Tesla Inc. this week will begin a wider rollout in the U.S. of an upgraded feature that allows a parked Tesla electric vehicle (EV) to ease out of its parking slot and drive to its owner by itself.
"Enhanced Summon" will be widely available to Tesla owners that have installed either of two advanced driving packages on their EVs: Enhanced Autopilot (EA) or Full Self-Driving (FSD). It's essentially a supervised line-of-sight remote parking assist feature that allows a Tesla to navigate a parking lot autonomously and find its driver.
Using Enhanced Summon, a Tesla owner taps a button on the Tesla mobile app to command his EV to drive to him. The feature's great because Tesla owners are spared the arduous task of trying to find their EVs in a parking lot maze.
The feature has one big downside to it, however. The owner has to be within 150 feet (46 meters) of his Tesla for Enhanced Summon to work. If you're parked at one of Walmart's mammoth parking spaces, you're going to have to still make that long walk to your Tesla.
Enhanced Summon can't park a Tesla but can only allow the EV to exit its parking space and find its driver who must be at least 150 feet distant. Musk has been teasing this feature for some time.
It's being used by Tesla owners enrolled in the early access program but was available more widely a few weeks ago to some owners.
Owners of Teslas with Hardware 2 can avail of Enhanced Summons. Introduced in October 2016, Hardware 2 features a more robust suite of sensors, radar, and cameras that allow higher levels of automated driving. FSD will eventually allow the automated driving feature to reach new levels of capability and enable autonomous driving without human intervention.
Teslas with EA have are capable of Summon, adaptive cruise control, Autosteer (or automated lane keeping) and Navigate on Autopilot.
Autopilot demands an extra investment of $3,000 while FSD costs an additional $5,000.
It must be remembered that no Tesla is fully self-driving. Autopilot is an advanced driver assistance system that allows partial automation. This Level 2 system can control two ADAS features simultaneously (like an adaptive cruise that accelerates and decelerates the Tesla along with the vehicle ahead) and lane steering in certain conditions.
