On halloween this year I had what I thought was a brilliant idea to scare people using the Tesla model S. Leaving my car in the driveway, as people would approach I would use the summon feature to have the car pull 1-2 feet forward or backwards. In place of the driver was a ghost prop. This worked great, however at the end of the evening I went to use it one last time and when I began summon pulling forward the car stopped responding and continued driving even after I was no longer pressing forward and even trying reverse. In the middle of our quiet street I had a human sized stuffed mannequin that had been out also as a prop and the car failed to recognize this and ran it over. It continued to be unresponsive and didn't stop until it crashed itself into the curb on the opposite side of the street. It was witnessed by multiple people and was honestly terrifying because if that had been a real person, they would have been killed, not to mention the horrible sound of hearing my car crunch into the curb. So not only did the failsafe of losing response to the commands not work, but the safety measures that are supposed to keep the car from running into/over solid objects failed. I brought the car to the Tesla dealership and they could not identify the problem and stated that this was in Beta phase so essentially it is up to me to trust whether summon won't kill someone or crash the car. Honestly, that is far to cavalier for me to release a function that can malfunction with such a serious consequence and then say it is Beta. If they had at least found out what went wrong, I could assume they could fix it but now I can't trust summon at all for fear it will wreck something or hurt someone. I don't know if anyone else has had this issue but this is to me a serious safety concern and I would caution anyone from using the summon feature. I have not had this issue before, but one catastrophe is enough. I am trying to figure out next how to report this to the transportation safety board as I don't think Tesla has acted responsibly in releasing Beta products that can kill people.
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Honestly in reading this, the only possible explanation that I can come up with is that parking brake failed and the car simply continued rolling after summon tried to end.
Assuming you have continuous press enabled, summon should stop when you release the button on the fob, and even if you don’t, it should stop with a second press of the fob. It didn’t do this.
The ultrasonic sensors should have detected the manaquin laying in the road (unless maybe it was laying totally flat and too low for the sensors) and they should have also detected the curb (especially if it was high enough to cause the car to ‘crunch’) and either of those obstacles should have stopped summon.
Finally, summon only operates for a set distance (30 feet as I recall) and will automatically stop after that. It certainly sounds like down the driveway and across the street would have exceeded 30 feet.
As I said, the only thing I can imagine is that the parking brake failed and the car was simply free rolling down the driveway and across the street with nothing to stop it until it hit the curb.
Still a scary situation and I would think that the SC would be able to find that issue by checking the logs, but I honestly have a hard time seeing how nearly every single one of the summon failsafes could have failed at once.
Assuming you have continuous press enabled, summon should stop when you release the button on the fob, and even if you don’t, it should stop with a second press of the fob. It didn’t do this.
The ultrasonic sensors should have detected the manaquin laying in the road (unless maybe it was laying totally flat and too low for the sensors) and they should have also detected the curb (especially if it was high enough to cause the car to ‘crunch’) and either of those obstacles should have stopped summon.
Finally, summon only operates for a set distance (30 feet as I recall) and will automatically stop after that. It certainly sounds like down the driveway and across the street would have exceeded 30 feet.
As I said, the only thing I can imagine is that the parking brake failed and the car was simply free rolling down the driveway and across the street with nothing to stop it until it hit the curb.
Still a scary situation and I would think that the SC would be able to find that issue by checking the logs, but I honestly have a hard time seeing how nearly every single one of the summon failsafes could have failed at once.
SomeJoe7777
Marginally-Known Member
I don't believe a word of this.
1. For this to happen as described, the OP would have had to disable "require continuous press", which is accompanied by a warning. Blaming Tesla after he disabled the safety feature is ridiculous.
2. Summon moves the vehicle at about 2 MPH. You literally can walk faster than this. No one was in danger of being "killed".
3. If both the phone and the keyfob fail to make the vehicle respond, you can stop summon at any time by pressing any door handle. One would think that if you're going to take the risk of disabling require continuous press that you would know that.
Troll / short / hater / FUD spreader.
1. For this to happen as described, the OP would have had to disable "require continuous press", which is accompanied by a warning. Blaming Tesla after he disabled the safety feature is ridiculous.
