Lifestyle
Tesla club performs group ‘Smart Summon’ to simulate an autonomous valet service of the future
A gathering of Tesla Model 3, Model S, and Model X owners from the official Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley Club got together over the weekend for a Cars and Coffee event to foster camaraderie in the community. But the biggest highlight of the day, outside of a Frunk N Swap activity wherein club members exchanged popular accessories and personal items from their vehicle’s front trunk, was a group Smart Summon activity that simulated an autonomous valet service of the future.
Roughly 80 Tesla owners and enthusiasts met up at the Cherry Avenue Supercharger in San Jose, CA on Sunday to share personal stories of electric vehicle ownership and to build friendships with local Tesla owners.
Club member Arash Malek, who goes by the handle @minimalduck on Twitter, gathered fellow members and came up with the idea of a ‘group Smart Summon’ with their Model 3s as a showcase of how Tesla’s latest autonomous vehicle retrieval feature works in a real-world scenario.
“The Smart Summon went very well and the cars did not stop as much as some had anticipated. The technology feels like it has come a long way since its initial release. Afterward, a lot more members felt encouraged and better about the technology,” Tesla Owners Club of Silicon Valley founder and president John Stringer tells Teslarati.
Got @tesla’s for days. So much demand in one spot. Love this community. Thankful to @elonmusk @tesla for creating this. pic.twitter.com/gyPwPzEB0r
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) January 26, 2020
“To be able to summon your car to yourself is one step closer to autonomous driving. At some point, your car will be able to come to you no matter where you are and no matter what floor you are on. It will be a normal thing to see a car without someone in it,” added Stringer.
Smart Summon is available to customers who purchased Full Self-Driving Capability or Enhanced Autopilot. With this feature, one can enable their Teslas to go to them or to a destination of choice from a parking spot that’s within their line of sight. It is a pretty handy and convenient feature for those who might be coming out of grocery stores, those dealing with a fussy child, or for those who opt not to walk to the parking lot for whatever reason.
In the future, what members of the Tesla Owners Club of Silicon Valley did over the weekend can be applied to autonomous valet services at hotels, airports, or other venues where such technology can be used. It is an initial step to how Tesla’s future Robotaxi service would operate in the future. Passenger can be given temporary access codes to Summon a vehicle to pick them up for a ride or perhaps valet services will have a dispatch system to deliver rides to waiting customers.
Tesla owners can only expect the Elon Musk-led electric carmaker to further improve the Smart Summon feature overtime. A Tesla Model 3 owner subjected their vehicle to an obstacle course and saw results that made them believe that Tesla is on its way to perfecting the technology for self-driving cars. With the confidence that it can also perform well outside the United States where road markings and signs may be different, Tesla expanded its release of Smart Summon to other markets including China.
Check out the drone video from @MinimalDuck, capturing fellow Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley club members Smart Summoning their Model 3s together.
Lifestyle
Tesla Semi hauls fresh Cybercab batch as Robotaxi era takes hold
A Tesla Semi was filmed hauling Cybercab units out of Giga Texas for the first time.
A Tesla Semi loaded with Cybercab units was recently filmed leaving Gigafactory Texas, marking what appears to be the first documented delivery run of Tesla’s autonomous two-seater. The footage shows multiple Cybercabs secured on a flatbed trailer being hauled by a production Tesla Semi, a truck rated for a gross combination weight of 82,000 lbs. The location is consistent with Giga Texas in Austin, where Cybercab production has been ramping since February 2026.
The sighting follows a wave of Cybercab activity at the Austin facility. In late April, drone operator Joe Tegtmeyer spotted approximately 60 Cybercabs parked in two organized groups in the factory’s outbound lot, the largest concentration observed to date. Units being staged in an outbound lot is a standard pre-delivery step, and the Semi footage is the logical next frame in that sequence.
En route with @tesla_semi pic.twitter.com/ZfuOjaeLH1
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) May 7, 2026
This is not the first time Tesla has used its own Semi to move Tesla products. When the Semi was unveiled in 2017, Musk noted it would be used for Tesla’s own operations, and over the years Semi prototypes were spotted carrying cargo ranging from concrete weights to Tesla vehicles being delivered to consumers. In 2023, a Semi was photographed transporting a Cybertruck on a trailer ahead of that vehicle’s delivery launch.
The Cybercab itself was first revealed publicly at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event on October 10, 2024, at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, where 20 pre-production units gave attendees rides around the studio lot. Musk stated at the event that Tesla intends to produce the Cybercab before 2027. The first production unit rolled off the Giga Texas line on February 17, 2026, with Musk posting on X: “Congratulations to the Tesla team on making the first production Cybercab.”
