Firmware
Tesla’s $35k base Model 3 and HW3 upgrade will usher in Elon Musk’s ride-sharing vision
Elon Musk recently announced on Twitter that in about 6 months, all cars produced by Tesla would be equipped with upgraded hardware, which includes a custom chip that’s specifically designed for autonomous driving. With HW3 installed on all its vehicles, even the company’s entry-level vehicle – the $35,000 base Model 3 – would have the potential of becoming a full self-driving car in the future.
Among the reasons behind the Model 3’s long waiting list is the electric sedan’s starting price of $35,000. At such a price point, the base Model 3 could become a true fossil fuel car killer, costing just a hair higher than the top-of-the-line Toyota Camry XSE V6, which is priced at $34,950. Add the advantages of always leaving the house with a “full tank” thanks to home charging solutions and low maintenance costs, and the base Model 3 becomes an even more attractive vehicle.
Back in August, Worm Capital analysts Eric Markowitz and Dan Crowley published a report after an extensive tour of Gigafactory 1. During the analysts’ tour, Tesla’s head of investor relations Martin Viecha reportedly noted that production of the Model 3 in Standard trim would start sometime in the “next 8 months.” Considering Viecha’s timeframe, it seems safe to infer that by April or May 2019, the $35,000 Model 3 would be in production.
Keeping Elon Musk’s estimated timeline for the rollout of Tesla’s HW3 in mind, the $35,000 Model 3’s production could very well hit its stride just as the company is introducing HW3 to its fleet. These developments, ultimately, could pave the way for the eventual creation of Elon Musk’s vision of an autonomous ride-sharing service – the Tesla’s Network.
The Tesla Network was mentioned by Musk back in 2016 when he published his Master Plan, Part Deux. Musk suggested then that Tesla owners can have their vehicles pay for themselves by allowing them to be used in the Tesla Network. The CEO further noted that Tesla would operate its own fleet of autonomous cars in cities, to ensure that commuters can always hail a ride when needed. Musk teased some ideas for the Tesla Network earlier this year during the Q1 2018 earnings call as well, when he described the system as similar to a “robo-Lyft or robo-Uber.”
“For the whole sort of system to work, you need all the pieces in place. You need to have full autonomy, full 4 or 5, and obviously a lot of cars in the road, and then build the software infrastructure behind that to enable shared autonomy, so to help enable people to share their cars and be able to offer their cars as effectively, kind of a robo-Lyft or robo-Uber. It’s sort of like a combination of Uber, Lyft and Airbnb type of thing, where you can own your car and have a higher percent usage of an autonomous electric car. You can say it’s available generally to anyone who wants to use it when you’re not using it. You can recall it at will. You can restrict usage to only friends and family or only users who are 5-star.”
A base Model 3 equipped with Autopilot and Full Self-Driving would fit perfectly in this scenario. Such a vehicle, after all, is equipped with 220 miles of range per charge, which should prove adequate for intracity travel. An investment of around $43,000 (comprised of $35,000 for the car, $5,000 Autopilot, and $3,000 for Full Self-Driving), after all, could be deemed justifiable by numerous owners who wish to acquire a vehicle that can generate income on its own. Tesla’s potential as a provider of autonomous ride-hailing services has been pointed out as a huge income opportunity by ARK Invest CIO and founder Cathie Wood, whose firm currently has a long-term price target of $4,000 per share on Tesla stock. Explaining her estimates in a letter to Elon Musk earlier this year, Wood noted that Tesla is poised to be a leader in the autonomous ride-sharing market.
“Our $4,000 price target assumes that Tesla evolves from a hardware manufacturer with 19% gross margins to a company generating most of its profits from Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), a business that we believe will enjoy 80% gross margins. In the $4,000 scenario, our assumptions are conservative: we incorporate profits only from cars and certain autonomous taxi networks, not from trucks, drones, utility-scale energy storage, or the MaaS opportunity in China.”
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ARK Invest’s forecasts for Tesla in the autonomous ride-sharing market is not farfetched. While self-driving taxis are only being utilized in incredibly limited and controlled areas today, Wall Street has taken notice of the opportunity offered by the emerging industry. In August alone, Morgan Stanley analysts led by Brian Nowak stated that Waymo, Google’s self-driving unit, could be worth $175 billion, up $100 billion from the bank’s initial estimates. Nowak listed three income streams that justify Waymo’s $175 billion valuation – autonomous taxis, estimated to be worth $80 billion, logistics services through self-driving vehicles that could be worth $90 billion, and $7 billion from software licensing. The potential of Waymo’s autonomous cars has also been given a valuation of $119 billion by Mark Mahaney of RBC Capital Markets, and $135 billion by Eric Sheridan of UBS.
As Elon Musk stated earlier this year, Tesla would have to achieve Level 4 of 5 autonomy before the company could introduce the Tesla Network. That said, Tesla seems to be making moves in the development of self-driving technology. Near the end of the third quarter, for one, a leaked email from Elon Musk to Tesla’s employees revealed that the electric car maker is set to conduct an incentivized beta test program for its Full Self-Driving suite, where employees will receive free Autopilot, FSD, and PUP on their vehicles provided that they share 300 to 400 hours of real-world driving feedback.
Ultimately, it might still take years before regulators approve the operation of an autonomous ride-sharing service. As soon as it does, though, Tesla would likely be ready to pounce on the market, powered by HW3 and a fleet of base Model 3.
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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