Tesla updated its summon feature. Now this owner can’t get to his car.
Tesla recently sent out an update to its vehicle “summon” feature – which it calls Actually Smart Summon – and as a result, one Tesla owner can no longer use his car.
For years and years, Tesla has touted a “summon” feature, allowing owners to move their cars remotely.
It started off with simple forward/backward movement, but then Tesla promised a “smart” summon which would be able to navigate through parking lots, and even be able to drive coast-to-coast all on its own to pick you up on the other side of the country.
Needless to say – and much like Tesla’s famed Full Self-Driving feature – some of these features haven’t been fully implemented yet. There was a smart summon feature active for some time on vehicles equipped with radar, but when Tesla shifted to vision-only for autonomy tasks, the feature disappeared for some time.
But in September, Tesla finally rolled out Actually Smart Summon, promising to finally bring remote-driving ability to cars, as long as they are on private property (parking lots, long driveways and the like).
The system has shown some impressive uses so far, but is still limited to certain use cases (for example, I can’t use it for the one thing I’d use it for – swapping the position of vehicles from my driveway to the parking spot in front of my house on a low-traffic incredibly wide street, both because it’s a public road and because the system can’t handle the gentle slope of my driveway).
So even though the system is often used as a party trick, there are still people who find legitimate uses for features like these and have come to rely on them – but in the case of one Tesla owner from Nova Scotia, that reliance has turned sour with the most recent update, which broke the system and has left his car stuck in its parking spot for the last two weeks.
Tesla changed summon, now one owner’s car is stuck
We were contacted by Jamie, a Tesla owner in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a simple photo showing his interesting parking situation, which he’s been using for the last four and a half years successfully. In fact, he bought the car specifically for this feature as it’s the only way his parking spot would work, and he commonly gets comments from people wondering how he gets his car out of there.
Which was all fine, until a week or two ago. Upon receiving Tesla firmware version v12.5.4.1, something broke and his car will no longer move.
This version of the software did make changes to both Actually Smart Summon and the old “Dumb” summon. The latter is the system Jamie had been using all along.
Now, when he tries to use the function, it fails in any number of ways, as the car detects walls too close and aborts the move, even if he can visually confirm that the situation is safe. The car cycles through various error messages – “cannot find clear path to pin,” “autopilot temporarily degraded,” “stopped due to unexpected error,” and the like. He’s been able to get it to move some amount occasionally, but estimates it only works one out of every 20 tries or so, whereas it used to be 100% reliable.
Jamie said he tried to contact Tesla customer service three times, who were unable to provide help other than suggesting the default “two finger salute” software reset. They offered no ability to do a software rollback to a functioning version of the software.
He also contacted the local service center – which he managed to bring the car to by opening the trunk and crawling in through the whole car up to the driver’s seat, despite an ailing back which added more difficulty to this comical situation.
At the service center – where he said they were very helpful – they were able to confirm the existence of the problem by stacking boxes beside the car and showing that it wouldn’t move. But they couldn’t offer a rollback, and offered no timeline for a potential fix.
So, he drove the car home, parked it, plugged it in, and has mostly left it there. Now, he walks places instead of driving, though that that won’t remain an option as the Nova Scotian winter sets in. Street parking is also not really an option, as Halifax routinely bans overnight street parking when snow is expected, to allow for snow clearance.
He could charge elsewhere in town, but on level 2 that would require walking to and from a charger, potentially at odd hours, or driving a half hour outside town to the nearest supercharger. The best situation, of course, would be to use his parking spot and charger as he has for the last four and a half years, until this “fix” was applied.
Jamie figures that, while he’s certainly in a niche situation, among the millions of Tesla owners out there, there must be other owners who are seeing similar issues right now. While he’d like a fix for his own problem, he’s also concerned for other owners who could be seeing the same issue.
This isn’t the first time Tesla has suddenly rolled out changes that affected parking. In 2022, Tesla abruptly removed ultrasonic parking sensors from cars, claiming that it would move to a vision-only park assist system. This took about six months to roll out, and is still being improved over time, but surprised some buyers who bought cars expecting this common feature and didn’t receive it.
Electrek’s Take
We at Electrek occasionally get reports from individual customers who have individual problems, but we don’t always do articles for every one of them, especially if there’s some other solution available. We usually like to wait for a pattern to develop.
But this was such an interesting problem, and brings up an important point: it highlights one of the issues with rolling out new software updates, especially when it comes to autonomous driving, or really any other device that people rely on: it’s all well and good to have a feature that works most of the time, but if people rely on a feature, you need to ensure that it works every time.
And this is a relatively minor automation feature in the scheme of things. But it demonstrates the difficulty of automated driving tasks, where in order to receive acceptance, systems don’t need to just work most of the time, but all of the time. A true, driverless, level 5 system needs to be perfectly reliable, even in “niche” situations – and we can’t have software updates coming along and breaking functionality when there’s more at stake than just one person’s parking spot.
And a final note, we can sometimes solve problems simply by emailing an automaker’s communications department to ask them what’s going on. I’ve used this method before, and companies have been able to address an issue for the customer, solving the problem before it turns into bad press for them. Unfortunately, though, this is not possible with Tesla.
