It's been a big week for electric vehicles, thanks to CES. Faraday Future made waves, Chevrolet debuted the Bolt, Volkswagen gave us the Budd-e electric camper van, and Arcimoto's SRK turned out to be our surprise of the show. Tesla doesn't do auto shows or CES, but it evidently didn't want to be left out; it's just begun rolling out its latest firmware, version 7.1. The update includes improvements to the Model S' various driver assists and adds a new beta feature that allows the car to drive into or out of one's garage remotely.

According to the firmware release notes posted over at the Tesla Motors Club forums, the improvements to Tesla's adaptive cruise control systems include better traffic awareness, and the Autosteer function has been refined so that it won't exceed the speed limit by more than 5mph (8km/h) on residential streets or roads without a central divider.

The new beta feature is called Summon. This lets a Model S drive or reverse into or out of of a parking space, up to 39 feet (12m). We should caution that Summon can only be used on private property at this point; outside of special permits granted by states for manufacturers to test self-driving vehicles, there are no currently-approved vehicles that the general public can use on the roads to be driven autonomously.

Interestingly, Summon doesn't appear to be able to parallel park yet. We imagine this ability may show up in future updates, since quite a few cars (update: including the Model S itself) have been able to self-park in parallel parking spaces for some years now, albeit with a human driver present in the cockpit and controlling the brake.