News
Tesla Model 3 gets Full Self-Driving HW3 upgrade: Full details with lessons learned
True to Elon Musk’s expectations on Twitter last month, it appears that Tesla is now looking to ramp Hardware 3 retrofits for owners who purchased the Full Self-Driving suite and whose cars are equipped with HW2 or HW2.5. A recent account involving a Tesla owner-enthusiast’s experience with her Model 3’s HW3 upgrade shows that there are still some areas in the retrofit process that can be improved.
Tesla Model 3 owner-enthusiast TeslaJoy was looking to do a video on the company’s recent voice command update when she noticed that the feature on her vehicle was not working properly. This prompted her to make an appointment with Tesla to get her car checked in and fixed. During the troubleshooting process, she inquired if a possible HW3 retrofit could be done to her vehicle as well. Fortunately, a HW3 unit was available for her Model 3, and so, a rather eventful upgrade process began.
Tesla Service Centers currently receive batches of HW3 units from the electric car maker, and each unit is assigned to a specific VIN. This is the reason why for now, at least, owners are not advised to call Tesla to schedule a HW3 retrofit. Fortunately for Joy, the Tesla Service Center opted to perform the HW3 upgrade at the same time as her appointment, since she would need to bring her Model 3 back for a retrofit anyway.
Since the retrofit was estimated to take around 5 hours, Tesla asked the Model 3 owner to leave her car for the day and claim it the next business day. That was December 31, which meant that the vehicle should be ready the day after New Year’s. As it would turn out, the Service Center would end up encountering difficulties installing the necessary firmware on Joy’s Model 3. This resulted in delays, which culminated in the vehicle’s HW3 retrofit being completed on January 5, 2020, over five days after the Model 3 owner turned in her car.
Hardware 3 retrofits are available for owners who have purchased Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite, and whose cars are still equipped with the company’s HW2 and HW2.5 units. With Hardware 3 installed, owners will be able to utilize the full suite of FSD capabilities that the company is rolling out today. One of these is the FSD preview that Tesla rolled out for the holidays, as well as features like traffic cone recognition.
True to Elon Musk’s words on Twitter, the HW3 retrofit is free for owners who have purchased the company’s FSD suite. Joy, for her part, was able to get FSD last March at a discounted price of $2,000 on top of her Enhanced Autopilot. FSD currently costs $7,000 when it is included in a new vehicle’s order.
Based on Joy’s experience, it appears that owners should expect to wait some time for their vehicles are set to be retrofitted. In the Model 3 owner’s case, her car’s upgrade ended up taking days since the first HW3 kit that was installed did not function properly. This resulted in the vehicle essentially getting retrofitted twice, causing delays. Tesla did give Joy a $500 Uber voucher due to the absence of loaner vehicles, but the whole experience showed notable points for improvement nonetheless.
In a way, TeslaJoy‘s experience with her Model 3’s HW3 retrofit stands in stark contrast with the experiences of Model S owner Sofiaan Fraval, whose car was upgraded by a Service Center during a voluntary HEPA replacement. In Fraval’s case, his Model S was fully retrofitted within a matter of hours, and it was calibrated in pretty much the same day. A Tesla Model S owner who runs the Electric Dreams YouTube channel also received his vehicle’s HW3 retrofit without any issues, and it was performed by a mobile technician, not a Service Center.
In the Electric Dreams host’s case, the entire HW3 retrofit was conducted from the convenience of his home, with a mobile service tech coming over in the morning, taking an hour and a half for the installation to be completed, and an additional two hours for the necessary firmware to be loaded onto the vehicle. This is in line with Elon Musk’s previous statement on Twitter, where he stated that HW3 retrofits should be possible through Tesla’s mobile service fleet.
Overall, there seems to be a variance with regards to the experience of owners when getting their vehicles retrofitted with Tesla’s FSD computer. Some owners seem to be experiencing a seamless, painless process, while some, like Joy, end up having to test their patience. Hopefully, as Tesla ramps its HW3 retrofits this quarter, the company could work in optimizing its upgrade process, so there are more experiences like the Electric Dreams host’s, and less like TeslaJoy‘s.
Watch TeslaJoy‘s HW3 experience in the video below.
News
Tesla Roadster livestream: everything Tesla has revealed before Thursday night
Tesla will stream the Roadster event Thursday at 7:55 p.m. Central. Here is what’s known.
Tesla will stream its next generation Roadster event live this Thursday, October 15, at 7:55 p.m. Central, according to a post from the official Tesla account shared late Monday. Texas is on daylight time, and outlets have read the post as local Central time, which puts the Tesla Roadster livestream at 8:55 p.m. Eastern and 5:55 p.m. Pacific. The stream is expected on Tesla’s X account, where the announcement went up.
This is the second date for the event. Tesla posted a “Go for launch” image on September 12 that set the unveil for October 1, and invitations sent to reservation holders placed it in Waco, Texas, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern, for guests 21 and older with tickets that could not be transferred. Until this week, Tesla had not said the event would be broadcast at all.
Roadster event streaming live this Thursday at 7:55pm CST https://t.co/AbsmpVucui
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 14, 2026
On September 28, Tesla moved the event to October 15, citing severe weather and the fact that the demo can only be held outdoors. Elon Musk then said the cause was high winds, a comment that pushed speculation that the car will leave the ground on stage.
The event will be held in Waco, which sits close to SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site, where the FAA closed airspace up to 10,000 feet from September 18 through October 2 for the original date. Another restriction covering Wednesday, October 14, has been reported near the site, which could mean a rehearsal, though that is unconfirmed.
