Your Tesla could soon drop you off and go find its own parking spot

Tesla could soon release its “Reverse Summon” feature, which could enable owners to have their electric car drop them off and go find their own parking spots.

With Smart Summon, Tesla introduced a significant upgrade to its capacity to remotely and autonomously move its car, which the automaker refers to as “summoning.”

Tesla owners can “summon” their car when parked in a parking lot — triggering the vehicle to drive to you.

The feature has been working relatively well, but many owners don’t find it that useful.

However, many have suggested that a “reverse smart summon,” which would enable owners to be dropped off in a convenient location within a parking lot and then the car could go find its own parking spot, would be a much more useful feature.

CEO Elon Musk hinted that the feature could be coming soon and linked it to an upcoming Autopilot core foundation code rewrite that would enable to deploy a faster pace of improvement to Autopilot features.

When asked when we could see reverse summon, Musk responded:

We need to finish work on Autopilot core foundation code & 3D labelling, then functionality will happen quickly. Not long now.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 2, 2020

As we previously reported, Tesla is going through “a significant foundational rewrite in the Tesla Autopilot.” As part of the rewrite, Musk says that the “neural net is absorbing more and more of the problem.”

It will also include a more in-depth labeling system.

Musk described 3D labeling as a game-changer:

It’s where the car goes into a scene with eight cameras, and kind of paint a path, and then you can label that path in 3D.

For example, the scene could be a parking lot and a better understanding of the scene could help the car find a parking spot.

Electrek’s Take

I am one of those who haven’t found smart summon that useful, but I know that some people have found some interesting use cases. The best one I’ve seen is how Tesla Smart Summon is proving useful for wheelchair users.

But I think a reverse summon would be something a lot of people would find extremely useful.

You can get dropped off at the mall entrance and have your car go find a parking spot. That wouldn’t work with the current limitations of Smart Summon, but I could see some improvements leading to a useful version of that feature.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.