Tesla vehicles are going to drop you off and park themselves later this year, says Musk

Tesla vehicles are going to be able to drop you off and park themselves later this year, according to a new comment from Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

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.

Earlier this year, CEO Elon Musk hinted that the feature could be coming soon and he now says that it will come later this year as part of a broader Autopilot software update:

The CEO said on Twitter tonight:

We’re working super hard on getting traffic lights & stops released. Reverse summon (auto park) will be part of the core Autopilot software upgrade for FSD later this year.

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.

The CEO added that Tesla could map parking lots using its fleet of hundreds of thousands of vehicles and better understand where it can and can’t park.

The timeline is still not clear beyond “later this year”, but it sounds like it is the next priority of the Autopilot team after Tesla’s new “Stopping at Traffic Lights and Stop Signs” feature, which is currently being tested in the early access program and is expected to launch in the US in the next few weeks.

All these new features aim to eventually lead to Tesla’s full self-driving capability and its plan for a fleet of robotaxi.

Last weekend, Musk said that Tesla should have the functionality for its robotaxi ready as planned this year, but the deployment is going to depend on regulatory approval.