Firmware
Tesla short-sellers up in arms over latest Autopilot Traffic Light update
Since the early days of the original Roadster, Tesla has been a company that warrants equal amounts of optimism and pessimism. As the company grew and remained resilient, it also started gaining a lot of sincere support from enthusiasts and outright hate from critics. Examples of the latter have become particularly evident following the release of Autopilot’s Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control feature.
Tesla’s Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control has only started rolling out to the company’s fleet of eligible vehicles. The feature’s wide release is pretty much identical to the iteration rolled out to members of Tesla’s Early Access Program. This meant that cars would stop when a stoplight is encountered, regardless of what light is on. If the green light is on, drivers are required to push down the gear selector or press on the accelerator to instruct the vehicle to move forward.
As could be seen in real-world demonstrations of the feature, Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control works well provided that drivers are paying full attention to the road. Tesla warns drivers of stop signs ahead, which gives owners enough time to instruct their cars to move forward. As with all of Tesla’s other driver-assist features like Navigate on Autopilot, Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control is bound to get better after receiving updates. Tesla mentioned this in the feature’s Release Notes: “Over time, as we learn from the fleet, the feature will control more naturally,” Tesla wrote.
Such a system does not sit well with Tesla’s harshest critics on social media. Tesla and Elon Musk attracts avid fans and rabid critics, and some have actually done dangerous things in the past, all in the name of the anti-Tesla cause. It is then unsurprising to see Tesla critics up in arms following the release of Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control. The criticisms were varied. Some argued that the feature is fraudulent since it does not work as advertised. Others stated that it was extremely dangerous since Tesla drivers will be stopping at green lights now. Amidst all these, there are some that take things a bit farther.
Tesla critic and proud TSLAQ member @daltonnyuphilo1, for one, stated that with such a dangerous feature being deployed on the road today, it is now a matter of moral obligation to sabotage Tesla’s efforts. “Sabotaging Tesla self-driving cars so that they no longer can take the road is a moral obligation,” he wrote, while also suggesting that Teslas should be “destroyed or sequestered completely.” Strangely enough, this is not the first time Tesla critics and short-sellers promoted such dangerous ideas.
During the lead up to Tesla’s Autonomy Day last year, reports were abounding that the electric car maker was planning on holding a demonstration of its full self-driving system. In response, a number of Tesla critics and short-sellers proposed that TSLAQ members try to crash the company’s FSD test car to see if it really is prepared for real-world scenarios. Disturbingly enough, avid TSLAQ member and California resident Randeep Hothi seemed to have taken the suggestions to heart, stalking Tesla employees who were testing FSD on the road in a Model 3 test car.
Just as suggested by short-sellers and critics, Hothi performed several maneuvers in his Honda Accord that were deemed threatening by the Tesla employees. In one instance, Hothi drove so erratically and swerved so close to the Model 3 test car that the Tesla staff actually called the police to report the incident.
A look at forums dedicated to Tesla critics and Twitter threads populated by short-sellers shows something very interesting. Despite the irony in the entire situation, critics seem to be able to reconcile the allegations that Tesla’s Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control is nothing but a fake feature propagated by Elon Musk and AI Director Andrej Karpathy, together with the accusations that the function (which should not exist because it’s fake) is too dangerous and must be taken off the road. Is it possible that this is a case of mental gymnastics? Perhaps, but we’d have to take some time to see.
In the meantime, one can simply hope that no Tesla critic actually follows through with any sabotaging plans. That will likely result in legal action, or worse, injuries on the road.
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.
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.
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
It appears that Tesla may be preparing to roll out some subscription-based services soon. Based on the observations of a Wales-based Model 3 owner who performed some reverse-engineering on the Tesla mobile app, it seems that the electric car maker has added a new “Subscribe” option beside the “Buy” option within the “Upgrades” tab, at least behind the scenes.
A screenshot of the new option was posted in the r/TeslaMotors subreddit, and while the Tesla owner in question, u/Callump01, admitted that the screenshot looks like something that could be easily fabricated, he did submit proof of his reverse-engineering to the community’s moderators. The moderators of the r/TeslaMotors subreddit confirmed the legitimacy of the Model 3 owner’s work, further suggesting that subscription options may indeed be coming to Tesla owners soon.
Did some reverse engineering on the app and Tesla looks to be preparing for subscriptions? from r/teslamotors
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite has been heavily speculated to be offered as a subscription option, similar to the company’s Premium Connectivity feature. And back in April, noted Tesla hacker @greentheonly stated that the company’s vehicles already had the source codes for a pay-as-you-go subscription model. The Tesla hacker suggested then that Tesla would likely release such a feature by the end of the year — something that Elon Musk also suggested in the first-quarter earnings call. “I think we will offer Full Self-Driving as a subscription service, but it will be probably towards the end of this year,” Musk stated.
While the signs for an upcoming FSD subscription option seem to be getting more and more prominent as the year approaches its final quarter, the details for such a feature are still quite slim. Pricing for FSD subscriptions, for example, have not been teased by Elon Musk yet, though he has stated on Twitter that purchasing the suite upfront would be more worth it in the long term. References to the feature in the vehicles’ source code, and now in the Tesla mobile app, also listed no references to pricing.
The idea of FSD subscriptions could prove quite popular among electric car owners, especially since it would allow budget-conscious customers to make the most out of the company’s driver-assist and self-driving systems without committing to the features’ full price. The current price of the Full Self-Driving suite is no joke, after all, being listed at $8,000 on top of a vehicle’s cost. By offering subscriptions to features like Navigate on Autopilot with automatic lane changes, owners could gain access to advanced functions only as they are needed.
Elon Musk, for his part, has explained that ultimately, he still believes that purchasing the Full Self-Driving suite outright provides the most value to customers, as it is an investment that would pay off in the future. “I should say, it will still make sense to buy FSD as an option as in our view, buying FSD is an investment in the future. And we are confident that it is an investment that will pay off to the consumer – to the benefit of the consumer.” Musk said.
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
