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Tesla Model 3 Now Offers 'Summon' Self-Parking Feature (autoblog.com)
The "Summon" feature that the Model S and Model X have had for a while is now available in the Tesla Model 3. The feature allows the car to park autonomously without anyone in the car; it can even operate the garage door as it parks and powers down, or when it is called out of its parking spot by the owner. Autoblog reports: Tesla tweeted the news in response to a video showing a Model 3 park itself in a tight space in a home garage, before the garage door closes behind it. Elon Musk replied to Tesla's tweet by assuring viewers, "Note, no one is in the car or controlling remotely. Car is driving entirely by itself." The feature comes via an over-the-air software update.
Big liability issue and eula will not save them if it went the wrong way and run over an kid on the sidewalk.
It's only been 5 hours since the last Elon Musk article.
I was getting very nervous and feared the worse. I'm glad everything is OK.
Nothing could go wrong, unless it mistakes the garage for a police car.
At some point, you have to admit that Tesla continues to break new ground and drive auto/manmufacturing technology harder and faster than any other automaker. :-) .
Are they perfect and able (yet) to churn out 2 million vehicles a year? Nope, but they are sure as shit shaking up the traditional automakers, who desperately needed it. I'm rooting for the guy to win Bigly(TM)
I would guess that brakes and door locks would solve most of your concerns.
The control unit has onboard redundancy. There are redundant actuators controlling all safety-related driving functions. You can see the layout here.
Re, crashing: anything that deploys the airbags also deploys the pyro fuse in the battery pack. All HV power is instantaneously cut. No driving.
What's to prevent a thief / hijacker from opening the doors and driving off? Um, the locks? The fact that touching the door handles, steering wheel, accelerator, or pretty much anything else disables Summon? The fact that (assuming we're talking about the Model 3) you have to have a paired phone or the card in the car to drive it?
Why must all aquatic villains play the organ?
Yeah, but that easter egg that they added to make the car scream "OH YEAAHH!" when it does so makes it totally worth it ;)
Why must all aquatic villains play the organ?
If this requires the parking spot to be a well defined position programmed in advance, like my garage, its a bit of a gimmick with limited practical use. A lot of people have a door straight through to their house from the garage, and in hot or cold climates they aren't going to want to get in or out of the car outside. What I really want is a car that can drop me at the door of Walmart, then go and find a parking spot by itself. And as I pull my phone out to pay at the checkout I can summon it to come and pick me up from the door again. This requires significantly better autonomous driving skills - a supermarket carpark has a lot more pedestrians stepping out from between cars than your average suburban neighborhood, and the AI needs to recognise the difference between a vacant parking spot and a lane between two blocks of parking, and it needs to make that recognition even when some asshole has already parked in half that lane. Probably a good strategy would be to drive to the outer limit of the carpark where it is generally empty except for staff cars, which would also limit the outrage from the general public about unsupervised cars driving around the lot and stealing their parks.
It doesn't. It's situation-adaptive, making use of the ultrasonic sensors
It's not perfect, though. It's slow, and when there's uncertainty it prefers to give up rather than risk hitting something (particularly noteworthy in really tight situations, where you want summon the most). And there have been some rare instances where things have been hit, although it's not common. For most people, it's just a party trick. But it does occasionally come in handy, for things like the "car parked in a puddle" situation and the like. It's not yet to the point of "drop you off at the door and then go find a parking space", and it's not clear when, if ever, it will be (self-driving optimists would say "soon"; I'm not among them). But some more speed and reliability would make summon (and autoparking) see significantly more use.
Why must all aquatic villains play the organ?
I've seen a number of Model S owners complain that there was really no use-case for summon except the "gee whiz" factor of showing off your car entering or exiting the garage without you in it first .... until they needed to park in a really tight space. Saves you from having to worry about opening your door and hitting something next to you.
If the vehicle you're driving now was built in the past 10-20 years, chances are it's already drive-by-wire. You can press the brake pedal all you like, but if the traction control/electronic stability control/anti-lock brakes/etc decide not to apply any braking action due to a malfunction, you've got no brakes. And you can ease up off the accelerator pedal all you like, but if the throttle control sensor/cruise control/etc decide to throw gas into the engine, you're going to speed up right quick. And you'd best pray that steering assist doesn't malfunction in such a way that your steering becomes impossible to predict or you'll have next to no control over that either.
Accelerator, brakes, steering; all computer controlled. You've been at the mercy of computer malfunctions for years. The fact that you've still got a steering wheel to grip and pedals to press while you speed towards death in an uncontrollable malfunctioning car is giving you just enough false hope to let you believe you have some control. Tesla's just taking the next logical step. That step was and is inevitable.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
There are already too many jack-wagons where I live that drop someone off in front of the store and then STAY PARKED IN THE FIRE LANE waiting for that person to come out.
If I we also had people summoning their vehicles to constantly wait in front of the building it would be impossible to access.
Parking lots work because they are spread out, if everyone were to get in/out of their vehicle directly in front of the store it would be a nightmare.
You would end up having to summon your car to meet you 50-100 yards from the store entrance. In which case, you could just leave the damn thing parked. Feel free to turn it on remotely and let the climate control make it comfortable, that seems completely reasonable.
Err... all cars that are currently on sale have hydraulic brakes.
When you push on the brake pedal, you're actually operating a piston that pushes on brake fluid, and that fluid pushes on the pistons in the brake calipers. You have vacuum assist to make it easier, but even with the engine not running you can still brake (granted it takes much more force to do it).
And only one or two car models have steering by wire, almost all cars still have mechanical rack and pinion steering, with either hydraulic or electrical assist. Again if the engine cuts out it will take more effort to steer but it's still working.
Only the gas pedal is now almost always drive by wire, you no longer have that cable running from a pulley over the pedal to the throttle body, it's just a variable resistor measuring the movement of the pedal and relaying this information to the computer, wich then operate an servor motor on the throttle body.
Even the Tesla cars have a fully mechanically connected rack & pinion steering, but there's a small electric servo that can operate it when on autopilot. For the brakes the Tesla have conventionnal hydraulic brakes for the front, and electrically actuated rear brakes.
I don't know where you got your information, but it's moslty wrong.
Try it! Library of Babel