A video released yesterday shows a Tesla vehicle slowly colliding with a private jet. According to the information, everything happened following the owner activated the Smart Summon feature. This feature allows the car to be summoned to its owner, at a maximum distance of 60 meters and in line of sight. The private jet in question is estimated to be worth $3.5 million. This incident brings up to date questions related to the safety and reliability of autonomous driving functions.
Smart Summon builds on Tesla’s previous “Summon” feature, which was used by owners to autonomously move their car a few feet in their driveway or in tight parking situations. With the new version, owners are able to call in their Tesla vehicles from a greater distance, and the cars will be able to orient themselves in more complex parking environments.
CEO Elon Musk has described Smart Summon as Tesla’s most viral feature. Within weeks of its release, it had already been used more than 550,000 times, and several Tesla owners posted videos of their vehicles being involved in crashes and near-misses while testing the new Smart Summon feature. Smart Summon’s problems are well known and accumulate over time. There are many known situations that reveal that this vehicle movement is still not very smart and reliable.
Smart Summon was first rolled out in 2019, and Tesla owners immediately started posting videos of near-misses or confused, slow-moving vehicles. One Tesla owner tweeted regarding front bumper damage, while another claimed his Model 3 hit the side of a garage. Video of a near collision with a speeding SUV gave the owner the impression that his “Smart Summon” test didn’t go too well. Another Tesla was filmed by pedestrians and people in other cars looking confused as it tried to navigate its way through a Walmart parking lot.
The Smart Summon feature is primarily used to get your car to “autonomously” drive you back from where you parked it to a parking lot. In a way, this was the first “self-driving” feature for Tesla, since it might be used without anyone in the car. But as with all of Tesla’s autopilot or full self-driving features, owners need to stay alert at all times and be ready to take control; we had an extreme example of this when the Tesla vehicle crashed into a jet plane.
The person who originally posted the video wrote that they saw the crash happen at an event hosted by aircraft builder Cirrus Felts Field Spokane, Washington. Smartphone video appears to capture security camera footage of the Tesla slowly crashing into the Cirrus Vision Jet, then actually pushing it onto the tarmac.
The video shows that the owner didn’t pay attention when he summoned the vehicle, as it seems he had plenty of time to see the vehicle heading straight for the jet. For Smart Summon to work, the owner must rest their finger on an app button. As soon as he lifts his finger, the car stops. In this case, it is particularly disturbing that the Tesla vehicle continued to move following hitting the plane. In the past, Tesla vehicles in Autopilot mode have had difficulty detecting objects lifted off the ground, such as a tractor-trailer, which can be compared to the back of an airplane.
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