What happened

As you can see from the owner’s post, there are what appear to be ceiling-mounted cabinets in the garage that are about half the height of the room. This means that while the sensors located at body height register it as an unobstructed area, there’s still plenty of space underneath.

Tesla Model Y driver Tito Rodriguez used Tesla’s Summon feature to remotely reverse into a parking space. However, since the car’s sensors were scanning the area at its height, they were unable to see the locker section above. As a result, the car thought it had entered a space where no object was located and continued to travel in the opposite direction. Very quickly, the rear window met the lockers. Now a Tesla owner could lose thousands of dollars in repairs. Also, as noted, the cover was damaged.

The owner says it may be his fault

The Summon function is very useful for Tesla owners and we have already seen many great examples of it when the car is parked in places where a human can barely manage. However, the company always warns that there are things to do before using it, such as opening the bumper, which Rodriguez did not do.

Set the distance you want Summon to stop from the detected object (for example, you might want Summon to stop a few centimeters from the garage wall). Note that this distance only applies to objects that Summon detects directly in front of Model Y when moving forward, or directly behind Model Y when reversing.
– specified in the usage rules of the function.

According to Rodriguez, it could all be his fault. In the responses, the user pointed out that when using the Summon function, you have to stop the vehicle when it is in the position you want, and Rodriguez said, “I actually changed the settings the day before the incident so that it doesn’t wait. I pressed the button on my phone. That was the first time I called him after that and I accidentally pressed it again and all I heard was a big bang.”

In addition to accidentally calling the car off, Tesla also warns against similar situations if something is hanging low from the ceiling. It seems that the owner cannot trust that they can somehow sue the company for not being able to get compensation because their car is not detecting objects above the bumper.