— Tesla "Actually Smart Summon" crashes convinced the federal government to open an investigation into Tesla's feature and the crash incidents.
The Tesla Actually Smart Summon investigation includes about 2.6 million of the following vehicles:
- 2016-2025 Tesla Model S
- 2016-2025 Tesla Model X
- 2017-2025 Tesla Model 3
- 2020-2025 Tesla Model Y
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation was opened in January 2025 but has now been closed after NHTSA determined out of millions of Smart Summon user sessions, only 1% resulted in some sort of incident.
Tesla describes its Actually Smart Summon feature as a short-distance Level 2 automated driving system controlled by a user from a cell phone within short distances. The feature is typically used to summon a vehicle on private property or a parking lot.
NHTSA found almost all incidents occurred when the system or person using the Smart Summon app failed to fully detect or respond to vehicle surroundings resulting in minor impacts.
Customers complained to Tesla and NHTSA about "crashes," but safety regulators found minor property damage claims from impacts with parking gates, nearby parked vehicles and short parking posts (bollards). And no incident resulted in injuries, fatalities, airbag deployments or incidents involving vehicles that had to be towed.
NHTSA did find two Tesla Smart Summon crashes related to blocked cameras in snowy parking lots, with the Tesla vehicles hitting parked vehicles. In both cases the users did not tell the vehicles to stop despite the obstructed cameras visible in the camera streams in the cell phone applications.
Tesla issued over-the-air software updates to help with detecting blocked cameras, including to reduce false negative camera blockage detections caused by snow or condensation.
According to the government, Tesla also issued additional updates to vehicles to improve Actually Smart Summon.
NHTSA closed its Tesla Actually Smart Summon crash investigation due to the low severity of the incidents and the low number of collisions.