Release notes for Tesla’s holiday software update were shared earlier this month, including the addition of the High Fidelity Park Assist feature. Some have since shared footage of the feature in action, showing how it works in parking lots and garages as users evaluate its usefulness when trying to park.
Tesla’s holiday update release notes were shared on X earlier this month, where the company first mentioned the new High Fidelity Park Assist mode. Tesla owner Ryan Hoffman, along with others, have shared videos of the feature on X, including one taken in a Supercharger lot on Saturday.
As can be seen in the video, the activated High Fidelity Park Assist mode shows a similar view to the highly requested Birds Eye 360-degree visualization. Hoffman says he drives a 2023 Model 3 RWD with HW3 and the Ryzen chip, meaning the car doesn’t have Ultrasonic Sensors (USS) and utilizes just Tesla Vision.
The video is taken at a Supercharger station, where Hoffman backs into a charging spot. Behind the visualization of the car, you can see an orange and yellow zone, signifying the vehicle’s close proximity to the charging pile. The top-down visualization shows that it recognizes the charging stalls as well as the parking lines on the ground, making it easy to back into the spot without the car ending up crooked.
He also shared a short video of what it looks like to back into the spot, including the actual rear camera’s video footage and the High Fidelity Park Assist view, and calling the feature a “game changer” for parking.
Here’s a short video of what it looked like to reverse into the spot. The lines for each parking spot are very handy… it’s a game changer for parking. pic.twitter.com/47BDBbXw7z
— Ryan Hoffman (@tekmaven) December 16, 2023
Others have shared similar footage of High Fidelity Park Assist, as many have wondered how exactly the feature is activated when being used in a parking lot. According to X user EVBaymax, the feature appears to engage when there is a clearly defined object in front of or around the car, and when users shift into reverse in a parking lot. Still, the current version seems to lack the ability to engage when driving forward, although it probably should have this ability.
In his videos of the feature, you can see the visualization switch on from the regular Autopilot view when reversing in the parking lot, and he also says that speeding up to around 15-20 mph makes the visualization disappear again. He goes on to call the feature “surprisingly accurate” and “definitely helpful,” and he also includes footage using it in a darker, in-garage environment.
Here’s what the switch from Autopilot visualizations to High-Fidelity Park Assist looks like in a parking lot pic.twitter.com/xtx8BylI0W
— kEV (@EVBaymax) December 16, 2023
You can see in the above videos that the feature still requires some prodding to work as desired, though once it’s engaged, it looks to be pretty useful. It does, however, appear to fill the need that many have requested with Birds Eye, 360-degree views, as the top-down visualizer makes it especially easy to see where the vehicle is in relation to other cars, parking lines, and more when parking.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently said that the company’s cars will eventually offer a convenient “Tap to Park” feature, in which the vehicle will identify open parking spots and let drivers select on-screen which to use, then letting the driver get out and allow the car to park itself in the selected space. Still, many are awaiting updates like Tesla’s Actually Smart Summon and the automaker only reintroduced its Vision-based Park Assist earlier this year.
Tesla Model 3 Highland owner’s manual confirms Auto Shift out of Park feature
What are your thoughts? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send your tips to us at tips@teslarati.com.
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.
Elon Musk
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla’s Optimus factory in Texas targets 10 million robots yearly, with 5.2 million square feet under construction.
Tesla’s Q1 2026 Update Letter, released today, confirms that first generation Optimus production lines are now well underway at its Fremont, California factory, with a pilot line targeting one million robots per year to start. Of bigger note is a shared aerial image of a large piece of land adjacent to Gigafactory Texas, that Tesla has prominently labeled “Optimus factory site preparation.”
Permit documents show Tesla is seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by the end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of $5 billion to $10 billion. The longer term production target for that facility is 10 million Optimus units per year. Giga Texas already sits on 2,500 acres with over 10 million square feet of existing factory floor, and the North Campus expansion is being built to support multiple projects, including the dedicated Optimus factory, the Terafab chip fabrication facility (a joint Tesla/SpaceX/xAI venture), a Cybercab test track, road infrastructure, and supporting facilities.
Credit: TESLA
Texas makes strategic sense beyond the existing infrastructure. The state’s tax structure, lower labor costs relative to California, and the proximity to Tesla’s AI training cluster Cortex 1 and 2, both located at Giga Texas and now totaling over 230,000 H100 equivalent GPUs, means the Optimus software stack and the factory producing the hardware will share the same campus. Tesla’s Q1 report also confirmed completion of the AI5 chip tape out in April, the inference processor designed specifically to power Optimus units in the field.
As Teslarati reported, the Texas facility is intended to house Optimus V4 production at full scale. Musk told the World Economic Forum in January that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000, stating, “I think everyone on earth is going to have one and want one.” He has previously pegged long term demand for general purpose humanoid robots at over 20 billion units globally, citing both consumer and industrial use cases.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a miss on vehicle deliveries for the first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles and building 408,386 cars during the three-month span.
As Tesla transitions more toward AI and sees itself as less of a car company, expectations for deliveries will begin to become less of a central point in the consensus of how the quarter is perceived.
Nevertheless, Tesla is leaning on its strong foundation as a car company to carry forward its AI ambitions. The first quarter is a good ground layer for the rest of the year.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings Results
Tesla’s Earnings Results are as follows:
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.41 Reported vs. $0.36 Expected
- Revenues – $22.387 billion vs. $22.35 billion Expected
- Free Cash Flow – $1.444 billion
- Profit – $4.72 billion
Tesla beat analyst expectations, so it will be interesting to see how the stock responds. IN the past, we’ve seen Tesla beat analyst expectations considerably, followed by a sharp drop in stock price.
On the same token, we’ve seen Tesla miss and the stock price go up the following trading session.
Tesla will hold its Q1 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q1 2026 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT https://t.co/pkYIaGJ32y
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 22, 2026
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
