Elon Musk Suggests Teslas Will Learn to Park Themselves Later This Year

Despite a shaky start for Tesla’s Smart Summon feature at the end of last year, the company’s CEO Elon Musk seems to be pushing forward with the autopilot feature, hoping to introduce a Reverse Summon feature later this year.

Discussing upcoming software upgrades with commenters on Twitter, Musk revealed that “Reverse summon (auto park) will be part of the core Autopilot software upgrade for FSD later this year.” Presumably, the new feature would mean that Teslas with full self-driving capabilities will be able to drop you off at a certain point by a parking lot and subsequently park itself into an open spot.

The new feature is — as its name suggests — the opposite of Smart Summon, an update launched in October last year which allowed the company’s cars to activate and come out of a parking spot to meet its owner at a designated spot within a 200-foot radius, completely autonomously. It had a problematic launch, with many Teslas causing near or actual crashes when trying to navigate to its owner, causing U.S. regulators to investigate the new function just a week after its debut.

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.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 16, 2020

Elsewhere in the automotive world, the Petersen Automotive Museum has moved its Cars and Coffee event online.