A new video that surfaced on Reddit shows a Tesla vehicle crashing into a $3.5 million Cirrus Vision jet after being ‘summoned’ in a precarious way by the owner at a Cirrus event at Spokane’s Felts Field airport. Tesla Model Y has a feature called “Smart Summon” that allows the driver to push a button on their phone to call the car to come to them autonomously.
In the video, the summoned car can be seen going all the way up to the Cirrus Vision jet, colliding with its tail, and keeping pushing forward until the jet has been turned around in a complete half-circle. Only then does it finally come to a halt.
Many glitches. Smart summon has been known to have many glitches, even occasionally crashing into poles. CEO Elon Musk has described the feature as “Tesla’s most viral feature” but that definitely does not make it its safest.
Of course, like any of Tesla’s Autopilot features or Full Self-Driving Beta, owners need to stay attentive at all times, something this particular owner clearly wasn’t doing, or he would have taken control and stopped the crash. Perhaps he summoned the vehicle by accident simply by sitting on the app’s button?
Interesting Engineering