diff --git a/src/lerobot/policies/smolvla/smolvlm_with_expert.py b/src/lerobot/policies/smolvla/smolvlm_with_expert.py
index 555c40773..caca41dab 100644
--- a/src/lerobot/policies/smolvla/smolvlm_with_expert.py
+++ b/src/lerobot/policies/smolvla/smolvlm_with_expert.py
@@ -77,7 +77,6 @@ class SmolVLMWithExpertModel(nn.Module):
             print(f"Loading  {model_id} weights ...")
             self.vlm = AutoModelForImageTextToText.from_pretrained(
                 model_id,
-                device_map=device,
                 torch_dtype="bfloat16",
                 low_cpu_mem_usage=True,
             )