2. Summon moves the vehicle at about 2 MPH. You literally can walk faster than this. No one was in danger of being "killed".
3. If both the phone and the keyfob fail to make the vehicle respond, you can stop summon at any time by pressing any door handle. One would think that if you're going to take the risk of disabling require continuous press that you would know that.
Troll / short / hater / FUD spreader.
Tiger
Active Member
Tiger
Active Member
Thanks for all the reply’s and happy to provide some further details based on the questions. No this is not an April fools joke and was witnessed by multiple people in the neighborhood who were all mortified as I was.
1. The total distance from my driveway to cross the street is about 30 feet so I don’t know if it would have stopped soon if it had not hit the curb.
2. The car was operated by the phone app and was set to disable when the forward button is release. It has been this way since summon was released and I have not changed the settings. I have had the car since July 2015 and although summon was not yet a feature, I have never had it malfunction like that before since it was introduced. It essentially became non-responsive
3. The mannequin was stuffed with straw and about 5-6” thick and in clothes
4. Curb height is 4.5-5” which at least kept my nose cone from being crushed
5. Yes it is a silly prank to have the car drive an no the car isn’t a toy but that doesn’t mean it is okay for that many things on the car to fail. Hence why I started the post.
6. It is correct that the car moves only about 2 mph in summon but to assume all people could get out of the way shows a complete lack of knowledge by whomever wrote that.
7. This is my first post because in general I stay away from all social media but I was so concerned that this happened I felt it my duty to make people aware. I don’t expect people who are going to cry fake news to change their mind and that is fine. It is clear some people will only believe what suits them.
8. As mentioned earlier I did bring the car in to Tesla to have them run the logs and they couldn’t find the problem. That is why I posted this. If they knew what went wrong then it could be fixed. Since they don’t, it means it could potentially happen again
1. The total distance from my driveway to cross the street is about 30 feet so I don’t know if it would have stopped soon if it had not hit the curb.
2. The car was operated by the phone app and was set to disable when the forward button is release. It has been this way since summon was released and I have not changed the settings. I have had the car since July 2015 and although summon was not yet a feature, I have never had it malfunction like that before since it was introduced. It essentially became non-responsive
3. The mannequin was stuffed with straw and about 5-6” thick and in clothes
4. Curb height is 4.5-5” which at least kept my nose cone from being crushed
5. Yes it is a silly prank to have the car drive an no the car isn’t a toy but that doesn’t mean it is okay for that many things on the car to fail. Hence why I started the post.
6. It is correct that the car moves only about 2 mph in summon but to assume all people could get out of the way shows a complete lack of knowledge by whomever wrote that.
7. This is my first post because in general I stay away from all social media but I was so concerned that this happened I felt it my duty to make people aware. I don’t expect people who are going to cry fake news to change their mind and that is fine. It is clear some people will only believe what suits them.
8. As mentioned earlier I did bring the car in to Tesla to have them run the logs and they couldn’t find the problem. That is why I posted this. If they knew what went wrong then it could be fixed. Since they don’t, it means it could potentially happen again
Trailblazer
Member
If, in fact, your story is true, the phone app is at least a possible cause of the malfunction. If the phone loses connectivity for any reason, you can have a problem like this. Much safer to use the fob when you are summoning the car.
bambam4171
Member
One thing that just came to my mind: A straw stuffed bunch of clothes is probably nowhere near as dense as a human being thus very unlikely radar would pick this up.
Agree that loss of phone connectivity is likely what initiated the lack of responsiveness but every time in past when there was a connectivity issue the car would just stop. It has never continued moving. I did not have the fob on me at the time so couldn’t try to override with that or run to the car to try and stop it that way.
It still doesn’t explain why it would run over a straw man and hit the curb. I don’t know what the minimum curb height is for the car to recognize but when I park the car it always recognizes curbs of similar height.
It still doesn’t explain why it would run over a straw man and hit the curb. I don’t know what the minimum curb height is for the car to recognize but when I park the car it always recognizes curbs of similar height.
Bumper
Member
Why is the fob safer? I had read that people had rare instances where laying down with Fob in their pocket caused the right amount of pressure to the top and then fwd/back to cause the car to inadvertently summon. The app at least you have to go through some menu choices which seems much harder to do accidentally. I wasn't aware of a better "fail safe" using fob vs app.
