The Limit of Actually Smart Summon (is Not Very Good)

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]All right. So, I was playing with the new Smart Summon that got updated, and it ran over a can of spray paint, which had me really concerned because I don't want it running over things when I'm summoning it to me. And I can't see it.

[00:00:13]I can actually still see the black on my tire from where this uh black spray paint can exploded. And so, here we are today testing it out with nobody in the car and various objects of different sizes. So, I'm just holding the button and the car is about to come into that frame and it is going very slow. I have it going to target at the end of my driveway and for whatever reason, as of right now, it doesn't want to move. So, the session is not over. Looks like the GPS on my phone might be a little screwy.

[00:00:53]I am using an iPhone for the summoning, so maybe that's the problem. But summon is still active right now. I am currently summoning is what you're seeing. And the car just does not want to move. So maybe if I go over here and get this stroller out of the way. It's nowhere near it. We have probably 8 ft of space. Let's see.

[00:01:16]It still does not want to move. All right. I'm going to stop.

[00:01:22]I'm going to hit go to target again immediately. And off it goes. So, I'm going to let it go.

[00:01:29]I'm going to put this stroller right in front of it, which it easy. Should be really easy. We're starting easy, right?

[00:01:34]I want to I want to show that it can avoid stuff, right? So, here you go. It backs up and goes around the stroller.

[00:01:41]No big deal. I walk towards it and it Oh, wait. Oh, so you can see this battle you can have with it where it'll keep stopping as you walk towards it. You walk away and then it should continue there. I might have messed with it.

[00:01:53]Yeah, that stopped. I might have messed with it a little too much, but let me stay away and demonstrate to you that it will actually go to the end of the driveway.

[00:02:04]Of course, this is not a normal use case where you're screwing with it constantly. Let me try one more time.

[00:02:12]Preparing just says prepare. Oh, here we go. Okay.

[00:02:22]And and off it goes. So, it it'll it will avoid stuff, right? It will avoid stuff. That's not like we shouldn't be surprised by that. But why didn't a why didn't it avoid that spray paint can?

[00:02:32]It's driving me nuts. It's driving me nuts. Here's next. Here's the next object I put for it. Whoa. Where's it going? I told it to come back over here.

[00:02:42]It's driving away. There we go. Now, it hit the reverse lights. It's the same object, but I laid it down so that it's smaller, right? That's That's pretty obvious. I clearly see that object in the cameras. Now, that is the one thing I will say is I do have some control here. I can watch in the app. I can see in the camera if something is there. But the spray paint can, it's too small. I can't see that. And look, it avoided it.

[00:03:05]It It avoids things, guys. It It does avoid things. Okay, so Smart Summon has this avoiding ability. Where are you going? It is parking in the garage. This is crazy. Look. Look at this.

[00:03:18]I That's not where I have the thing.

[00:03:21]It is just doing that on its own.

[00:03:24]Okay. Well, see you later. Is it going to stop?

[00:03:28]It stopped. Right. Wow. Applause. I love it. This is cool. Okay. Here's the next object. I can't see the camera, but it's a birdhouse. I I don't know. I don't know what we're doing here. We're looking for small things. Small. Smaller and smaller. So, we're going to get smaller from there. So now I'm going to send it back out and we're going to go to Target and see if it hits this. I'll stay out of the way. No humans. I'm looking for small targets. And I will say guys, buying all these Teslas and testing all this stuff is getting expensive. But with today's sponsor, Monarch, that's okay. Now you guys know I am obsessed with tracking all of this data, whether it's full self-driving or actually smart summon or my finances.

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[00:05:40]Okay, so it didn't like I think that I was walking up to it. I'm not sure why it stopped there.

[00:05:48]Let me continue the go to target here.

[00:05:50]That's a weird spot to to stop because it's nowhere near where I told it to go.

[00:05:56]Yeah, I was a little unsure there. I was a little unsure. So, again, it it threaded the needle here. It went clearly avoided this this little object.

[00:06:03]So, I'm going to stop it there and I'm going to send it back to go to target like way over here. I don't really want it to go in the garage again. I'm going to stick this. So, it's like if it backs up normally, it's going to run that over, right? It has to do obstacle avoidance.

[00:06:23]See, again, it's going the wrong way.

[00:06:25]I'm not sure why it's driving in that direction first.

[00:06:29]Okay, that is not It stopped. That is not where I told it to go. Let's try this again. Go to target.

[00:06:39]No, I told it to go backwards. What are you doing?

[00:06:45]There we go. Okay. So, for some reason it has a weird thing where it wants to go forward first and then backward, which is so funny cuz the older versions of Smart Summon, like before we had the front bumper camera, it's going straight forward this birdhouse right now.

[00:06:59]Uh-oh. Oh, okay. It's It's going around it. Let me move out of the way. I don't want to get in its way. It is attempting to go around this. Look at that. So, the older versions of Smart Summon.

[00:07:15]Beautiful, dude. This is crazy. That was so impressive. Would always reverse first before we had the front bumper cameras. They would always put it in reverse and then they would go straight, then they would go forward. And this one seems to want to go forward before it will go in reverse, which is kind of weird, but maybe the front bumper camera is even better than the reverse camera.

[00:07:31]So, it it definitely dodged that. That was really impressive, actually. It got pretty close to it. It looked like a human, like it it was very sensient, thinking like, "Oh, what is this? Why is there a birdhouse here? Let me drive around it." All right. Now that we have proven it can dodge this. This is, you know, pretty decent size object. It's not huge. It's not tiny. I'm going to put it right in front of it. So, front bump or the front windshield cameras are not going to have a good time with this, but front bumper camera, no problem at all. I can see it. So, there's still some mystery around how much the front bumper camera is used. With full self-driving, with smart summon, we don't know at all. With full self-driving, it's used in some capacity because if it's blocked, you'll get a warning, but car will still drive. So let me move this for you and then let's see here. Go to target which the target is in front of it. It is reversing and it is going around that object. So that is huge. That is really good news actually because it's not going exactly where I told it. But it did avoid it did avoid the birdhouse. How do I get this thing turned around? That's what I really need. All right. I am using dumb summon right now. Wow. It straightened the wheel. So, the wheels were turned and I'm using dumb dumb summon just to tell it to go forward and it's doing it. So, let me stop it right there. Hold on. All right. So, let's use dumb summon really quick. I don't really care if this hits something. That might sound crazy, but dumb summon is used when you're like next to the car looking at it, trying to get into or out of a tight parking spot or something. This is not something you use from a distance. You're going to be next to your car looking at it. So, let's just see if I hit forward.

[00:09:08]Okay, so clearly Dumb Summon is not using that front bumper camera. But let me just back it up a tiny bit.

[00:09:19]Okay, that's cool. I let go. Just stop right there. Now we try smart summon with the same thing. All right, he's got his hat back on. We're going to do smart summon and I'm telling it to go forward, but Smart Summon can kind of do whatever it wants. So here we go. And it's backing up. It's backing up, y'all. Look at it go. Uh, so Smart Zoom is definitely using the front bumper camera. Holy moly, that's incredible.

[00:09:42]All right, so again, I'm going to stop it right there. So you can see in the app that the front-facing cameras. No, I mean the not the front bumper camera, but the cameras up here in the in the windshield. Cannot see that at all. So look at this. When we press go to target here, I'm going to have it leave the driveway. So again, it goes forward looking at that front camera.

[00:10:03]Okay. Well, not not as incredible that time. And see, that's the time I wasn't looking at the car. That's the whole point of Smart Summit. I mean, you're supposed to look at the car, but I was looking at my phone at that front camera. And that front camera can't see right in front of the bumper, which is why that front bumper camera is so important. So, why did it go around it twice and not the third time?

[00:10:27]See the wheels wiggling? This is dumb summoning backwards. I'm not sure why it's wiggling the wheels like that. I do feel like a hat is a critical part of this. All right, here we go. We're going to try again. And I'm going to go to Target, not the store. Target in the app, the where I want the car to go. And I'm going to look at the car this time. So, let's see. Go to Target is clicked.

[00:10:47]And it's just going to do it. So, it doesn't seem to be using the front camera because watch now if I move it. I don't know. It seemed to use it twice and now these times now it's not. Maybe this object is just been here too long and now it has some type of like We got to ignore this stupid thing. All right.

[00:11:02]This is going to get interesting.

[00:11:03]Stephanie's pulling in the driveway.

[00:11:04]Here we go. Go to target.

[00:11:07]Oh, she's flying, too. What is she doing? Go to target.

[00:11:13]And it doesn't want to move.

[00:11:18]Oh, it touched it. It just touched it.

[00:11:20]All right, I'm going to go to target around her car.

[00:11:24]Oh, buddy.

[00:11:27]Here it comes.

[00:11:31]There. Just do whatever you got to do.

[00:11:39]The human is also confused.

[00:11:43]>> Yeah, he's he already came.

[00:11:45]>> So, I'm going to have it go to target again.

[00:11:48]Oh, she's backing up. I wouldn't do that.

[00:11:51]Oh, okay.

[00:11:56]The the human is very confused here.

[00:11:58]Summon is just not moving.

[00:12:02]Am I going to hit it? Hit what?

[00:12:05]>> No.

