Tesla's revamped technology lets you do more than “summoning” your car

Tesla’s auto-parking technology Summon, which will let car owners remotely control their car using their phones, will be ready in six weeks, tweeted the company’s CEO Elon Musk.

“Car will drive to your phone location and follow you like a pet if you hold down Summon button on Tesla app… [It] will work on all cars made in past 2 years,” the CEO said. It simply means all Tesla vehicles with the advanced driver assistance system known as Autopilot or “enhanced” Autopilot can access the Summon parking feature.

Also, an upgrade to the software app, coming next month, will allow the vehicles to drive around a parking lot, find an empty spot and read parking signs, says Musk. “You’ll be able to drive it from your phone remotely like a big RC car if in line of sight.”

Tesla introduced Summon way back in January 2016 –for its hardware 1 vehicles– that allowed the car owners park or retrieve their vehicles by using the Tesla mobile app or key fob. The capability, however, was limited; a Tesla car wasn’t capable of autonomously driving through a parking garage to find an empty space, rather, it only drove itself out of a parking space or garage when prompted.

And so, as Musk says, “to deliver new levels of capability and for autonomous driving” Tesla began producing hardware 2 vehicles, equipped with a more robust suite of sensors, radar, and cameras. As a result, Summon became more capable – and now, with its own vision system for object identification and avoidance, it just got better.