Tesla’s vehicles come with several unique features, including the option for the controversial Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta and the accompanying Smart Summon. Earlier this week, one Tesla owner managed an impressive use of Smart Summon after nearly locking his vehicle in a garage overnight.
X user @JackyHeshi had accidentally parked his Tesla Model 3 in a garage that closed at 10:00 p.m. on Friday night, leaving him unable to access it when arriving later in the evening. Fortunately, Heshi was able to use Smart Summon from outside the locked garage to get his Model 3 to come to him, triggering the sensor to open the garage door from the inside.
Heshi posted the account on X early Saturday morning, along with footage from the Model 3’s external cameras. You can see the thread below.
#fsdbeta pic.twitter.com/pSRRRifAjn
— Jacky Heshi (@JackyHeshi) September 16, 2023
The videos show one of the more interesting uses of the Summon and Smart Summon features that have been captured yet. Many users have noted the Smart Summon feature’s clunkiness when used in parking lots, so continual improvements to the system have been necessary.
As Tesla writes in its owner’s manuals, Summon allows vehicles to move up to 39 feet into or out of parking spaces. Drivers can use the Tesla app while standing outside the vehicle to move it forward or in reverse as it parks or unparks itself.
Alternatively, Smart Summon lets the vehicle move longer distances of up to approximately 213 feet while avoiding obstacles and without owners manually propelling the car forward and in reverse.
Tesla also includes warnings in its owner’s manuals noting that Smart Summon is a beta feature and should only be used under supervision and in parking lots, driveways or private property “where the surrounding area is familiar and predictable.”
As Tesla also points out in its owner’s manuals, Smart Summon “may be temporarily limited or inactive until it is enabled with a future software update for vehicles manufactured as of approximately October 2022.”
This is due to the automaker removing radar-based Ultrasonic Sensors in its builds over the past couple of years, instead opting for its camera-based Autopilot system dubbed “Tesla Vision.” The automaker says the features will be unavailable “for a short period of time during this transition” in a note penned about the transition.
Tesla’s Elon Musk posts quick update on Smart Auto Wiper, “Actually Smart Summon” rollout
Earlier this month, Tesla made its autosteer on city streets feature available in the FSD beta after it had been listed as “coming soon” for several months on the company’s order configurators. The automaker also dropped the price of the FSD add-on from $15,000 to $12,000.
The automaker is currently allowing one-time transfers of the FSD beta from one Tesla vehicle to another without owners being forced to pay for the upgrade again. Transfer of the FSD beta would include access to Smart Summon and other FSD features such as autosteer on city streets. Customers can transfer the FSD beta system between vehicles for the remainder of the third quarter — or until the end of this month.
Update: Eighth and ninth paragraphs added to note that Summon and Smart Summon are temporarily unavailable for Tesla vehicles without Ultrasonic Sensors.
What are your thoughts? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send your tips to us at tips@teslarati.com.
Tesla revealed a major new Cybercab detail in a guide it released for First Responders, showing new territory in its beliefs and intentions for the ride-hailing-focused vehicle that entered production in April.
The First Responders Guide is released to give fire departments, paramedics, and other emergency personnel the proper guidance on what to do in the event of an accident, entrapment, or other situation that would require immediate attention.
On one of the pages of the First Responders Guide, Tesla revealed a stark detail about the Cybercab, which could help personnel enter the vehicle more easily in case of an emergency.
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
It shows Tesla has no intention of releasing any Cybercab units that were initially proposed for ride-hailing services for the general public with any manual controls, meaning a steering wheel or pedals:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals.”
New official Cybercab documentation from Tesla:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or… https://t.co/P6ut1mZyzr pic.twitter.com/yq6skl9s2J
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 27, 2026
This is a major development for those who continue to believe Tesla planned to release the Cybercab with any sort of manual controls so that passengers could take over if needed. However, when Tesla started manufacturing production versions of the Cybercab in Giga Texas earlier this year, they were spotted without a steering wheel or pedals.
It essentially confirms the company has no intentions of bringing manual controls to the car’s production versions. Some have argued that the likelihood of Tesla having something
There still are some Cybercab units out there with a steering wheel and pedals, and as Tesla said, these cars are engineering or test vehicles, which have Safety Monitors on board to help the car out of a precarious situation or emergency.
Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
