle. Or go and stand in front of the car.

Thanks for the Info on touching the door handle. I didn’t know about this. I don’t know if this would have worked when everything else was non responsive but still good to know

 

[wussy]

Mann

The car has a hard time going over a 0.5" concrete lip for some people's driveways, I have a hard time believing it drove OVER 5" of straw (which is still probably more than 0.5" when compacted). You sure it didn't drag the mannequin?

straw man was not dragged. Just run over. I think compressible enough not be be stuck. It was just the legs that were run over

Treating your car like a toy and not understanding the functionality is not Tesla's fault. I think you need to tuck your tail between your legs and take this as a learning lesson and move on.

i would have to agree that this ended up being irresponsible as a stunt but my bad decision making still doesn’t change that the car was even able to run over an object and crash. I am not trying to blame Tesla. I love my car but I do have legitimate concerns that this can happen. Clearly not something common but if people don’t report then there is no way of knowing how common a fail like this is.

 

[wussy]

Invoice Date
Invoice Number

15-Nov-2017
300000221713

Date/Time Received
Date/Time Promised
15-Nov-2017 12:45 p.m.
Odometer In
Odometer Out

26876 Miles
Ready Date
15-Nov-2017
26876 Miles
Service Advisor
David Stella
TESLA MOTORS
9428 Reisterstown Rd, Owings Mills, MD 21117 Ph: 410-415-1411
Fax:
Invoice SERVICE DEPARTMENT HOURS
M.V.R.T.# 3550

Bill To
Mobile Phone
Additional Phone
Vehicle Identification Number



Year
Model
License Plate
Color

2015
Model S
Solid Black Paint
Job Number
Description Of Work
Amount (USD)
1
Concern: Customer: Summons caused vehicle to run over Halloween prop.
Corrections: Summon General Diagnosis
This concern was not duplicated at this visit. We went over the vehicles data and found no trouble faults.
Pay Type: Goodwill
0.00
2
Concern: Perform courtesy inspection.
Corrections: Courtesy Inspection Performed standard courtesy inspection.
Pay Type: Goodwill
0.00

This is taken from the invoice emailed to me by Tesla. I deleted only my personal information from here. I suspect that still won’t be enough for you but it is not my job to please you. I can handle the criticism but just want to do my part so that this hopefully doesn’t happen again. Bad decision notwithstanding on the Halloween prank, as I’ve said, there was s still no good explanation why the car would stop responding and continue driving until it hit something solid. At least I did learn about the door handle potentially stopping the car. So whether you believe or not is up to you but Tesla certainly is aware and I had to drive a shitty and smelly Chevy impala while they had the car in the shop. I have nothing to gain from this other than ridicule but if it can save someone then it is with it. If not, at least some people had the chance to make themselves feel good about ridiculing me. Oh well.

 

[unbelievable]

Invoice Date
Invoice Number

15-Nov-2017
300000221713

Date/Time Received
Date/Time Promised
15-Nov-2017 12:45 p.m.
Odometer In
Odometer Out

26876 Miles
Ready Date
15-Nov-2017
26876 Miles
Service Advisor
David Stella
TESLA MOTORS
9428 Reisterstown Rd, Owings Mills, MD 21117 Ph: 410-415-1411
Fax:
Invoice SERVICE DEPARTMENT HOURS
M.V.R.T.# 3550

Bill To
Mobile Phone
Additional Phone
Vehicle Identification Number



Year
Model
License Plate
Color

2015
Model S
Solid Black Paint
Job Number
Description Of Work
Amount (USD)
1
Concern: Customer: Summons caused vehicle to run over Halloween prop.
Corrections: Summon General Diagnosis
This concern was not duplicated at this visit. We went over the vehicles data and found no trouble faults.
Pay Type: Goodwill
0.00
2
Concern: Perform courtesy inspection.
Corrections: Courtesy Inspection Performed standard courtesy inspection.
Pay Type: Goodwill
0.00

This is taken from the invoice emailed to me by Tesla. I deleted only my personal information from here. I suspect that still won’t be enough for you but it is not my job to please you. I can handle the criticism but just want to do my part so that this hopefully doesn’t happen again. Bad decision notwithstanding on the Halloween prank, as I’ve said, there was s still no good explanation why the car would stop responding and continue driving until it hit something solid. At least I did learn about the door handle potentially stopping the car. So whether you believe or not is up to you but Tesla certainly is aware and I had to drive a shitty and smelly Chevy impala while they had the car in the shop. I have nothing to gain from this other than ridicule but if it can save someone then it is with it. If not, at least some people had the chance to make themselves feel good about ridiculing me. Oh well.

