Model Y with new Actually Smart Summon autopark feature aces the roundabout test

Back in May, Elon Musk said that the release of the Actual Smart Summon feature will happen "soon," and it just launched together with the self-parking option that he previously referred to as Banish.

The Actual Smart Summon launch is coming with Tesla software update version 2024.27.20. For now, it seems to be a limited rollout for vehicles equipped with the latest HW4 FSD suite of cameras and sensors. Given that Tesla made FSD 12.5 work on HW3 vehicles, their own take on Actual Smart Summon shouldn't be far behind.

Tesla calls the feature ASS (for Actually Smart Summon) in the 2024.27.20 update release notes, and says that it "allows your vehicle to come to you, or head to a spot that you choose, all on its own." In fact, there are only two Actually Smart Summon options:

• COME TO ME: Press and hold to have your Tesla come to you.
• GO TO TARGET: Set where you want your Tesla to go, then press and hold to send it on its merry way.

Needless to say, the big update here is the self-parking option, as Tesla owners have been waiting for that for a long time, but since the update is just rolling out, it remains to be seen how sending the car away to park itself will work in practice.

What has already been tried, however, is the Actually Smart Summon feature itself, and a Model Y with the new update passed the test with flying colors.

As can be seen in the video of the Actually Smart Summon option test below, the Model Y not only came to the owner who summoned it, but figured out a complex roundabout in the process, instead of simply choosing the shortest distance to the summoner. It also beamed a footage of its journey to the summoner's phone at all times in case they would need to intervene.

The previous edition of the feature stays under the option Dumb Summon that "allows you to move your Tesla forward or back with simple controls directly in your mobile app," as before.

It will be interesting to compare the performance of Actually Smart Summon on vehicles with Hardware 4.0 against those on HW3. Some FSD 12.5 tests show that there are subtle differences in behavior, with HW4 taking the more natural driving decisions.

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