Firmware
Tesla Autopilot, FSD challenges highlighted by Waymo’s difficulties in real-world testing
Tesla is expected to release the first features of its Full Self-Driving suite with the rollout of Software Version 9. The company teased some of these capabilities in the Q2 2018 earnings call, when Elon Musk and Stuart Bowers, a member of the Tesla Autopilot development team, discussed some of the features that would likely be included in the upcoming update. Among these is highway on-ramp to off-ramp capabilities, automatic lane changes, and Integrated Navigation, to name a few.
It took a long time before Tesla was confident enough to announce that it would be introducing Full Self-Driving features to its fleet. Over the years, Tesla had been gathering data from its fleet of vehicles, and in a report last month, MIT’s Lex Fridman estimated that Tesla had acquired around 1.2 billion real-world miles on Autopilot and approximately 7.8 billion miles in Autopilot “Shadow Mode.” This translates to an immense amount of data that Tesla has been using to train its neural network. With enough training, Tesla’s neural network would be able to, in Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy’s words, gain an “understanding of what is around us and around the vehicle.”
Tesla might not be a prominent player in the self-driving market today, but the real-world data that it has gathered over the years would likely be a difference-maker once it starts introducing Full Self-Driving features to its fleet. Nidhi Kalra, a senior information scientist for the RAND Corporation, previously noted that there is just no replacement for real-world miles like the ones that Tesla’s fleet are gathering every day, since simulations like those utilized by Waymo to train its autonomous cars are a “simplification” of the real world.
The information scientist’s words appear to be ringing true. A report from The Information recently noted that Waymo’s self-driving car program is currently facing some difficulties in Chandler, AZ. Waymo is a leader in the self-driving car race, considering that its autonomous vehicles have driven a total of 5 million real-world miles and 5 billion simulated miles as of May this year. Despite this, reports from residents in Chandler, where Waymo’s autonomous cars are currently testing, show that even Google’s self-driving unit is having issues training its cars to interact with real drivers on the road.
For one, Waymo’s self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans reportedly run into problems when crossing a prominent T-intersection close to the company’s headquarters. Since the vehicles are programmed to follow all driving rules strictly, the autonomous cars are finding it difficult to deal with human drivers on the road, most of whom do not follow driving rules. In the particular T-intersection, for example, Waymo’s vans have a tendency to stop as the vehicle analyzes what it needs to do, making them a nuisance to some drivers in the area. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Waymo’s vans are also reportedly running into some problems with several unprotected left turns onto fast roads, and with merging into heavy traffic. The autonomous cars are reportedly having difficulties in highways when there are a lot of vehicles on the road as well.
Waymo appears to have been a bit too optimistic about its expectations for its self-driving car program. Last fall, the company announced that it would start rolling out vehicles that do not have safety drivers. As it turns out, this is only true in relatively small residential areas in Chandler, AZ, where there is little traffic. For areas that are more congested, Waymo still utilizes safety drivers. It’s just not Waymo, either. According to the publication, even GM Cruise’s self-driving Chevy Bolts are regularly taken over by safety drivers in their operations.
For now, Waymo is continuing its attempt at making its self-driving cars even better, highlighting its focus on safety and its experience on the road in a statement to The Information.
“As the only company with a fleet of fully self-driving cars on public roads today, safety continues to be our highest priority. The vehicles are continually learning, and we’ve developed robust testing and validation processes that will allow us to safely expand our vehicles’ driverless capabilities over time,” a Waymo spokesperson said.
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Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
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Tesla announced its Spring 2026 software update, and it’s the most feature-dense seasonal release the company has put out. The update covers twelve named changes spanning FSD, voice AI, safety lighting, dashcam storage, and pet display customization, among other things.
The centerpiece for owners with AI4 hardware is a redesigned Self-Driving app. The new interface lets owners subscribe to Full Self-Driving with a single tap and view ongoing FSD usage stats directly in the vehicle.
Grok gets its biggest in-car upgrade yet. The update adds a “Hey Grok” hands-free wake word along with location-based reminders, so a driver can now say “remind me to pick up groceries when I get home” without touching the screen. Grok first arrived in vehicles in July 2025, but each update has pushed it closer to genuine daily utility. Musk framed the broader vision clearly at Davos in January, saying Tesla is “really moving into a future that is based on autonomy.”
On safety, the update introduces enhanced blind spot warning lights that integrate directly with the cabin’s ambient lighting, building on the blind spot door warning that arrived in update 2026.8.
Dog Mode has been renamed Pet Mode and now lets owners choose a dog, cat, or hedgehog icon and add their pet’s name to the display.
Dashcam retention now extends up to 24 hours, up from the previous one-hour rolling loop, with a permanent save option for any clip. Weather maps now show rain and snow with better color differentiation and include the past hour of precipitation data along the route.
Tesla has now established a clear rhythm of two major OTA pushes per year. As with last year’s Spring update, that cycle started taking shape in 2025 with adaptive headlights and trunk customization. The 2025 Holiday Update then added Grok to the vehicle for the first time. This Spring follows that structure: the Holiday update introduces new architecture, and the Spring update broadens it across the fleet.
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Two notable features still did not make it. IFTTT automations, which launched in China earlier this year, were held back from this North American release for unknown reasons, and Apple CarPlay remains absent, reportedly still delayed by iOS 26 and Apple Maps compatibility issues.
Below is the full list of feature updates released by Tesla.
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 13, 2026
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