I’m not ridiculing you. I just want you to post a photo of a recognisable part of your Tesla. You know. Just to prove it. Rather than copying and pasting something from the internet and filling in all the blanks.

PS. I’ll give you full marks for: Concern: Customer: Summons caused vehicle to run over Halloween prop.

 

[Farzinfar]

@wussy: I can believe you. Did you use your fob key or Tesla app? If the later, on what phone?

There might be a possibility that your phone had too many apps open and ran out of RAM. This happens to my Iphone time to time and if there are too many apps open, even my camera starts with a few seconds delay. So if you used your phone for summon and you had too many app opened, this might have been the cause of the problem. This means the connectivity with the car was not lost so the car did not stop immediately but there was delay in transmitting command.

Anyway, you put a ghost on the driver seat and use summon to scare off people. Maybe ghosts got upset and sat on the driver seat to scare you off!!

One last word, I think summon has to be used responsibly and with extra caution even if it is not in Beta mode.

 

[wussy]

It was using the Tesla app on an iPhone 7

 

[unbelievable]

It was using the Tesla app on an iPhone 7

Why don't you use your iPhone 7 to pop out and take a quick photo of your Tesla?

 

[wussy]

I’m not ridiculing you. I just want you to post a photo of a recognisable part of your Tesla. You know. Just to prove it. Rather than copying and pasting something from the internet and filling in all the blanks.

PS. I’ll give you full marks for: Concern: Customer: Summons caused vehicle to run over Halloween prop.

If you really care that much, you are welcome to call the dealership at Owings Mills although we have no idea if they would actually give out information. My guess is not. And I would not give five the full invoice either as it would also contain personal information which I don’t want shared. A photo would show nothing since there a plenty of Tesla’s around and I could take a picture of anyone’s car. I Understand a healthy dose of skepticism and you don’t know me so you have no reason to believe I have no personal gain in this. There was nothing damage so I have no financial gain and I love my Tesla and would like to see the company succeed and honestly I could do without all this back and forth bullshit although there were at least a few helpful posts. I doubt I will get an answer as to what happened but this did at least co firm to myself why I have a general aversion to social posts as there are plenty of opinionated people out there who love to criticize until it is them that makes a mistake. As I’ve said, I accept that what I did was dumb. I put it out there honestly. But there was still a problem that went beyond phone connectivity. Something failed and I don’t know what and it could have happened in a situation when I was using the car for its intended use.

 

[BerTX]

Invoice Date
Invoice Number

15-Nov-2017
300000221713

Date/Time Received
Date/Time Promised
15-Nov-2017 12:45 p.m.
Odometer In
Odometer Out

26876 Miles
Ready Date
15-Nov-2017
26876 Miles
Service Advisor
David Stella
TESLA MOTORS
9428 Reisterstown Rd, Owings Mills, MD 21117 Ph: 410-415-1411
Fax:
Invoice SERVICE DEPARTMENT HOURS
M.V.R.T.# 3550

Bill To
Mobile Phone
Additional Phone
Vehicle Identification Number



Year
Model
License Plate
Color

2015
Model S
Solid Black Paint
Job Number
Description Of Work
Amount (USD)
1
Concern: Customer: Summons caused vehicle to run over Halloween prop.
Corrections: Summon General Diagnosis
This concern was not duplicated at this visit. We went over the vehicles data and found no trouble faults.
Pay Type: Goodwill
0.00
2
Concern: Perform courtesy inspection.
Corrections: Courtesy Inspection Performed standard courtesy inspection.
Pay Type: Goodwill
0.00

This is taken from the invoice emailed to me by Tesla. I deleted only my personal information from here. I suspect that still won’t be enough for you but it is not my job to please you. I can handle the criticism but just want to do my part so that this hopefully doesn’t happen again. Bad decision notwithstanding on the Halloween prank, as I’ve said, there was s still no good explanation why the car would stop responding and continue driving until it hit something solid. At least I did learn about the door handle potentially stopping the car. So whether you believe or not is up to you but Tesla certainly is aware and I had to drive a shitty and smelly Chevy impala while they had the car in the shop. I have nothing to gain from this other than ridicule but if it can save someone then it is with it. If not, at least some people had the chance to make themselves feel good about ridiculing me. Oh well.

