Firmware
Elon Musk explains why Tesla is using custom-built hardware for Full Self-Driving
ARK Invest founder and CIO Cathie Wood and analyst Tasha Keeney featured Elon Musk in a recent episode of the firm’s weekly For Your Innovation podcast, where the Tesla CEO explained the rationale behind the electric car maker’s decision to develop a custom-built hardware solution for future Autopilot improvements and Full Self-Driving features.
During his conversation with the ARK Invest CIO and analyst, Musk reiterated a point he made last year, stating that everyone who purchased Full Self-Driving would be getting Tesla’s Hardware 3 upgrade for free. Musk also explained that as neural networks used for Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features get more advanced, it becomes more challenging to optimize software according to a given hardware’s limitations — something that Tesla is already employing in its current NVIDIA hardware. Musk was ultimately optimistic about the improvements offered by Hardware 3, stating that the custom-built solution has not “tapped out” yet despite intensive tests.
“If you want to have a complex neural network, you need to have a combination of software and hardware. And your software needs to be that much better in order to compensate for hardware’s (limitations). Sort of like, you have video games and how they’ve progressed — it’s a combination of software and hardware. No amount of clever software could produce a video game on old hardware that you have today. It doesn’t matter, you know. It’s the same thing with neural nets.
“So right now, we can process on the order of 100 frames a second and we really need to do a lot of work in terms of cropping the frames, and sort of bending the pixels, and not going to full resolution on all cameras, that kind of thing with the current hardware. We’re at full frames, full resolution with the Tesla hardware. All cameras, at full resolution, full frames, and it still hasn’t tapped out.”
Echoing Tesla’s statement back in 2016, Musk added that he believes Full Self-Driving is still attainable with the current NVIDIA hardware installed on the company’s electric cars, though the company would have to employ “tricks” to effectively manage the hardware’s computing power. Nevertheless, Musk maintained his point that autonomous driving systems would likely improve safety on the road. For example, even if Tesla ends up using its NVIDIA hardware for autonomous driving, the results would still be safer than a human driver.
“I do think that we can achieve full autonomy with the NVIDIA hardware, but it’s a much harder software problem. So really, you have to try to budget your compute and do all sorts of tricks to manage how you use your compute. So it’s a harder software problem. With hardware that’s 2,000% better, you don’t have to do that constant budgeting, and so the software problem is much easier. So I think with the current hardware and a lot of effort, we could get to Full Self Driving with maybe being like 50-100% safer than a person, but with Hardware 3, I think it’s probably like a thousand percent safer.”
Elon Musk also added that Tesla’s rollout of its upcoming Full Self-Driving features would ultimately be up to regulators. In this sense, Musk stated that he believes regulators would likely understand the case for autonomous driving and its advantages, provided that Tesla shows ample data. Considering the data that Tesla has gathered so far, Musk is quite optimistic.
-
“I think they will understand data, so if we show you know, billions of miles with a given safety level, then they will appreciate that. It’s not like saying, ‘Hey, we have this really fast computer and everything’s gonna work.’ It’s like, ‘Well, you know, that’s just a statement.’ But if you got hard data, billions of miles, and you could show the accident rates and intervention rates, and that it’s essentially unsafe if you don’t have Autopilot on, which I think is really unequivocal at this point. No matter how you slice the data, it is unequivocal at this point that it’s safer to have Autopilot on.”
It should be noted that Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot is not an autonomous driving suite. Nevertheless, the driver-assist feature is already a notable safety system. In Q4 2018 alone, Tesla’s Quarterly Vehicle Safety Report noted that the company registered one accident for every 2.91 million miles driven while Autopilot was engaged, while one accident was recorded for every 1.58 million miles driven while Autopilot was deactivated. In comparison, the NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States, there is an automobile crash every 436,000 miles.
Elon Musk’s recent segment in ARK Invest’s FYI podcast could be accessed here.
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.
-
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
Tesla headlights cause recall of over 20,000 Model 3 and Model Y
Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking
