Tesla Electric Motor Co. (Tesla) announced Thursday that the Smart Summon feature, promised by President Elon Musk at the end of last year, is ready for launch to the public.
"Customers who have purchased the full autonomous driving capability, or the so-called enhanced autopilot (Samon), can ask their cars to reach them, or to their self-preferred destination, as long as their cars are in line in the parking lot," Tesla said in her blog. And reach them or their preferred destination. "
For safety reasons, customers should constantly monitor the vehicle and hold down a button in the Tesla app as it moves in the parking lot, and Tesla urges customers to see the vehicle at all times.
Tesla began rolling out the tenth official version that contains this feature only in the past 24 hours, but beta versions have been available to Tesla test program members for several weeks.
When it was launched, there were several videos of Tesla cars touring in different US parking lots, and the videos could give us an idea of how this feature works, and observers hope the final version will work a little better.
The clip above is a week-long video, including the pre-official release of Samon, which provides a nice overview of how technology works.
The Tesla Samon feature screen displays a blue dot representing the location of the phone, and a red triangle showing the location of the car.
The owner can press the "come to me" button to make the car come directly to the phone site.
Or, the owner can drag the map around where the intersection has been repositioned and guide the car by moving elsewhere.
This feature can only be used within a limited range around the phone, defined by a large blue circle on the map.
It does more than just draw a straight line to its destination, as the car tries to follow the driving paths the way a human driver does. This sometimes causes the car to take somewhat longer tracks, as you can see in the video above.
As this technology is now available to Tesla owners, we can expect to see more videos coming out in the coming days.
The technology is designed for use in private parking, and it is not currently known if the use of this technology is legal on public roads.
It is not clear who will be responsible if the car causes accidents during operation in the "Samon" mode, and Tesla designed the application only to work when the user presses a single button, where it remains monitored for the progress of the car.
Samon's technology was the highlight of Tesla's 10th update, but it came with a number of other features as well. When the car is parked, Tesla owners will now be able to watch Netflix and YouTube videos or play a game ofhead.
You will also be able to click on the "I feel lucky" button to move to a randomly chosen destination, or the "I feel hungry" button to select a nearby restaurant.