Tesla releases new ‘Standby mode’ to make Enhanced Summon faster

Fred Lambert | Jun 27 2019 - 3:49 pm PT

Tesla has released a new ‘Standby mode’ to make its new Enhanced Summon, which lets owners summon their cars autonomously in parking lots, faster.

We got a tip that Tesla pushed the new ‘Standby mode’ in its 2019.20.4.5 software update as it is slowly rolling out its new Enhanced Summon feature.

Tesla describes the feature:

“Summon Standby will keep the sensors, cameras, and computers powered to reduce the amount of time required to begin Summon.”

It can be activated in the Autopilot settings under ‘Enhanced Summon’:

Tesla warns that the feature will increase power consumption when the car is parked:

“Additional battery power is consumed while Summon Standby is active. Summon Standby Mode works only when battery level is greater than 20%.”

Enhanced Summon builds on Tesla’s previous ‘Summon’ feature, which was used by owners to move their cars autonomously for a few feet in their driveway or in tight parking situations.

With the new version, owners are able to Summon their Tesla vehicles from further away and the cars will navigate more complex parking environments.

Earlier this year, we published an exclusive first look at Tesla’s new Enhanced Summon.

According to the beta release sent to owners in the ‘Early Access Program,’ the feature works up to 150 feet from the car.

We got some feedback from the people who had early access to the feature and they seem to think the feature works fairly well, but the main complaint is that it was very slow.

The complaints were mostly about the speed once the car starts moving, but there’s also a delay after the Enhanced Summon is activated.

‘Standby mode’ aims to reduce that delay for owners who use Enhanced Summon frequently, but it comes at a cost in terms of energy consumption.

We recently posted some Enhanced Summon demonstrations:

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