I appreciate your posting and apologize for any ridiculing on my part. You had good intentions in posting -- since you don't follow here, please understand that many here assumed you were simply presenting a false problem report, which then gets picked up by the media, causing a stock price crash that you can capitalize on. It happens, and sorry that you innocently got caught up in that incorrect assumption.

Also, the idea of reporting to the NTSB is a touchy subject, since features have been taken away from our cars simply because someone did something unwise and then complained to the NTSB. The feature may not be perfect, but it's better than nothing if you are in a case where it does some good, and we don't want it taken away.

As to the statement "there was s still no good explanation why the car would stop responding", I think there is. If your car was close to the house and using wifi to communicate, then you summon it away from the house, it has to switch from communicating via wifi, find the LTE signal, and resume communications that way. I can see a lag there where communication could be spotty. The car should stop, as others have stated. I have no idea why Europe thinks the phone control of Summon is safer and don't even allow the fob to be used for control.

 

[unbelievable]

If you really care that much, you are welcome to call the dealership at Owings Mills although we have no idea if they would actually give out information. My guess is not. And I would not give five the full invoice either as it would also contain personal information which I don’t want shared. A photo would show nothing since there a plenty of Tesla’s around and I could take a picture of anyone’s car. I Understand a healthy dose of skepticism and you don’t know me so you have no reason to believe I have no personal gain in this. There was nothing damage so I have no financial gain and I love my Tesla and would like to see the company succeed and honestly I could do without all this back and forth bullshit although there were at least a few helpful posts. I doubt I will get an answer as to what happened but this did at least co firm to myself why I have a general aversion to social posts as there are plenty of opinionated people out there who love to criticize until it is them that makes a mistake. As I’ve said, I accept that what I did was dumb. I put it out there honestly. But there was still a problem that went beyond phone connectivity. Something failed and I don’t know what and it could have happened in a situation when I was using the car for its intended use.

I hope someone in the US would please take you up on the offer of calling Owings Mills.

The photo would show that you have a Tesla. Don't tell me. You're at work and it's at home.

 

[Joe F]

Ultrasonic sensors are designed to avoid brick walls, not flesh or shrubbery

Not quite accurate. I've used me, pacing next to the front bumper on the drivers side to direct the summoned MS away from bushes and a pile of mulch I parked too close to once, and didn't want to squeeze to get back into the car as I did getting out of it. It was very handy!

 

[Farzinfar]

It was using the Tesla app on an iPhone 7

As I suspected! Did you have many apps open at the time?

As I explained lack of RAM can cause phone to delay and lag significantly in communicating with the car.

 

[BerTX]

Not quite accurate. I've used me, pacing next to the front bumper on the drivers side to direct the summoned MS away from bushes and a pile of mulch I parked too close to once, and didn't want to squeeze to get back into the car as I did getting out of it. It was very handy!

I think my statement was "quite accurate". It was not *designed* to avoid low-density objects. Sometimes it does. Sometimes, not. A small bag of water (aka, human) is borderline.

 

[jeffro01]

So many things here do not add up... Most of which have been called out so I'll save repeating... The one that jumps out at me is summon will abort the moment the car senses any resistance which would have surely happened when it ran over the straw prop. Furthermore, the average US street is at least 29ft wide so combine that with any length of driveway and again, the story falls "short"...

I'll stay away from the obvious responsibility and reckless usage of the feature but good lord...

Jeff

 

[croman]

Straw would be detected by ultrasonics (at least my car does). When using Summon now, I do not have front ultrasonics sometimes so my summon is prone to proceeding until bumping against things. I discontinued use of it after the first time it gently rammed the storage boxes in front of it while summoning in after I got .42. might be an AP2 only thing.

