Firmware
Tesla’s HW3 upgrade next year will usher in Full Self-Driving, improved Neural Net computing abilities
Tesla’s recently held Q3 2018 earnings call provided several updates on the company’s ongoing Hardware 3 development, which would help its fleet of electric cars achieve Full Self-Driving capabilities in the future. According to the company’s executives, work on the custom hardware is continuing, and prototypes of HW3 have already been installed on test units of the Model S, X, and 3.
The updates on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving plans and the development of the third version of Autopilot hardware were announced during the opening minutes of the earnings call. Pete Bannon, who heads the team developing the Tesla’s custom AI chip, noted that the company would be building a manufacturing line for HW3, emphasizing the vertical integration strategy that has become a trademark of the electric car maker.
Bannon also stated that development on the third-generation hardware saw notable progress in the quarter. The qualification of the chip and board, for one, as well as the qualification of its manufacturing lines, were conducted in Q3. Test versions of Model S, Model X, and Model 3 vehicles equipped with Hardware 3 have also been completed to validate the homegrown hardware.
Ultimately, Tesla’s progress on its Autopilot suite comes amidst the company’s focus in the development and eventual rollout of its Full Self-Driving suite, which is expected to happen in the second quarter of 2019. During the earnings call, Elon Musk noted that HW3 should provide Tesla’s electric cars with a 1000% improvement in processing capability compared to current hardware. Musk also reiterated that the cost of HW3 would be identical to HW2, despite a tenfold improvement in performance.
“[It’s] very important to emphasize that the only thing that needs to change between a car that’s produced today and a car that’s going to be produced in the second quarter of next year is probably the autopilot computer. This is a simply change that takes about half an hour to upgrade the computer. Anyone will be able to upgrade their car to Full Self-Driving capability with a simple service visit. Basically anything made in the last two years will be upgradable to Full Self-Driving. So its better important to emphasize that there’s no need to wait until that comes out because its just a very simple plug and play change to get to Full Self-Driving. Anyone who has made for Full Self-Driving option will get it done for free. It really ends up being a discount on future capability.”
Tesla Director of Artificial Intelligence Andrej Karpathy also provided some details on the improvements of the company’s neural networks, which have been growing steadily as the size of the fleet increases. The AI director noted that the upcoming hardware would be pivotal in supporting the growing demands of Tesla’s ever-growing neural net.
“The team is incredibly excited about the upcoming upgrade for the Autopilot computer. This upgrade allows us to not just run the current neural networks faster, but more importantly, it would allow us to deploy much larger computational and more expansive networks to the fleet. The reason this is important is that it is a common finding in the industry that as you make the networks bigger, the accuracy of their prediction increases with the added capacity. Now we’re currently at a place where we’ve trained large networks that work very well, but are not able to deploy them to the fleet due to computational constraints. So all of these will change with the next iteration of the hardware, and it’s a massive step improvement in computing capability, and the team is incredibly excited to get these networks out there.”
As Tesla prepares for the rollout of Hardware 3, the company is the also setting the stage of the release of its most advanced iteration of Autopilot to date. During the official release of V9, Tesla opted to hold back Navigate on Autopilot, a feature that allows vehicles to automatically change lanes, handle forks in the road, and conduct on-ramp and off-ramp maneuvers. Stewart Bowers, Tesla’ VP for Engineering, described the upcoming feature in the Q3 earnings call.
“We will soon roll out the team’s most advanced autopilot ever, Navigate on Autopilot. In our last release we watched a new set of neural networks that combined together provide a view of everything happening in and out of the car. With Navigate on Autopilot, we’ll use information to understand exactly where the car is on the highway system and to automatically change lanes, handle forks, and take high-curvature exits to follow a map route. Initially it will require drivers to confirm lane changes using the turn signal before the car moves into an adjacent lane. Future versions will allow customers to waive the confirmation requirements if they choose to.
“One area that I’m personally really excited to build on in this improvement is active safety. With the advancement of neural network covering 360 views around our car we can provide a level of constant vigilance that humans just can’t. Ultimately, this will allow us to warn and even intervene for an enormous percentage of modern accidents and to ship these improvements as software upgrades to our existing customers. By bringing out more cameras around the car, we can detect things as they come toward us not just directly in front of us.”
Initial demos of Navigate on Autopilot from members of Tesla’s early access program have teased some of the capabilities of Navigate on Autopilot, which includes Elon Musk’s fondly-named “Mad Max” setting, which determines the aggressiveness of the electric car when changing lanes and maneuvering around traffic. As could be seen in videos of the feature, though, even Tesla’s Mad Max setting is incredibly careful on the road, initiating overtaking maneuvers only when it is safe.
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.
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