Smart calling actually does well
1. October 2019 by Frugal Moogal
Having been fed the other news since Smart Summon came out with reference to how unsafe the Smart Summon is, I wanted to point out something … [19659005Formore"Failing"IwouldliketodirectlyconnectthevideosorthepoorlywrittenarticlesaboutthembutIwouldliketorefertothem:
In the first video, someone using Smart Summon to get their car driven in a parking lot has another car back in it. Although this is a crappy situation, cars return to others in the parking lots with a little regularity. It happened to me when I went out. Now, a driver who did not use Smart Summon may have seen this and sobbed, which may have prevented the accident, but it is not guaranteed. This is the one case where Tesla could potentially have done something more at the function of preventing the accident (self-raising?), And yet the driver who backs up his car is clearly the one to blame.
In the second video, a person brings his car over a parking lot. In some "news articles" the parking lot is called an intersection. A fast-moving SUV blows into the frame and the Model 3 snaps on the brakes just before you hit the SUV. For this, two things could have happened – either the driver of the SUV could have driven at a more reasonable speed, or the person who called Tesla could have seen the giant car come and release the button. Nevertheless, a vehicle flying into a fast-moving parking lot is a risk to both cars driven by people and cars driven by Smart Summon.
I have Smart Summon on my car, and even when it seems to be doing the right thing, I've released the button to run out and check. I definitely don't trust it quite yet.
What – is a dangerous robot car crawling up behind me?
In the third case, just a picture of a blue Model 3 in a tweet is tucked directly behind the driver's side wheel on the front panel. The person who tweeted it had not tweeted in four years. In it he says: “Tried in my empty manner. The car stepped forward and ran into the side of the garage. "
This was going to give immediate questions, the biggest thing is how is the car bent behind the wheel if the car moved forward at that time? This is obviously not a question of the front bumper getting bashed, and there are no pictures of the garage in question with a buck. Finally, if my car got too close to an object, I would stop it and double check. And so far, every time I've done it, the car is far more ready than I thought it was when I stopped it. I can't say it didn't happen, but it definitely raises questions for me.
In summary, in all three of the key "CHAOS!" Examples of the Smart Summon, there are problems.
Which leads me to a simple conclusion. Based on some rough baking mat, Tesla has delivered about 500,000 cars right now with hardware equipped for Smart Summon them. While the last 250,000 of these came with built-in Autopilot, and the features of the Smart Summon would have been under the Full Self Driving umbrella, the same features in the Enhanced Summon package were earlier. Let's assume that only 50,000 cars have the option of Smart calling them. And let's assume that Smart Summon has only been run on average once on each of them, so it has run 50,000 attempts.
(And by the way, I think this is a SUPER low estimate. I tried my Smart Summoning car in four different places, and usually several times, so I understand how it was. I would guess it has been called 15 times If others are equal, the number of times the Smart Summon has been tried would already be a significant force greater than this – it only takes 3,333 cars calling 15 times to be equal to my number …)
Of these we have only seen or heard of three accidents ?! And let's be honest, the media was going to eat up accidents around Smart Summon. I was deliberately looking for problems with it, because this is far from Tesla's risky move, and because there have been thousands of attempts, with only three problems, incredible. That of the three cases, it seemed that two have other cars at fault, and the other is very questionable, that means there are actually zero issues we have whether a Tesla is running over a child, or crashing at a store, or all these other things it seems as if the comments on all of the videos above are sure they are still happening.
Is it perfect? Definitely not. I've tried it on the driveway, and the car can't find a way to take a proper 90-degree turn to start pulling out, instead of moving back and forth over and over as it tries to figure out what you should do before you stop completely and just wait for me to do something.
But is it far better than it seems that many business journalists writing about it want to make you believe? Absolutely.
If it has a flaw I have seen, it is still a bit boring – one of the times I tried to pull my car out of the driveway, I moved toward it to see what it was doing. I was still 15 feet away and the car indicated that a pedestrian was too close and refused to move. In a real circumstance this would not be the case.
But if there is going to be a problem, it is excessive caution the best it can do.
What do I really think will happen here? In short, we get to see some more of these videos, and then Smart Summon will just continue to work as intended, and it won't be that big, because it seems to be working well. Eventually, the sensational headlines will become tedious, and the press will move on to other Tesla topics.
About the author
Frugal Moogal A businessman first, Frugal Moogal looks at EVs from the perspective of a business. Having worked in several industries and in roles that managed significant money, he believes that the way to convince people that the EV revolution is here is by looking at the vehicles that a business would do.