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Kia’s electric SUVs are taking over. The EV3 is the best-selling retail EV in the UK this year, giving Kia its strongest sales start since it arrived 34 years ago. And it’s not just in the UK. Kia just had its best first quarter globally since it started selling cars in 1962.
Kia EV3 is the best-selling EV in the UK through March
In March, Kia sold a record nearly 20,000 vehicles in the UK, making it the fourth best-selling brand. It was also the second top-seller of electrified vehicles (EVs, PHEVs, and HEVs), accounting for over 55% of sales.
The EV3 remained the best-selling retail EV in the UK last month. Including the EV6, three-row EV9, and Niro EV, electric vehicles represented 21% of Kia’s UK sales in March.
Kia said the EV3 “started with a bang” in January, darting out as the UK’s most popular EV in retail sales. Through March, Kia’s electric SUV has held on to the crown. With the EV3 rolling out, Kia sold over 7,000 electric cars through March, nearly 50% more than in Q1 2024.
The EV3 was the best-selling retail EV in the UK in the first quarter and the fourth best-selling EV overall, including commercial vehicles.
Starting at £33,005 ($42,500), Kia said it’s the “brand’s most affordable EV yet.” It’s available with two battery packs, 58.3 kWh or 81.48 kWh, good for 430 km (270 miles) and 599 km (375 miles) of WLTP range, respectively.
With new EVs on the way, this could be just the start. Kia is launching several new EVs in the UK this year, including the EV4 sedan (and hatchback) and EV5 SUV. It also confirmed that the first PV5 electric vans will be delivered to customers by the end of the year.
Electrek’s Take
Globally, Kia sold a record 772,351 vehicles in the first quarter, its best since it started selling cars in 1962. With the new EV4, the brand’s first electric sedan and hatchback, launching this year, Kia looks to build on its momentum in 2025.
Kia has also made it very clear that it wants to be a global leader in the electric van market with its new Platform Beyond Vehicle (PBV) business, starting with the PV5 later this year.
Earlier today, we learned Kia’s midsize electric SUV, the EV5, is the fourth best-selling EV in Australia through March, outselling every BYD vehicle (at least for now). The EV5 is rolling out to new markets this year, including Canada, the UK, South Korea, and Mexico. However, it will not arrive in the US.
For those in the US, there are still a few Kia EVs to look forward to. Kia is launching the EV4 globally, including in the US, later this year. Although no date has been set, Kia confirmed the EV3 is also coming. It’s expected to arrive in mid-2026.
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Environment
Podcast: Tesla’s disastrous deliveries, more Trump tariffs, EV delivery numbers, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Tesla’s disastrous deliveries, more Trump tariffs, EV delivery numbers, and more.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
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Charging your EV in freezing weather could soon become dramatically faster, thanks to a big breakthrough from the University of Michigan engineers.
Neil Dasgupta, U-M associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering and corresponding author of a study published in Joule, and his team have developed an innovative battery structure and coating that can boost lithium-ion EV battery charging speeds by a whopping 500%, even at frigid temperatures as low as 14F (-10C). “Charging an EV battery takes 30 to 40 minutes even for aggressive fast charging, and that time increases to over an hour in the winter,” Dasgupta explained. “This is the pain point we want to address.”
Freezing weather has traditionally been harsh on EV batteries because it slows down the movement of lithium ions, resulting in slower charging speeds and reduced battery life. Automakers have tried thickening battery electrodes to extend driving range, but this makes some of the lithium hard to access, making charging even slower.
Previously, Dasgupta’s group sped up battery charging using lasers to carve pathways around 40 microns in size into the graphite anode. This allowed lithium ions to reach deeper into the battery more quickly. However, cold-weather performance still lagged because a chemical layer formed on the electrodes, blocking the ions. Dasgupta compares this barrier to “trying to cut cold butter,” making charging inefficient.
To solve this, the team coated the battery with a thin, glassy material made of lithium borate-carbonate—only 20 nanometers thick—which prevented the problematic chemical layer from forming. Combined with the microscopic channels, the results were groundbreaking: the modified batteries retained 97% of their capacity even after 100 fast-charging cycles in freezing temperatures.
“We envision this approach as something that EV battery manufacturers could adopt without major changes to existing factories,” Dasgupta noted. “For the first time, we’ve shown a pathway to simultaneously achieve extreme fast charging at low temperatures, without sacrificing the energy density of the lithium-ion battery.”
This innovation could tackle one of the biggest concerns holding potential EV buyers back.
The new battery tech is moving closer to commercialization, supported by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization (MTRAC) Advanced Transportation Innovation Hub. The research devices were built at U-M’s Battery Lab and studied with help from the Michigan Center for Materials Characterization.
U-M Innovation Partnerships assisted the team in applying for patents, and Arbor Battery Innovations has licensed the technology for market deployment. Dasgupta and the University of Michigan hold financial stakes in Arbor Battery Innovations.
Read more: California now has nearly 50% more EV chargers than gas nozzles
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