I
It was o pay at the end of the night that everything failed at once and the last time it did not recognize the straw man. It was fairly densely packed and the car recognized it previously. I would estimate I had the car move 15 -20 Times over several hours before the failure
i also wondered about the straw not being dense enough but I actually had tested it at the beginning of the night because I wanted to ensure the car would definitely stop for a real person. I had put the car in the road and tried to run over it with summon and the car would stop a couple feet short. This gave me the false sense that it would safely stop if a kid stepped in front of it.
It was o pay at the end of the night that everything failed at once and the last time it did not recognize the straw man. It was fairly densely packed and the car recognized it previously. I would estimate I had the car move 15 -20 Times over several hours before the failure
Direct communication to vehicle with fob, vs home/ cell network to Tesla to cell/home network to car. Although in either case there should be a software timer to stop on loss of communication (if no command in .5 sec, stop).
timvracer
Member
I am sorry... but this is ridiculous. For anyone to trust summon using the phone app is not smart, that can fail in so many ways. Another concern is your car is likely in and out of your home's wi-fi, and that connection on/off can cause delays in car connectivity. Not smart.
I have had summon fail on me, in one case a low curb it did not see, and the other was my keyFob was getting interference from my work entry fob (on same keychain), and it failed. HOwever, in both cases I only used it in such a way that I was paying close attention, and surely not doing it with little kids walking around. THAT IS UNREAL and irresponsible, and now you want to call the NTSB and blame Tesla???
I have had summon fail on me, in one case a low curb it did not see, and the other was my keyFob was getting interference from my work entry fob (on same keychain), and it failed. HOwever, in both cases I only used it in such a way that I was paying close attention, and surely not doing it with little kids walking around. THAT IS UNREAL and irresponsible, and now you want to call the NTSB and blame Tesla???
I think there are some valuable lessons for us here, for sure.
The car's autonomous system isn't a toy
Using the phone to summon is a bad idea in some areas, particularly in places like your driveway where the car's communications have to transition from wifi to cellular systems. I, personally, would never use it.
Ultrasonic sensors are designed to avoid brick walls, not flesh or shrubbery
Failures of the car's systems to behave perfectly are not necessarily the fault of Tesla, nor are they inherently unsafe Tesla's don't kill people, people kill people.
@wussy, I'm glad no people or Teslas were injured in the making of this thread. (sorry about the scarecrow)
The car's autonomous system isn't a toy
Using the phone to summon is a bad idea in some areas, particularly in places like your driveway where the car's communications have to transition from wifi to cellular systems. I, personally, would never use it.
Ultrasonic sensors are designed to avoid brick walls, not flesh or shrubbery
Failures of the car's systems to behave perfectly are not necessarily the fault of Tesla, nor are they inherently unsafe Tesla's don't kill people, people kill people.
@wussy, I'm glad no people or Teslas were injured in the making of this thread. (sorry about the scarecrow)
RogerHScott
Active Member
You haven't answered the question about why you didn't simply walk up and touch a door handle to stop it.
If you've owned a Tesla for as long as you have surely you know that you can't count on the ultrasonic sensors to reliably pick up low-to-the-ground things like curbs.
I'm generally a big defender of summon and its usefulness, but I've gotta say that purposefully summoning in the direction of a bunch of distracted kids wandering around at night seems foolhardy on the brink of criminal recklessness.
General question about summon comms: when in require-continuous-press mode, shouldn't it just stop by default if it loses the connection? That seems kinda obvious, doesn't it?
If you've owned a Tesla for as long as you have surely you know that you can't count on the ultrasonic sensors to reliably pick up low-to-the-ground things like curbs.
I'm generally a big defender of summon and its usefulness, but I've gotta say that purposefully summoning in the direction of a bunch of distracted kids wandering around at night seems foolhardy on the brink of criminal recklessness.
General question about summon comms: when in require-continuous-press mode, shouldn't it just stop by default if it loses the connection? That seems kinda obvious, doesn't it?
Zaphod
Galaxy President (former)
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.
The car uses ultrasonics for summon, not radar (how else would it summon backwards or know the edge of the garage?).
