This Week in Tesla - Yorktown Cars & Coffee Makes Amends, V10 Launches en Masse, “Smart Summon” Creates a Stir

Yorktown, NY Cars and Coffee Group Makes Amends

After last week’s article, when it was reported that the Yorktown Cars and Coffee group took over the entirety of the Yorktown Heights Tesla Supercharger seemingly on purpose, this week the issue appears to be resolved. The leaders of the group supposedly discouraged their members from blocking the Supercharger and promised it wouldn't happen again. This Sunday morning at their most recent meeting, a Model 3 owner went to the charging location to see if they had kept their word.

Thankfully, the group did not repeat last week’s wrongdoing, but rather went out of their way to keep the charging stations clear putting cones down labeled, “Tesla Only”. Though the Tesla community was shocked at last week’s incident, most are glad that they did the right thing and made up for it this week.

The Tesla owner, Benswing Rich, who investigated the situation this week, even spent some time with the Cars and Coffee group. He discovered that they were not in fact “Tesla haters”, but rather many owned Teslas and just wanted to park together in an otherwise full parking lot. Perhaps if they all had Teslas they could have parked in other lots and “Smart Summoned” their cars to show each other!

The New “Smart Summon” Feature Launches with V10 and Creates a Stir

Speaking of Smart Summon, this new feature came with the arrival of V10, which promptly caused the masses of Tesla owners to have their cars driving themselves all over the nation’s parking lots. Of course as with any new massive Tesla Autopilot update, the media had plenty to say about it. Although only a few days after the launch of V10, CEO Elon Musk tweeted that there were over 550,000 uses of the feature, the media still was trying to sniff out every last issue.

Despite the fact that most owners have been cautious with the feature, only using it in deserted parking lots, a few have tried the beta feature in situations difficult even for humans such as these two.

The feature has also provided the world a glimpse into our inevitably autonomous future. One very positive use case for the feature is for mobility disabled people. Whether it be crutches or a wheelchair, “Smart Summon” will surely make one’s day easier. The controversy around the feature, as with many things concerning Tesla, has been blown out of proportion. The cars will very cautiously stop at intersections, activate their turn signals, and stop for any movement in front of them.

In my personal use of the feature, my Model X was driving to me in an empty parking lot with a driveway to the side. The vehicle identified the parking lot and stopped in front of it, presumably letting any cross traffic go. There have been several other very positive use cases captured on video such as this one. After sifting through all of the good and bad behind this feature, one can determine that this is incredible and anyone will be impressed by it, though it has some room for improvement. One situation where the feature consistently drives much more awkwardly and even possibly dangerously, is open spaces.

The feature does seem to prove to be highly refined in certain situations such as this one where the car navigates a seemingly double-parked car, as well as oncoming traffic which would typically involve driver communication, but is nailed by the self-driving algorithm.

In conclusion, while the feature has a lot of progress to make, it is certainly far more advanced than anything any other automaker has released. The feature will benefit Tesla in the form of good publicity, from the fascinated and even confused witnesses. Unfortunately, the media seems to report all the negative when it comes to Tesla and only some of the positive. If someone in a parking lot ever inquires about your driverless car, take the opportunity to educate them on what the feature is and correct any misconceptions.

Though TSLA Stock Falters, Tesla Breaks Delivery Record in Q3

For the past 3 fiscal quarters, Tesla has broken their delivery records. Each time after, the stock analysts and shorts are quick to say that this is the highest the price can go, despite having been proven wrong many times prior. Tesla has also announced that they are entering Q4 with a larger order backlog than that with which they entered Q3. CEO Elon Musk also reportedly wrote an email to company employees highlighting that they could hit 100,000 deliveries. They fell short, but only by a little, registering 97,000 total worldwide vehicle deliveries. Although the numbers were not as high in comparison to Wall Street’s expectations, it was still a record broken and progress made. Due to falling slightly short of their expectations, the stock managed to drop 6% in after-hours trading. Articles from news sources such as CNBC have already started to downgrade the stock calling it a “demand issue”. The issue lies in production and delivery timing logistics. There were enough orders placed to shatter the expectations, however they could not keep up with the demand and only fell short by a few thousand cars. Despite all of the negativity, this is still immense progress and further demonstrates the company’s domination of the electric vehicle sector.

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