What Tesla will actually show comes from speculative reports that the vehicle will be unmanned, and spectators will be kept several hundred yards back for safety. A SpaceX package is reportedly code named A71, and linked to what Musk has hinted at in the past – thrusters that could bring 0 to 60 mph down to about one second, compared with the 1.9 seconds quoted for the base car in 2017. Tesla also closed its Semi event with a Roadster teaser suggesting a design that looks different from the original prototype, and has said the event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets.
The 2017 figures remain the only official ones: 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, and prices of $200,000 for the base car and $250,000 for the Founders Series. Tesla reopened reservations last month with a $5,000 card payment followed by a $45,000 wire within ten days, and the deposit is refundable. Production is expected at Giga Texas in 2027 or 2028.
Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, six days after the stream, so whatever price or timeline appears Thursday night will land just ahead of that call.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan
SpaceXSI merges Grok, Cursor, and X Premium into one plan, raising questions for Tesla owners.
SpaceX Super Intelligence has rolled out The X Subscription, a single plan that combines Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium.
There are five levels, including a free plan that includes daily Grok access and a starter allowance for Cursor’s coding agents. Plus is $8 per month, Premium is $30, Super is $100, and Ultra is $200. Usage scales as you move up, with Premium offering four times the Plus allowance, Super 15 times, and Ultra 50 times. Annual billing brings the prices down a bit further, with Premium at $300 per year.
We’ve unified plans across Grok, Cursor, and X Premium.
Introducing The X Subscription. https://t.co/SvkrVvBa0p
— SpaceX Super Intelligence (@SpaceXSI) October 12, 2026
The $30 Premium tier is where SpaceXSI says it packs the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+, which previously added up to $90 per month. Grok Bot, the agent that handles tasks like ordering food or managing a calendar, is included from Premium upward but not on Plus. Paid plans share one weekly usage pool across Grok and Cursor, and each plan includes at least twice the coding usage of the comparable Cursor plan. Third party models in Cursor remain available on Premium and above, but they are billed separately at API list prices.
That last detail matters because of what has happened around Cursor this year. SpaceX exercised its option to buy the company for $60 billion in June, and the deal closed in August. Weeks later, OpenAI said it will cut Cursor’s access to its models on November 12. Bundling Cursor with Grok usage gives SpaceXSI a reason to steer developers toward its own models.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
For Tesla owners, the connection is Grok Bot. Tesla brought it into its vehicles last month, and at that point access inside the car was limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers. Grok Bot is now enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet. Neither SpaceXSI nor Tesla has said how the new plans change inside the car access for owners, or whether a $30 Premium subscription now covers Grok Bot in a personal Tesla. That is the question owners will want answered first.
The company is also changing its name along the way. The rollout follows the rebrand Musk announced on October 4, when he said SpaceXAI would become SpaceXSI, and the plan page now carries that branding.
The X Subscription is available to new customers starting now, and SpaceXSI says it will reach everyone globally over the next few days. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor, and X Premium subscribers do not have to switch. The option to move will appear gradually in billing settings, with a prorated refund for the unused time on the old plan. Switching is permanent once the accounts are unified, and old plans are closed to new sign ups.
Energy
Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows
Taiwan’s Apollo Power orders 260 Tesla Megapacks, betting AI data centers will need more electricity.
A Taiwanese power company has ordered 260 Tesla Megapack 2XL units, roughly 1GWh of storage, betting that electricity rather than chips will decide how fast AI data centers come online. Apollo Power signed the contract with Tesla’s Taiwan energy arm on October 8, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan stock exchange.
The filing says the units are meant for behind the meter storage and resilient grid projects, with delivery in batches from the end of 2027 and sites operating in 2028. Apollo and Tesla did not disclose a price, citing a confidentiality agreement. Apollo plans to pay for the equipment through a cash capital increase and bank financing, and it noted the purchase is not revenue and does not mean it holds firm orders from its partners.
Biggo reported that only about 33 units are under signed customer contracts, with roughly 150 more in negotiation. The same report put total project investment near NT$130 billion, but that figure includes installation work, with the equipment itself making up about 40 to 50 percent. In other words, a large share of this order is Apollo reserving supply ahead of demand. Apollo’s chairman told local media global large storage supply is tight, which is why the company locked in the units early, according to Yahoo Taiwan Finance.
Apollo also launched an AI data center and grid resilience alliance with Phison, Gigabyte and Shihlin Electric. The pitch rests on a pilot at Phison’s Zhunan plant, where Apollo and Tesla Energy Taiwan installed grid forming Megapack 2XLs in June. Tesla Energy Taiwan general manager Sun Hsiao-Han said the project went from demo to 1GWh in four months, and that Tesla Energy has deployed more than 50GWh worldwide.
Taiwan’s cabinet has approved amendments that would require large energy users to install their own generation and storage, which gives enterprise storage a regulatory tailwind.
The deal fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked. Tesla’s Megablock targets 1GWh commissioned in 20 business days, a pitch aimed squarely at fast moving data center builds. Megapacks already back xAI’s Colossus in Memphis and a 400MW AI campus in Brazil. Sun Media adds that Megapack 2XL was named among the first products in Nvidia’s DSX Ready qualification for battery storage in AI factories.
Deliveries are more than a year away, so the real test is how much of that 260 unit order turns into signed customer contracts.
Tesla Roadster livestream: everything Tesla has revealed before Thursday night
SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan
Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded
