Tesla Just Upgraded Smart Summon Big Time

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]Tesla announced that after they roll out a light version of full self-driving version 14 for hardware 3 vehicles in the US sometime in the future, they plan on expanding version 14 light to more international markets. Sounds like FSD version 14 light will go global. Second, now that FSD version 14.3.2 is rolling out wide, truly this time, one big thing people are noticing is that Tesla has now unified the model between actual smart summon, FSD, and robo taxi. Now that smart summon is basically the same architecture as FSD, users are saying it's now finally fixed, reacts faster, and is working incredibly well. This might very well be the feature that goes viral every time someone realizes the car drives itself in a parking lot.

[00:00:43]Or might it be Grok in the car? Only now are mainstream media, CNBC in this case, starting to show off real-world use of Grok inside a Tesla.

[00:00:52]So, first of all, it was I found it unusual that Tesla dropped this note in the first place. So, don't know why they did this, but they basically said, "Following a future rollout of FSD version 14 light for hardware 3 vehicles in the US." Okay, so at the earnings call, they did talk about Ashock said, "Yeah, there will be a light version of version 14 that will roll out." "We plan on expanding version 14 light to additional international markets." So, they said in the future, when we roll this out, we hope in the future we'll [laughter] roll out the international markets, too. "This update ensures that hardware 3 vehicle owners will continue to benefit from ongoing software updates."

[00:01:29]And then, caveat, "Since international rollout is subject to several factors."

[00:01:34]Okay, we can't provide definitive dates at the moment, but we'll provide updates on a rolling basis.

[00:01:39]Why do you think, Brian, that they had to even tell us that it's going to go everywhere, it's going to go global? I think there was a lot of frustration among hardware 3 owners, which are, as far as I'm aware, most owners. Hardware 3 was in production for a long time. It went on a lot of vehicles, and a lot of those buyers, even if the vast majority never purchased or even subscribed to FSD, but they still wanted that opportunity.

[00:02:03]They still wanted the ability to be in the cool kids club eventually.

[00:02:08]After the most recent earnings call, we learned that hardware 3 will not be unsupervised. It is not able to do it.

[00:02:16]But, fear not, that doesn't mean you're going to be stuck on version 12 forever.

[00:02:21]You will get version 14 light. And why would Tesla even do this? Is it because they're just super nice people? I think they're doing it out of that sense of obligation, sure, but really, they're doing it because they know they can put a version of 14 on hardware 3 cars that's so good that everyone will want to pay for it. We saw the number of paid subscriptions climb sharply. We are in the hundreds of millions of dollars range on recurring revenue. This is something that they would love to get to twice as many, three times as many eligible vehicles. So, I think they would be crazy not to, and they want to let people know, "Hey, we haven't forgotten you. It is not the end of the road." FYI, one of my cars is hardware 3, so I am very excited and want to make it happen, but the numbers actually don't It's not as many as people are saying it is.

[00:03:16]The number of people who have hardware 3 cars is a lot, as you mentioned, multi-millions, but the number of hardware 3 cars who actually outright bought FSD, it's under 400,000.

[00:03:27]And apparently, in the US, just in US, and apparently with the incentives to try to upgrade to hardware 4 cars, many of them have. And my guess at this point is that half of those have already switched over. So, we're talking 200,000 cars. Remember, Elon himself even said, "Luckily, there wasn't actually that many who outright bought it." But, it was expensive. Remember, some people paid 15, some people paid 12, so they need to be taken care of. It's just that Okay.

[00:03:55]Vocal minority, I suppose, but they need to be resolved. I'm not saying that they don't need to be. Okay.

[00:04:00]>> Absolutely. And the thing is, worth reminding folks, have you you ever owned a car before that got better after you bought it?

[00:04:08]The answer is no, certainly not over the air. I had the firmware updated in my Nissan Quest. The dealer tried to charge me for it, even though I didn't ask them to. They went, "So, we're going to do it as a courtesy." You already did it, didn't you? Yeah, there's This is amazing. The updates that we're getting that add little things. Cross traffic awareness when you're backing up. That wasn't on the car when I bought it, I have it now. It's amazing. Lots of features. Okay. So, that was interesting that they announced that, and Elon even reposted it.

[00:04:42]It just feels like they're setting up something why they want to let people know, but I think what you were saying makes sense, which is they want people to actually buy it now. If version 14 Even if it's a light version, it works, and it works so well that the people who have hardware 3 cars who don't own FSD, they want to make sure that they're aware, because it just subscribe to the thing, it's going to change your car.

[00:05:04]That's the important part. 14.3.2 is now rolling out, and across the board, the community who has it is saying that this is a magnitude change. It is so much better than 14.3.1.

[00:05:18]Like the it was that good. It cleaned up a lot of the parking issues. It's reacts faster. It is just so good as what they're saying. Now, it is truly is rolling out, and we reported that yesterday. More and more people are getting it. Lots of people I know are starting to get it. My I haven't received it in my other cars as well, but I've heard that it's now truly going wide. But, here's the interesting thing that they just are quietly talked about is that they've apparently unified the model between actual smart summon, FSD, and robo taxi for more capable and reliable behavior. So, in the past, our actual smart summon was a feature that they had to build separately, but now they're just using the FSD stack, which is what's used in robo taxi, to do smart summon. Makes sense, because it's really good at finding parking spots.

[00:06:04]So, Now, you've worked in development. A question I would have for you is, would you rather maintain one code base or three?

[00:06:11]Yeah, exactly. One code base is always the best. Easiest. Just like you said, just continue that. So, this is the end-to-end architecture means the same neural net handles summon, urban FSD, and highway. No separate code path.

[00:06:24]Weight updates propagate across all driving modes simultaneously, so you're talking about better urban performance, quietly makes summon faster, too. This is unified learning working as designed.

[00:06:34]So, now with summon, by the way, many people are thinking, now with this, the next feature is banish, which is you drive your car to a some sort of location, and then you say, you get drop me off at the lobby, at the front door, and then the car goes drives around and finds its own parking lot, parking space. This is still smart summon, but it's now really works. You have tested it. You told me last week that you don't really use it that often, but now you might want to do it. So, I'm going to play some videos here, but people are raving how quickly this works. I think you still need to press the button, but this is Nick Crupatine pointing out that 14.3 is actually updated. It's so good.

[00:07:14]It's smoother. Steering smoother, similar to actual FSD operation. It now shows the FSD visualization, and here's the comparison between the old version of smart summon and the new version. You can see the comparison is big deal.

[00:07:30]Yeah.

[00:07:33]That is very smooth, speedy, and confident.

[00:07:37]Yeah. That looks good. I'm still on 14.2. I will look forward to getting the update when I get the update and updating folks on what I've learned.

[00:07:49]By then, of course, it's not going to be the most relevant. Oh, what a great shot.

[00:07:55]Yeah, you can see how quickly it moves.

[00:07:57]I find that with you when you're parked and you just press the start FSD, and it just moves right away, cuz it's already it's constantly looking around you, so it knows. There's like me, I have to look around, make sure, which I do, but it's moving.

[00:08:10]>> it sped up. Yeah, it's just FYI, it's sped up 1.75 times, so this appears to be faster than it really is.

[00:08:17]I have found that with FSD, when I press let's go, it is about as quick as if I had a driver and their foot was on the pedal, like hovering over the pedal.

[00:08:28]That's about how quick it is. It doesn't take time to shift into gear and think.

[00:08:33]If you're in park and you hit it, it's in the gear and you're about to go. Not that I need that, but it's job is to mimic human behavior, and I think our job is to mimic human behavior. I don't know [laughter] how I'm doing. Hopefully, I'll You're doing good. You're doing good. So, Tesla forwarded this from Scott Debriansky.

[00:08:53]"Actually smart summon now reacts a lot faster." He goes, "I love smart summons.

[00:08:58]I'm going to use it as much as I can now. It truly is usable." I think they can just drop the word actually now.

[00:09:03]Just do smart summon. The reason they added it was, of course, was because it was so janky before.

[00:09:10]All right. So, I parked my car back over there, and I'm going to try doing it again. So, let's try summoning my car again. So, I'm coming to the summon screen.

[00:09:29]I'm picking my car.

[00:09:33]Couple of people were walking by. I don't want to have my camera here.

[00:09:36]Now, I'm pushing the button.

[00:09:40]Now, it immediately is starting to back up.

[00:09:45]It's so far I can't even see it. Put the camera on. Now, it's moving forward.

[00:09:52]There. Yeah, so on his phone, you can actually And there's something walking by. I just I'm just talking about the fact that you can use it from a substantial distance.

[00:10:02]That's true. They did extend the distance because before you people had to be close to it. You're right. This is much further than usual. Stop sign.

[00:10:16]Last summer I had a chance to use smart summon app. And I'm holding my finger down but it's waiting patiently for those people to cross.

[00:10:26]And it was great. It worked flawlessly.

[00:10:28]I'm holding my head down.

[00:10:30]They're walking behind it.

[00:10:34]They don't know it's a robot.

[00:10:38]Like a boss.

[00:10:41]I love it.

[00:10:44]Yeah, it seems to be much further away.

[00:10:46]That's great.

[00:10:48]It really confuses people when you get up and hop into the driver's side of a vehicle. Wait a second.

[00:10:55]I used it at the hotel that we were staying at for the family reunion.

[00:10:59]And I couldn't see where it was. It was around the corner of the building. I was just watching it on the phone cameras and it went [clears throat] by several of my family members who were also getting in their cars to go to the restaurant.

[00:11:13]And then it pulled up out front and this lady chatting on the phone with her friends saw it and said, "Hang on. Ain't nobody driving that car." It's great.

[00:11:21]>> [laughter] >> Nice.

[00:11:24]Ah, it's funny. You got a good impression there.

[00:11:27]>> [laughter] >> I can hear it right now. It's great.

[00:11:30]It's This is possibly the one that's going to go viral. I always thought that it was vanish that will do it. You get out of the car and then parks itself and then people are like, "My god, there's no one in the car."

[00:11:41]And then that's when people realize, "What? These cars can do this now?" And on Cybertruck, I wonder if Tesla's going to be cute and cuz they like to do little silly games and call it go on get. Go on get.

[00:11:53]>> [laughter] >> Go on. Get.

[00:11:56]It wouldn't surprise me.

[00:11:58]So where you have more and more of these mainstream media, in this case CNBC, actually showing off Grok inside a Tesla. My question to you is which one is actually going to go viral first? Hey Grok, can you take me down Broadway instead? Route updated for scenery. Head toward Broadway via West 59th Street, then south on Broadway to financial district. Mike Nelson says that using Tesla's driver assist system, full self-driving supervised, makes him feel like he doesn't have to work so hard at driving [music] and it encourages him to do other things instead of steering, braking, or watching the road.

[00:12:33]All full self-driving. Without touching.

[00:12:35]He spends a lot of his time conversing with Grok, xAI's AI chatbot now integrated [music] into Tesla cars. Hey Grok.

[00:12:43]Hey Nelson, what's up? Can you start off repeating the what the periodic table of elements stands for? Like each of the elements.

[00:12:54]The periodic table lists 118 elements by atomic number.

[00:12:58]>> [music] >> Like hydrogen is H number one, helium He number two, lithium Li number three. Who was the first monarch that controlled all of the United Kingdom?

[00:13:08]And what year did he ascend to that throne?

[00:13:14]Queen Anne was the first monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

[00:13:18]So this obviously it's just it's an LM inside your car. The new feature that they launched is now you can actually it's a way to word hey Grok. That's I for me that's a big deal because pressing the button and then swiping it away, it just breaks the idea. I like the idea of just saying hey Grok and then I'll use it more because it's so easy. And then you say go to sleep or go away.

[00:13:41]Because I can't stand that it's always there. Yeah. I'm concerned that you may have for those listening in podcast form in their cars just woken a bunch of robots.

[00:13:52]The thing quick pro tip though, you don't have to swipe away. You can just say go away and it goes away. It will close it. It is one I don't like that.

[00:14:03]Good news, you have to enable it.

[00:14:05]There's a little toggle you have to flip to turn that on. So if you don't like it, good news it's not on there until you say it. It's like the Tron update. I can't believe they're showing me ads.

[00:14:17]Optional ads that you had to turn on yourself. That's not Guys, it's just free content.

[00:14:25]I enjoyed that the reporter in the passenger seat the whole time is just he was just shocked.

[00:14:31]>> [laughter] >> Whole time. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe it. Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:35]Yeah.

[00:14:36]>> [clears throat] >> So that's the response you get from someone who has had their eyes open. And it's still just an LM inside the car. I'm not that impressed with it at this point. I want to see controlling the car. That is the cool the day that you can actually say, "Hey Grok, park in that parking spot." Or let's not park here. Let's go further away. It's coming very soon. I showed that my car did that one time already a long time ago. Literally with the hey with the Grok feature. My wife says, "I don't want to park here." And the car stopped says, "Okay, no worries." It literally replied back. We don't And then it found another spot.

[00:15:11]And everybody said, "I don't have that feature." And they couldn't replicate it. And then but it happened. So I don't know if they were just testing it or something happened. But that's the kind of feature I want.

[00:15:21]One time I was driving on the HOV lane and I pressed the button and then I said, "Hey Grok, I don't want to be driving here.

[00:15:28]I'm not allowed to be driving here." The car said, "No worries."

[00:15:31]And we moved out.

[00:15:33]So again, that was a second scenario where I was able to control the car.

[00:15:38]Physically saw it. Now was it luck? Was it maybe I'm misreading it? Maybe because it's not a feature that's available.

[00:15:44]But it seems to be some vehicles might be testing it. But that's the feature I think is going to be viral. The control that we know we have is route planning.

[00:15:53]And a good example is yesterday I took the gang out for >> [snorts] >> a belated family dinner and for Dom's birthday last week and I said, "Where's the nearest Red Robin?" And it said 61 miles away in Olympia. And I'm like, "No, it isn't." And it found the correct one. But we could just have a conversation.

[00:16:11]Now if I had just trusted it, that would have made my evening a bit longer. But >> [laughter] >> fortunately I knew I knew what I was actually looking for.

[00:16:20]But I just appreciate that I can say find me a whatever along my route and it will suggest ones that are ahead of me.

[00:16:30]It knows my route. That it and it'll tell this will add four minutes to your total journey.

[00:16:35]Not counting however long it takes at the place of course. But that's a good way. That was always my frustration with navigation since the beginning is I don't care if there's that Starbucks or that first of all you got to type it in.

[00:16:48]It goes great, there's one two miles away behind you. Once in the long your destination. Yeah, that's the most important thing. Along the way. You know where I'm going.

[00:16:57]Yes, but I don't care. And I think the next thing we might see before we get to vehicle controls is app integration where I can say make me a playlist of covers of Rolling Stone songs and it'll just populate my Spotify or my YouTube music or whatever it may be.

[00:17:16]And because I'll tell you that if I'm driving, I can't look away to plan my own playlist. So an LM in the car is useful of course. But I still keep saying that it's just an LM which we're all pretty used to already on your phone and so forth. This is I want to see controlling the car.

[00:17:34]I hope that comes sooner and it sounds like it might. And some people are saying though you need a higher more inference chips. Maybe the hardware AI five five needs to be there first.

[00:17:47]I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure. I haven't I have to dig closer into that.

[00:17:50]But that's the concern some people have.

[00:17:52]Who knows? And it software can get lighter and lighter over time.