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Transportation Technology

Tesla Model 3 Now Offers 'Summon' Self-Parking Feature (autoblog.com) 115

The "Summon" feature that the Model S and Model X have had for a while is now available in the Tesla Model 3. The feature allows the car to park autonomously without anyone in the car; it can even operate the garage door as it parks and powers down, or when it is called out of its parking spot by the owner. Autoblog reports: Tesla tweeted the news in response to a video showing a Model 3 park itself in a tight space in a home garage, before the garage door closes behind it. Elon Musk replied to Tesla's tweet by assuring viewers, "Note, no one is in the car or controlling remotely. Car is driving entirely by itself." The feature comes via an over-the-air software update.
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Tesla Model 3 Now Offers 'Summon' Self-Parking Feature

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  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Thursday July 05, 2018 @07:09PM (#56899264)

    Big liability issue and eula will not save them if it went the wrong way and run over an kid on the sidewalk.

    • Using summon is just you driving our car remotely, so you're the one who is liable.

      You use a phone app with buttons for forward and reverse to make the car slowly move forward or backward. You also have to be within ten feet of the car while you're doing it. If the car runs over a kid, it's entirely your fault.

      • Using summon is just you driving our car remotely

        You use a phone app with buttons for forward and reverse to make the car slowly move forward or backward.

        Elon is lying when he says, "Note, no one is in the car or controlling remotely. Car is driving entirely by itself."...?

        • I haven't seen the video or interview where he said that, but yes, if he said that, he was lying. The car's sensors are active and it will brake and try to avoid hitting things, but the person with the cell phone is in control of when it moves and what direction.

          • by Corbets ( 169101 )

            I haven't seen the video or interview where he said that, but yes, if he said that, he was lying. The car's sensors are active and it will brake and try to avoid hitting things, but the person with the cell phone is in control of when it moves and what direction.

            Are you here in Europe? The Summon feature works differently in the U.S. regulatory concerns or some such.

    • Welcome to planet earth; here, companies are liable for their autonomous vehicles.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      At least previously you had to be stood nearby with your phone paried by Bluetooth, so you could see it moving and be liable for not stopping it if there was an accident.

      The ultrasonic sensors have been shown to not be good enough to see small things like children and pets, so it's no wonder they made it that way.

    • Big liability issue and eula will not save them if it went the wrong way and run over an kid on the sidewalk.

      Because no kid was ever run over by a car driven by a human ?

    • And I don't think anyone here, or anywhere else in the world, thought otherwise. I am almost positive the engineers at Tesla thought of that unless you're insinuating they didn't?

      I just had a look at your recent posts and there seems to be a pattern of stating the obvious or just complaining about everything. How you got modded Informative is truly beyond me.
    • I wonder the same, and I wonder when state or federal legislation will come....probably only after courts took on various cases. With this feature, it seems to be intended to be operated on private grounds such as one's drive way?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 05, 2018 @07:22PM (#56899314)

    It's only been 5 hours since the last Elon Musk article.

    I was getting very nervous and feared the worse. I'm glad everything is OK.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The stock was getting hammered, had to make another announcement to keep the short burn of the century going.

  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Thursday July 05, 2018 @07:23PM (#56899318) Journal
    Nothing could go wrong, unless it mistakes the garage for a police car.
  • by GerryGilmore ( 663905 ) on Thursday July 05, 2018 @07:25PM (#56899336)
    At some point, you have to admit that Tesla continues to break new ground and drive auto/manmufacturing technology harder and faster than any other automaker.
    Are they perfect and able (yet) to churn out 2 million vehicles a year? Nope, but they are sure as shit shaking up the traditional automakers, who desperately needed it. I'm rooting for the guy to win Bigly(TM) :-) .
    • I like the guy as much as the next nerd. He's truly shaking up the world, but please stick to worshiping the things he does that are actually amazing. There are many cars which already feature self park, hands and foot free. This ultimately is nothing more than a minor itteration of a very common technology by a company that is far less afraid of lawsuits than the big car makers forcing you to remain seated in your car while it does almost the same thing.

      I'm rooting for him to win too, but as you said, Bigl

  • The feature allows the car to park autonomously without anyone in the car

    The feature can operate electric motors capable of moving this heavy machinery with no human at the controls and able to stop it, in the event of an emergency. What happens in the event of a computer or actuator malfunction?

    Keep in mind, the motors in the Tesla are capable of moving the vehicle at high speed. What kind of safety protocols are in place to make sure that if something goes wrong the car will not suddenly launc

    • Re: Scary (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I would guess that brakes and door locks would solve most of your concerns.

