Tesla's Enhanced Summon set for a wider release to US owners next week – TechCrunch

Tesla is preparing for a wider roll out of a better and robust version of its "optional" automated parking feature, known as Enhanced Summon next week, Executive Vice President Elon Musk tweeted Saturday.

Tweeten comes just days after the company released a new version of Navigate on Autopilot, an advanced driving feature that is seen as a step towards full automated driving on highways.

In tweet writing Musk "Tesla Enhanced Summon comes out in the US next week for anyone with Enhanced Autopilot or Full Self-Driving option."

Enhanced Summon is a parking assistant designed for vehicles to navigate a parking space autonomously and find driver ̵[ads1]1; under special conditions. For example, the driver, who uses the Tesla app to remotely call the car, must be within a certain distance from the vehicle. At this point, the driver does not park, just exit the parking lot and find the driver. As a reader discovered via Twitter recently, it is more of an automated feature to get to-from-a-parked position for now.

Using the feature, the vehicle will withdraw from the car park, navigate around objects and come to the owner. Musk has been bothering this feature for a while now and owners in the early access program have used it. It has begun to be available several weeks ago for some owners. (There are already many video demonstrations of Enhance Summon in action) Now it looks like it will have a wider edition, based on Musk's tweet.

Tesla's vehicles are not self-propelled. Autopilot is an advanced driver assistance system that can be described as a level 2 system, a term of SAE which means partial automation. Level 2 can control two ADAS functions at the same time as adaptive cruise (acceleration and deceleration along with the vehicle front) and lane control under certain conditions. However, the human driver is expected to maintain control at all times.

(Others have referred to it as semi-autonomous system, but that terminology has recently been removed by industrial insiders)

Navigating on Autopilot, which is supposed to control a car from a highway on the ramp to the off ramp, including navigational changes and lane change, Tesla's most advanced driver assistance to date. The feature was originally held back when the automaker released the latest version of its own car software, 9.0. When the Navigate on Autopilot was finally released at the end of October, Tesla put some limitations on it, including the insanity of a lane change proposal that required the driver to confirm by pressing the turn signal before continuing.

In this latest iteration, drivers will now have the ability to use Navigate on Autopilot without having to confirm path changes via the swing bar. The new version gives "a more seamless active guidance experience", the company wrote in a blog post on April 3.

For some history, in October 2016, Tesla announced that it would start producing electric vehicles with a more robust array of sensors, radars and cameras, called hardware 2, that allow higher levels of automated driving. The owners of these hardware 2 vehicles will be able to choose one of two advanced driving packages, Enhanced Autopilot or Full Self-Driving, the latter pushing the automatic driving feature to new levels of ability and eventually driving autonomously without human intervention.

Owners with improved autopilot have cars that can be adapted to cruise control, Autosteer (mainly lane keeping), Summon and Navigate on Autopilot. But in October 2018, the same month, it began rolling out the Navigate on Autopilot, removing Tesla's full self-drive option (FSD).

As soon as this year Tesla changed the terminology and pricing again – and it brought back the FSD.

Improved Autopilot is no longer available to new owners. Instead, owners can choose Autopilot or FSD. Autopilot includes auto styles and adaptive cruise control functions.

Owners who want the more advanced features that Navigate on Autopilot have to buy FSD. Navigating on the Autopilot is considered a step towards what is still fulfilled fully self-propelled.

Autopilot costs $ 3,000 and Full Self-Driving, costs an additional $ 5,000. So to get FSD owners must plunk down $ 8,000.