 

[wussy]

I appreciate your posting and apologize for any ridiculing on my part. You had good intentions in posting -- since you don't follow here, please understand that many here assumed you were simply presenting a false problem report, which then gets picked up by the media, causing a stock price crash that you can capitalize on. It happens, and sorry that you innocently got caught up in that incorrect assumption.

Also, the idea of reporting to the NTSB is a touchy subject, since features have been taken away from our cars simply because someone did something unwise and then complained to the NTSB. The feature may not be perfect, but it's better than nothing if you are in a case where it does some good, and we don't want it taken away.

As to the statement "there was s still no good explanation why the car would stop responding", I think there is. If your car was close to the house and using wifi to communicate, then you summon it away from the house, it has to switch from communicating via wifi, find the LTE signal, and resume communications that way. I can see a lag there where communication could be spotty. The car should stop, as others have stated. I have no idea why Europe thinks the phone control of Summon is safer and don't even allow the fob to be used for control.

That is a good point abou NTSB. I’m not looking to create problems for Tesla although I would love for them to investigate further. A phone connectivity issue seems likely but as I’ve said in the past the car would always stop if connectivity lost. I have used summon many times to pull the car forward when it is in a tight parking space and it has worked great and I agree it is a useful feature. Never had I had a problem other than occasionally not summoning due to connectivity or going into my garage not pulling forward because the floor is elevated almost an inch over my driveway so it often stall there partway in.

I would never use autopilot without paying attention and keeping hands and feet ready to react and I have never used summon without being in visual contact with the car but with summon one is not actually in the car so when something goes wrong there is no way to stop it that I knew of as releasing the forward didn’t work. Yes some moron pointed out that I could use the handle to stop the car but since I didntknow that would work without the key it wasn’t a thought. Running to to car as they suggest would be idiotic though as I am not going to throw myself in front of it when I’ve already seen it run over something and trying to get in without the key I wouldn’t expect to work. Even dumber is the idea that I would stop and try to video this or take a photo rather than continuing to try and use the app to stop the car since that is all had available. That would have actually been irresponsible.
I do appreciate the thought on ntsb though and the sensitivity. I did bring it to Tesla first before making anything public because I had hoped they could identify what went wrong. I I was superstitious I would even go along with an actual ghost taking over on Halloween. Not buying it but I appreciate the humor in that. If that happened to one of my neighbors Tesla’s on Halloween I would have gone with that response

 

[wussy]

As I suspected! Did you have many apps open at the time?

As I explained lack of RAM can cause phone to delay and lag significantly in communicating with the car.

Not sure how many apps open but I believe that likely contributed to the loss of connectivity. My Wi-Fi is weak and about the end of the driveway will stop picking up so both the car and phone could be switching from Wi-Fi to cell around that distance.

 

[Krazaak]

After watching a video of somebody summoning their Tesla through their garage door, I wouldn't be even remotely surprised if the events are 100% true.

The reality though is the vehicle was not being used in a safe manner and certainly not in the manner it was intended to be used. It sounds like panic set in when things went awry in a situation resulting from some pretty poor judgement. There's nothing in the Tesla AP design that says it's going to see and stop for a couple inches of straw or a low curb. Had somebody stepped in front of the car or it struck an object that provided resistance, it might have stopped as it should have.

It sounds like the situation could have been caused by the phone not registering the change in presses, which is one of the reasons I never summon my vehicle without being completely aware of objects in it's path and being in a position to manually terminate the summon when possible.

 

[wussy]

Goo

You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

good point. I apologize for calling names. The idea of taking a photo while your car is out of control seems to be a poor one to me but you are correct there is no need for me to be derogatory to that person. Nor do I understand how a photograph of the front of a Tesla would convince anyone that it belongs to me. It is irrelevant.
I do not personally know anyone who doesn’t make mistakes and usually at least a few big ones. I can at least accept my error and learn from it and admit I was wrong. If only our president could do the same maybe we would be better off. I’m sure that comment will bring me more hate from people who likeTrump but so be it. I appreciate all the helpful comments that have been posted and for those who wish to focus on blame that is your right as well.