    • Re:Scary (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday July 05, 2018 @08:00PM (#56899534) Homepage

      What happens in the event of a computer or actuator malfunction?

      The control unit has onboard redundancy. There are redundant actuators controlling all safety-related driving functions. You can see the layout here [youtube.com].

      Re, crashing: anything that deploys the airbags also deploys the pyro fuse in the battery pack. All HV power is instantaneously cut. No driving.

      What's to prevent a thief / hijacker from opening the doors and driving off? Um, the locks? The fact that touching the door handles, steering wheel, accelerator, or pretty much anything else disables Summon? The fact that (assuming we're talking about the Model 3) you have to have a paired phone or the card in the car to drive it?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Loki_1929 ( 550940 )

      If the vehicle you're driving now was built in the past 10-20 years, chances are it's already drive-by-wire. You can press the brake pedal all you like, but if the traction control/electronic stability control/anti-lock brakes/etc decide not to apply any braking action due to a malfunction, you've got no brakes. And you can ease up off the accelerator pedal all you like, but if the throttle control sensor/cruise control/etc decide to throw gas into the engine, you're going to speed up right quick. And you'd

      • This all reminds me how nice it is to have a physical off switch in case any of these things go wrong.

        Press and hold the power/start button for 3 seconds and hope it works? A lot can happen in three seconds.

        • This all reminds me how nice it is to have a physical off switch in case any of these things go wrong.

          Press and hold the power/start button for 3 seconds and hope it works? A lot can happen in three seconds.

          To be clear, you're talking about a system designed with electro/hydraulic assistance to the operator in mind and you want to turn off all these features while it's moving?

          There's a lot of things I would try on a car before I turn off power steering and power braking while moving. These aren't like the cars of old. Without these systems it's actually incredibly difficult to control a modern car.

      • There's a giant difference between "pushing on a button causes action" and "using a camera through ML algorithms to cause an action" If you were serious, I'm actually not sure how to continue the conversation, cause that's pretty insane.

      • I can't believe I'm still surprised at how many Slashdot readers are essentially Luddites. "News for Nerds (who believe their experiences writing PASCAL accounting software makes them experts on modern safety critical computer systems)".

        It's like every other comment is always "Never connect a computer to the internet even if it's a web service!" "If it's not mechanical, I don't trust it!" "Automation will be the death of us!"

        It's like most of Slashdot fought a war against the Cylons in a past life.

      • by mysidia ( 191772 )

        If the vehicle you're driving now was built in the past 10-20 years, chances are it's already drive-by-wire. You can press the brake pedal all you like, but if the traction control/electronic stability control/anti-lock brakes/etc decide not to apply any braking action due to a malfunction, you've got no brakes.

        I drive a model car that is from the year 2000:
        The brakes are controlled by a cable system attached to the break pedal.
        And if that don't work, there's an E-brake lever that also operates the

      • by Toshito ( 452851 )

        Err... all cars that are currently on sale have hydraulic brakes.

        When you push on the brake pedal, you're actually operating a piston that pushes on brake fluid, and that fluid pushes on the pistons in the brake calipers. You have vacuum assist to make it easier, but even with the engine not running you can still brake (granted it takes much more force to do it).

        And only one or two car models have steering by wire, almost all cars still have mechanical rack and pinion steering, with either hydraulic or elec

        • When you push on the brake pedal, you're actually operating a piston that pushes on brake fluid, and that fluid pushes on the pistons in the brake calipers. You have vacuum assist to make it easier, but even with the engine not running you can still brake (granted it takes much more force to do it).

          So my anti-lock brakes and traction control system don't take my inputs, run them against sensory inputs, and then output braking controls to the physical brakes based on (if everything's working) what will enabl

  • This is a great milestone on the way to the feature we all want where the car avoids parking fees by reparking itself every 2 hours!

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Parking in Seattle? Yeah, right. I'm stopping at Starbucks for a half hour. Car, why don't you circle the block until I'm done?

