During Tesla’s Q3 2019 earnings call, CEO Elon Musk announced the company would be using data obtained from over one-million uses of Smart Summon in order to release improvements to the function within the coming weeks.
Smart Summon was released in early September with the company’s V10 software update. The feature allows owners to call their vehicles to their location, eliminating the need to walk to their cars in a parking lot. Videos and social media posts of owners using the feature reveal that Smart Summon has several benefits, such as saving kids from walking under the rain, or giving physically-handicapped individuals an easier time accessing their vehicles.
While speaking about Tesla’s progress in its full self-driving initiatives, Musk explained that it is really all about how real-world data from a fleet of owners can improve a feature. Smart Summon’s usage will be used to improve the feature’s current iteration, and as more updates and rolled out and refinements are applied, the function will be improved even more. Thus, it would not be surprising if Smart Summon truly becomes worthy of its moniker in the coming months.
“It’s now over 1 million uses of Smart Summon, and in the next week or so we will be releasing an improved version of Smart Summon taking into account all the data from those 1 million Smart Summon attempts. So, this really illustrates the value of having a massive fleet, because it allows us to collect these corner cases and learn from them, and use street learning and become rapidly better just as Navigator and Autopilot did on the freeway. So, expect a number of improvements in Smart Summon in the weeks to come. And this is really just the beginning as we collect more data and Autopilot and Full Self-Driving functionality get better,” Elon Musk said.
Musk stated the improvements to Smart Summon will be available within “the upcoming weeks” of the recently-held quarterly earnings call. It should be noted that Musk’s announcement comes just three weeks after Musk revealed that Smart Summon had been utilized around 500,000 times just days after its release. The release of the feature in Canada on October 11 has certainly helped this figure, but the company plans to improve upon the software using data obtained from the uses in order to increase safety and convenience for Tesla owners who have the Full Self-Driving suite activated in their vehicles.
Summon has not yet been approved for use in Europe, as legislators have enforced strict regulations on Tesla’s Autopilot software. The region has adopted the rules of autonomous vehicles from the United Nations. Tesla owners in Europe have recently complained about the restrictions, stating they have made Autopilot somewhat more dangerous as it limits the sharpness of turns allowed to be executed by the software. The restrictions also require lane changes to be executed within five seconds of signaling for a lane change.