New ‘Advanced Summon’ Autopilot Update Will Turn Teslas Into ‘Big RC Cars’

Tesla will release a new upgrade to its cars’ Summon feature that will allow the vehicles to follow parking signs, find empty slots, park automatically, and most importantly, allow you to drive it like a giant RC car.

Elon Musk took to Twitter late on Wednesday night to tout Tesla’s forthcoming “advanced summon” feature, which he says is due out in about six weeks.

Ever since the introduction of Tesla’s second generation Autopilot hardware, the automaker has been promising the release of new features under an ‘Enhanced Autopilot’ package that it has been selling for $5,000 USD.

While the rollout of those new “Enhanced Autopilot” features have been extremely delayed over the past 2 years, the company is moving forward with some of them after deploying a new neural net.

“Car will drive to your phone location & follow you like a pet if you hold down summon button on Tesla app,” Musk tweeted. In another tweet, Musk said that “you’ll be able to drive it from your phone remotely like a big RC car” — though only if the car is within the line of sight.

Summon, part of Tesla’s driver-assist Self-Pilot system, currently allows Model S drivers to park their cars from outside the vehicle in tight spots or to move the cars short distances to shift parking spot.

Tesla has long touted a more ambitious vision — one where you just get out of your car and the vehicle will find a parking spot, park itself, and then come and pick the driver up later. Tesla has been touting these features on its Autopilot page for more than two years, even though they weren’t available.

Now, it looks like Elon Musk and company are starting to make good on the Enhanced Autopilot features promised two years ago.

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