Gary Zhou 
Tesla’s advanced features like Autopark and Smart Summon are great and eye-catching, but for the most part, their real-world use has been pretty limited. Smart Summon, for one, is a neat party trick, but in a crowded parking lot where people and other cars are moving about, the feature’s slow speed and overly-cautious nature could result in Tesla owners simply opting to walk to their cars.
Fortunately, it appears that Tesla is looking to improve its advanced automated features. During one of his recent interactions on Twitter, Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla’s Autopilot and AI team is also working on the company’s humanoid robot, Optimus. Musk, however, noted that the team is also hard at work with Smart Summon and Autopark.
Musk seemed to be fully aware of Smart Summon’s limited real-world use today, as he noted that the Autopilot/AI team was working on an “actually smart” version of Summon. What’s more interesting, however, was the fact that Musk noted that the team has an end-of-month deadline. This suggests that improvements to Smart Summon and Autopark may be coming soon.
It should be noted that while Smart Summon does not seem to be that widely used by Tesla owners yet, it is still an extremely unique feature that’s enough to catch the attention of people. Just this past July, for example, a Tesla owner in New Zealand found himself confounding a passerby when he decided to use Smart Summon. According to the Model 3 owner, the passerby was extremely interested in the fact that the vehicle was operating without a human driver.
“I don’t often use Smart Summon as it’s often more of a nuisance for others in the car park, but on this evening, the car park was relatively quiet. I waited for a few people to finish leaving just to make sure my car wouldn’t get in the way.
“As it trundled across the car park, this guy happened to cross paths with it and resulted in a genuine double take when he noticed that there was no one driving it. We ended up having a short conversation about it, and I’m sure he’ll be talking about the encounter for a few weeks down at the local pub with his mates,” the Tesla owner noted.