[00:12:10]So, smart summon is on right now. Oh, no. It's complete. No. Go, go, go. All right. So, there you go. That's how that worked. Okay. So, this is dumb summon again. And just just to show it to you, it uh does not like hills at all. And we're on like, you know, a slight incline. I could never I don't know, 5 degrees, I'm going to guess. I have no idea what it really is, but it's a very slight hill. and it just does not want to move. Now, if I just switch it to smart summon and move the target kind of back to where I'm thinking and click go to target, what it could do is there's no driver. So, there's no the car doesn't care if it's going forwards or backwards. There you go. It can just go in reverse to get where I'm telling it to go, right? It doesn't need to what we consider the front of the car.

[00:12:54]It doesn't need to go in that direction.

[00:12:56]It can go either way. It sees 360. It can go forward or backwards. It doesn't really matter. Um, and that's a really nice job, actually. So, that's perfect.

[00:13:03]That's where I want it. Now, we need to up the ante and get some smaller objects. All right, kids. Go stand in front of my car. Okay, so next we're going to do just the hat, the top of the bird feeder, because we're getting to the point where it's getting a little ridiculous, the the smallalness of the thing, but this is still something that should easily be avoidable and that you would want to avoid. You wouldn't want to break whatever this is. Who knows if there's something under it? Who knows if it's made of glass and it I don't know puts a hole in your tire or something.

[00:13:32]So, you definitely want to avoid that, but it's like kind of on the edge of like, do we really care, right? So, let's get Smart Summon out of here.

[00:13:41]Man, iPhones overheat really fast, y'all. How do you deal with this? I've been outside. It's not even hot out.

[00:13:46]It's like 50°. So, no. Did not avoid Did Nope. All right.

[00:13:53]Well, goodbye top of birdhouse because uh so that's crazy because smart summon just doesn't have that level of avoidance. I'm surprised cuz that is the type of object I think FSD would avoid.

[00:14:06]Let me try it in FSD really quick. All right, so at this point I'm ready to turn on FSD without navigation. It won't. There's no button, but I put it into drive and I can clearly see that thing. Front cameras can clearly see that thing. It did get a tiny bit flattened, but let's see. And now FSD is also just going right over that. I am so surprised because FSD used to be so sensitive. Um, I'm going to say critical. FSD used to be so sensitive to all of those type of like deviations in the road. And you know, maybe they adjusted that so that we weren't getting too much discomfort with like avoiding things we shouldn't. Like 14.2 too used to always avoid uh you know like tire marks in the road which obviously is is stupid right but this thing you would want to avoid. So man it's just such a tough distinction between these really small objects because this if you saw in the road you could just drive over it right you could straddle it with your tires but I don't I mean let's give FSD a chance. I don't think it was doing that. I mean, I'm sure it could get to that level of intelligence, right? But as of right now, it's clicked uh oops, click start self-driving.

[00:15:14]And I mean, this this front tire is going to go straight for it. So, it's not and as we saw in Smart Summon, the the front tire or the back tire obviously hit it. So, it's not using that type of logic of like, yeah, let's just straddle it and go over it. So, that's uh that's a pretty tough one. So, unfortunately, I feel like we already kind of found the limit of smart summon, but also FSD. was not expecting anything about FSD in this. I was just looking at Smart Summon and they have driverless robo taxis out there, but our personal cars, we don't know how that software relates to the robo taxis, although it seems like it's pretty close. Um, and you're supervising with Smart Summon.

[00:15:49]Obviously, you're still supervising.

[00:15:50]You're controlling it from the phone.

[00:15:52]You're responsible. You're holding the button. You can see some cameras. You can't see the front bumper camera, but like something like this. Look at this wrench. I'm going to test that. I mean, we can test it, but there's no way it's going to see this if it couldn't see the uh that the top of that bird feeder, which was probably about half the height of this, but this will be laying down.

[00:16:09]So, uh I'm not sure that's that's I don't like it because with Smart Summon, again, the car is far away from you. You might not have a good visual on it. Like when you're watching it from wherever you're calling it from, obviously you can see the top of it and you should be able to have some type of line of sight, but there's going to be cars and people and all kinds of stuff in the way.

[00:16:30]You're not going to see what's on the road, what it's potentially driving over or on. And once the drive starts, the front camera that you can see in the app here should of course pick up a lot of things and you should be able to see it if that's what you're watching. But personally, I know I mostly look at the car itself. Well, I don't even know if I'm in the camera right now. I I look at the car itself. I don't really look at the app, the camera on the app so much, but whatever. Let's Let's stick this right here. Should be super obvious.

[00:16:56]Like a person would probably see this.

[00:16:58]It's shiny. It's metal. You would not want to run this over. I don't think it would damage the car, but it's just nobody would run that over. You know what I mean? Nobody's going to do it.

[00:17:05]All right. So, there it is. Hopefully, you can clearly see that object on the edge of the driveway. We're going to do our final go to target here. And I mean, the car has to just run it over. How would it ever see it? Yep. Has no idea.

[00:17:15]I'm just going to stop it there. Uh I don't know why it's still moving because I had let go.