  • by jrumney ( 197329 ) on Thursday July 05, 2018 @08:03PM (#56899546)
    If this requires the parking spot to be a well defined position programmed in advance, like my garage, its a bit of a gimmick with limited practical use. A lot of people have a door straight through to their house from the garage, and in hot or cold climates they aren't going to want to get in or out of the car outside. What I really want is a car that can drop me at the door of Walmart, then go and find a parking spot by itself. And as I pull my phone out to pay at the checkout I can summon it to come and pick me up from the door again. This requires significantly better autonomous driving skills - a supermarket carpark has a lot more pedestrians stepping out from between cars than your average suburban neighborhood, and the AI needs to recognise the difference between a vacant parking spot and a lane between two blocks of parking, and it needs to make that recognition even when some asshole has already parked in half that lane. Probably a good strategy would be to drive to the outer limit of the carpark where it is generally empty except for staff cars, which would also limit the outrage from the general public about unsupervised cars driving around the lot and stealing their parks.
    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      If this requires the parking spot to be a well defined position programmed in advance

      It doesn't. It's situation-adaptive, making use of the ultrasonic sensors

      It's not perfect, though. It's slow, and when there's uncertainty it prefers to give up rather than risk hitting something (particularly noteworthy in really tight situations, where you want summon the most). And there have been some rare instances where things have been hit, although it's not common. For most people, it's just a party trick. But it

    • by King_TJ ( 85913 )

      I've seen a number of Model S owners complain that there was really no use-case for summon except the "gee whiz" factor of showing off your car entering or exiting the garage without you in it first .... until they needed to park in a really tight space. Saves you from having to worry about opening your door and hitting something next to you.

      • Stupid thing to do. Now the guy you blocked in keys your car because he has trouble getting into his car.

        And dumbass Tesla owner would deserve a good keying for being that kind of selfish prick.

        My keys are mightier than your paint job, Teslassholes.

        You have been warned.

    • by Hodr ( 219920 )

      There are already too many jack-wagons where I live that drop someone off in front of the store and then STAY PARKED IN THE FIRE LANE waiting for that person to come out.

      If I we also had people summoning their vehicles to constantly wait in front of the building it would be impossible to access.

      Parking lots work because they are spread out, if everyone were to get in/out of their vehicle directly in front of the store it would be a nightmare.

      You would end up having to summon your car to meet you 50-100 yard

      • There are already too many jack-wagons where I live that drop someone off in front of the store and then STAY PARKED IN THE FIRE LANE waiting for that person to come out.

        In one small town I lived in the main grocery store got tired of that and asked the cops to ticket people parked in the fire lane. Every few months a cop would grab a lawn chair, park it in the shade of the building, and just sit there. People would drive by him, park in the fire lane, and he'd write up the ticket, wander over, hand it to them, and then head back and sit down.

        It was like shooting fish in a barrel. And it didn't seem to make much difference in the long run.

    • Probably a good strategy would be to drive to the outer limit of the carpark where it is generally empty except for staff cars, which would also limit the outrage from the general public about unsupervised cars driving around the lot and stealing their parks.

      I predict in the next 5 years someone is going to paint corners on parking spaces specifically to enable self-driving cars to pick them out easier.

  • You would dismiss the vehicle when you no longer need it, you would summon it when you need it.
    • Would you not have to summon it before dismissing it? Sort of a chicken and egg problem.
      • by bjwest ( 14070 )
        It doesn't matter how I got it, if I have it and no longer want it, I'm certainly not going to summon it.
    • by judoguy ( 534886 )

      You would dismiss the vehicle when you no longer need it, you would summon it when you need it.

      I've been calling this feature "valet mode" for years.

      I'd love this, (if it's reliable!) for rainy days, parking downtown, etc. For me, this would be the top of the list of autonomous features.

  • ...who are mad that the car doesn't appear next to them when they raise a staff in the air and shout gibberish.
  • With how dramatically wrong Tesla's super-cruise features have gone on their vehicles, I fully expect that car to end up... "I'm sorry Dave, I missed the garage door but on the bright side your garage now has a new enterance!" :)

  • If you use the Summon feature while Ludicrous mode is active, the car will do a handbrake turn when arriving at your location.

  • Bracing for the news reports of people getting hit by Teslas in parking lots, or Teslas running into buildings/closed garage doors, because the half-assed excuse for AI that everyone keeps trying to use like a human brain isn't and never will be 'smart' enough to fucking do shit like this without completely fucking it up!
  • When it backs into my garage door, can I sue Tesla for a new door? What about if it doesn't pull in far enough and the garage door closes on it? Can I force Tesla to pay for new paint on the trunk?

    • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      Your garage door doesn't have a sensor to prevent closing when something is blocking the opening? Ours does, and it's about knee-high, so unless you have a very jacked-up Model 3, you wouldn't have to worry about the garage door closing on it. The door also will stop if it hits resistance, and has a rubber strip across the bottom as a weather seal, so it's not going to be metal-on-metal (or metal-on-paint) in any event.

  • And another perk, is that they can park on handicap-spots.
    Because compared to (most) human drivers, they are definitely differently abled.

There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares"

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