Tesla’s annual production goal is 2 million Cybercabs per year once multiple factories reach full design capacity, with the company targeting a price under $30,000 per unit. Tesla has confirmed plans to expand its robotaxi service to seven cities in the first half of 2026, including Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Las Vegas, building on the unsupervised service already running in Austin. Musk has said he expects robotaxis to cover between a quarter and half of the United States by end of year.
Tesla has taken home the “Overall Loyalty to Make” award from S&P Global Mobility for the fourth consecutive year, reinforcing Tesla owners’ willingness to come back. The 2025 awards are based on S&P Global Mobility’s analysis of 13.6 million new retail vehicle registrations in the U.S. from October 2024 through September 2025. The complete list of 2025 winners includes General Motors for Overall Loyalty to Manufacturer, Tesla for Overall Loyalty to Make, Chevrolet Equinox for Overall Loyalty to Model, Mini for Most Improved Make Loyalty, Subaru for Overall Loyalty to Dealer, and Tesla again for both Ethnic Market Loyalty to Make and Highest Conquest Percentage.
Tesla’s streak in this category started in 2022, and the brand has now won the Highest Conquest Percentage award for six straight years, meaning it keeps pulling buyers away from other brands at a rate no competitor has matched. Tesla’s retention among Asian households reached 63.6% and among Hispanic households 61.9%, rates that significantly outpace national averages for those groups. That breadth of appeal across demographics adds a layer of significance to a win that some might dismiss as routine.
The timing matters too. After several consecutive quarters of decline, Tesla’s share of U.S. EV sales jumped to 59% in Q4 2025. That rebound, arriving just as competitors were flooding the market with new models and incentives, suggests Tesla’s loyalty numbers are not simply the result of limited alternatives. Buyers are still choosing it when they have plenty of other options.
What keeps Tesla owners coming back has a lot to do with the and convenience of charging. The Supercharger network is the most straightforward example. With over 65,000 Superchargers globally, it remains the largest and most reliable fast-charging network in the world, and owners who have built their routines around it face a real practical cost when considering a switch. Competitors have made progress, but the consistency, speed, and availability of Tesla’s network is still the benchmark the rest of the industry is chasing. Then there is the software side. Tesla has built a model where the car you own today is functionally different from the car you bought two years ago, through over-the-air updates that add continuous game-changing improvements such as Full Self-Driving that has moved from a driver-assist feature to an increasingly capable autonomous system. For many Tesla owners, leaving the brand means starting over with a car that will not get meaningfully better over time, and that is a trade-off fewer and fewer are willing to make.
Cybertruck
Tesla Cybercab just rolled through Miami inside a glass box
Tesla paraded a Cybercab in a glass display at Miami’s F1 Grand Prix event this week.
Tesla set up an “Autonomy Pop-Up” at Lummus Park in Miami Beach from April 29 through May 3, 2026, embedded within the official F1 Miami Grand Prix Fan Fest. The centerpiece was a Cybertruck towing the Cybercab inside a glass display case marked “Future is Autonomous,” rolling through the beachfront crowd.
Miami is on Tesla’s confirmed list of cities for robotaxi expansion in the first half of 2026, making the promotion a strategic promotion that lays groundwork in a target market.
This was not Tesla’s first time using Miami as a showcase city. In December 2025, Tesla hosted “The Future of Autonomy Visualized” at its Miami Design District showroom, coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach. That event featured the Cybercab prototype and Optimus robots interacting with attendees. The F1 pop-up this week marks Tesla’s return to Miami and follows a pattern Tesla has been running since early 2026. Just two weeks before Miami, Tesla stationed Optimus at the Tesla Boston Boylston Street showroom on April 19 and 20, directly on the final stretch of the Boston Marathon, letting tens of thousands of runners and spectators meet the robot for free, generating massive earned media at zero advertising cost.
Tesla is sending its humanoid Optimus robot to the Boston Marathon
Tesla has confirmed plans to expand its robotaxi service to seven cities in the first half of 2026, including Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Las Vegas, building on the unsupervised service already running in Austin. Musk has said he expects robotaxis to cover between a quarter and half of the United States by end of year. On the production side, Musk told shareholders that the Cybercab manufacturing process could eventually produce up to 5 million vehicles per year, targeting a cycle time of one unit every ten seconds. Scaling robotaxis to 10 million operational units over the next ten years is a key condition of his compensation package, alongside selling 20 million passenger vehicles.
As for the Cybercab’s price, Musk has said buyers will be able to purchase one for under $30,000, with an average operating cost around $0.20 per mile. Whether those numbers hold through full production remains to be seen.
Cybercab at F1 Fan Fest in Miami
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