How This Tesla Owner Avoids Parking Tickets Using ‘Summon’ Feature

By Noah Long ● Nov 6, 2018

Tesla is currently working on a plan to update the “Summon” feature on its vehicles so that you can move your car around without actually having to be in it.

Twitter user D Shawn Kennedy of Janeville, Wisconsin demonstrated how useful this feature already can be as he moves the vehicle around in order to get out of potential parking tickets:

As you may notice in the tweet above, Kennedy is able to move his Tesla vehicle between empty parallel parking spots. This is a way to get around the two-hour limit rule for these parking spots. Essentially Kennedy can do this every couple of hours from his office window. However, this will not work out if any of those spots are taken.

The current version of ‘Summon’ allows you to move the car up to 39 feet backward or forwards. And this feature is supposed to help users park the car in tight spots. Tesla first introduced the Summon feature in beta with version 7.1 of its software back in 2016. And the company has been subtly improving the feature since then.

On November 1st, Tesla CEO Elon Musk also said that an advanced summon feature will be arriving in about 6 weeks. “Tesla advanced Summon ready in ~6 weeks! Just an over-the-air software upgrade, so will work on all cars made in past 2 years (Autopilot hardware V2+),” wrote Musk in a series of tweets about the feature. “Car will drive to your phone location & follow you like a pet if you hold down summon button on Tesla app.”

Musk added that you will be able to drive the Tesla vehicle from your phone “remotely like a big RC car if in line of sight.”

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