The Tesla Smart Summon feature is one of the cleverest features packed into EVs. In short, you can summon the car to come to you from its parking spot if it is hard to get into it because cars are on either side. But one man argues you should be careful when using it.
TikTok user Mr. Wang (@iamxw99) shared some images on his account of what happened when he tried to summon his car to him. In the images, he claimed that the EV failed to recognize what was around it, and it was involved in its own collision.
According to Mr. Wang, the car had scraped along a parked vehicle after he had summoned it out of its own parking spot. The images show the car sitting in a parking lot but at a weird angle, and it’s clear it has attempted to pull out.
It is then immediately obvious that the car has hit another as it came out. The damage isn’t obvious in the first image, but it’s when we get to the close-up pictures that we realize that both cars have suffered damage. This isn’t what anyone wants to deal with.
This Is What Happened to the Tesla
The images clearly show that the EV has hit a Mitsubishi SUV. Mr. Wang explained in the video what had gone wrong with his car, a Tesla Model X. “2020 Model X. Smart Summon. Clear line of sight. Stationary car next [to] me. Still made contact,” he said. There are scratches and paint-swapping spoil across the Model X, while the Mitsubishi has also taken some damage.
Another image gives a clear idea of the damage. The bumper of the Mitsubishi is quite crumpled, suggesting the Tesla hit it with some force. The scuffs on the Tesla look to have reached not just above the wheel well, but also to the driver’s door handle. According to Wang, he had been watching the cars, and he stopped the summon the second he saw the impact between the two. Wang said that he isn’t the only person who has questioned the safety of Smart Summon.
He has also issued a safety complaint to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA). “Insurance claim filed. Tesla case opened. NHTSA safety complaint filed. Even if you have a 2026 model with HW4, don’t trust it too much,” he said. “In a NHTSA complaint involving a 2026 Model X, the owner reported that while using Actually Smart Summon to pull out of a parking space, the Tesla turned toward a nearby BMW M5, scraping the Tesla’s door against the BMW’s bumper. The owner said they were watching the vehicle the entire time but couldn’t stop it quickly enough.”
Lots of Drivers Have Complained About Smart Summon
Wang does not appear to be the only person who complained about the system. In 2025, Teslarati highlighted an NHTSA investigation into crashes that were linked to the Actual Smart Summon feature on Tesla EVs. Auto-Pilot is a newer version of the system, but it has still led to people being frustrated, and it is still prone to causing these types of accidents. But the sheer number of incidents is quite shocking.
The NHTSA found that Smart Summon caused 159 incidents, with 97 of those actual crashes. Thankfully, none of them led to injuries or deaths. The NHTSA did eventually close investigations into the feature, stating that over-the-air updates from Tesla helped fix many of the issues and that any damage incurred was quite minor. Plus, the 159 incidents were recorded from millions of sessions, which showed that the probability of a failure was quite low.