Summon Your Tesla from Your Phone

&quot;Summon&quot;<p>Great word - evokes both magic and privilege in one fell swoop.<p>They just nail the language in their communications.

&quot;Eventually, your Tesla will be able to drive anywhere across the country to meet you, charging itself along the way.&quot;<p>In there lies perhaps a hint at a business opportunity&#x2F;solution to the renter problem: Tesla charging garages and comes to pick you up when you are ready to go.<p>We certainly live in a Sci-fi movie.

What I want is my car to go park it self on the street. And then come back and pick me up. Parking is the main reason I hate driving in San Francisco.<p>Turning the car in to an Uber doesn&#x27;t work for me. I don&#x27;t want someone spilling something all over the seats.

This is the Uber&#x2F;Lyft&#x2F;Taxi killer.<p>Imagine paying $2-4 for a ride in a Tesla for what used to cost you $25-$30 in an Uber or cab.<p>97% of the cost of an Uber ride goes towards paying the driver, fuel and Uber fees, 3% (or less) goes towards the lease costs.<p>A Tesla lease is only ~$0.73&#x2F;hour ($~12,000&#x2F;yr), including recharging.

I&#x27;m sure many of you also dreamed of being Michael Knight, summoning KITT with his watch.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pbs.twimg.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;BxHbwy5CMAAk8eA.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pbs.twimg.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;BxHbwy5CMAAk8eA.jpg</a><p>If you&#x27;re looking for a cool novel with self-driving vehicles featured prominently in it, I highly recommend &quot;Daemon&quot; by Daniel Suarez. It&#x27;s a techno-thriller written by an actual software security expert, where a computer virus takes over the world. Everyone I&#x27;ve recommended it to has enjoyed it. (EDITED for clarity.)

This use case seems very strange. Why would I want to get out in my driveway when it&#x27;s more convenient to park it myself in my garage? I&#x27;m covered by any rain, and my front door is locked (whereas the door from my garage into my house is usually unlocked).

Have any of these cars ever gotten stuck? Accidents are one thing, but has a car ever been able to traverse a great distance (10+km of public roads) with the 99.9999% reliability such a product would require?<p>You call the car. It leaves the garage and starts heading to you. Then something comes up, something like a construction zone or other odd situation. Or perhaps the car breaks down. So the car is now stopped and alone. You&#x27;re sitting by the road five miles away and the car is parked blocking traffic somewhere. Who comes to help? AAA? Wil it fight back if someone tries to tow it away? Or push it onto the shoulder to free up the lane? I doubt the general public would have much sympathy for the guy who&#x27;s tesla is blocking an intersection because he didn&#x27;t want to pay for parking and&#x2F;or bother walking to the car himself.<p>I cannot see drivers using this garage&#x2F;parking trick very often. It&#x27;s just too slow.

As much as I love TSLA, they always time their announcements a bit cynically. Summon is great and awesome, but as a task itself is a very niche utility unless it can park itself lets say in malls or in public spaces. The real story is they want to be in News cycle esp. with Detroit Auto Show going on now and more and more mainstream Automakers getting the plugin religion.<p>The bigger news is the 2017 Chrysler Pacifica PHEV, which is more of a game changer from impact perspective.<p>edit: Also who is going to plugin the Car, if it self-parks?

When you miss a payment, the car will go back to motherbase.

Very, very slowly. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;9yqDWVLx35I" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;9yqDWVLx35I</a><p>And note how of course the car cannot anticipate the lip of the garage needing slightly more momentum to overcome like a human driver would.<p>But it is a start and I&#x27;d buy a Model X in a heartbeat if I won the powerball, lol

This is really cool, and is obviously intended to be just the beginning of something that could be really amazing.<p>I suppose this is mostly just Tesla wanting to &quot;beta&quot; test the technology &amp; collect some data to work with for future optimization...<p>I just don&#x27;t see the practicality in this specific functionality that they&#x27;re rolling out -- sure, it&#x27;s neat, and I&#x27;m sure many of us would love to show it off to our friends for the wow factor.<p>But right now, you pull in the driveway, and tell your Tesla to park in the garage. It opens the garage &amp; parks. Now what? You&#x27;ve got to follow the car into the garage &amp; plug it in to your wall-attached charging cord.<p>Same thing when you leave the next day -- you&#x27;ve got to unplug the cord before you summon it to the driveway ~20 feet away...<p>Neat for sure, though. ;-)

Is this the first car that will now drive itself, however small a distance, without anyone sitting in the driver&#x27;s seat?

Now we just need those automated snake arm chargers [1] or giant floor induction charging.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.extremetech.com&#x2F;extreme&#x2F;211865-check-out-this-scary-robotic-arm-charger-for-the-tesla-model-s" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.extremetech.com&#x2F;extreme&#x2F;211865-check-out-this-sca...</a>

I wonder how city congestion will be affected by thousands of empty cars driving around a few years from now.

Really cool, but it&#x27;s worrying the increasing capabilities that bad actors will have at their disposal if they get access to your mobile device... Why not use a single purpose device instead of a phone for this?

Just the ability to have it pull out or back into tight parking spaces is worthy all by itself.

I thought it was still a far-fetched concept when I saw this video 3 years ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vt20UnkmkLI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vt20UnkmkLI</a>

am I the only one thinking about the old tv show &quot;Knight Rider&quot; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0083437&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0083437&#x2F;</a>

If&#x2F;When Tesla achieves a full self-driving car, I feel like the Uber&#x27;s of the world would go bankrupt (perhaps a little drastic). Tesla can just as easily cut out the middleman and create the complete experience.

Can anyone speak to the limitations for the tight spot the car will park into? Could there be a situation where the spot is tight enough that you can&#x27;t get into the driver&#x27;s seat?

Wouldn&#x27;t this be true of all self-driving cars eventually? I mean, no one has fully contemplated all of the possible applications of self-driving cars, this being one of them.

Wait until someone <i>else</i> will summon <i>your</i> Tesla from their phone!<p>How strong will the security be for this?

Accio Tesla

What happens when this runs over somebody&#x27;s dog? (Or worse...) Sure, they have safeguards in place, but systems fail. It&#x27;s like they have never heard the term &quot;liability&quot; before.