{"id":82710,"date":"2025-06-02T03:03:26","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T07:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=82710"},"modified":"2025-06-02T03:03:26","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T07:03:26","slug":"tesla-has-no-plan-for-hw3-owners-4-months-after-admitting-it-wont-support-self-driving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=82710","title":{"rendered":"Tesla has no plan for HW3 owners 4 months after admitting it won’t support self-driving"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\"Tesla<\/figure>\n

Tesla still has no plan to make things right for millions of car owners with its \u2018HW3\u2019 system, more than four months after it finally admitted that the hardware won\u2019t support self-driving.<\/p>\n

At this point, the automaker is just hoping they buy new cars.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We are approaching the 10th anniversary of Tesla\u2019s promise and sale of self-driving capability that still doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

The Tesla FSD Timeline<\/h2>\n

In 2016, Tesla announced that all vehicles produced thereafter would become capable of \u201cFull Self-Driving\u201d with future software updates.<\/p>\n

\tAdvertisement – scroll for more content<\/span><\/p>\n

At that time, Tesla was producing its vehicles with a new self-driving hardware suite called \u201cHW2.5\u201d \u2013 consisting of cameras, a radar, and a self-driving computer.<\/p>\n

CEO Elon Musk warned at the time that the system might need an eventual computer upgrade to achieve full self-driving capability, which he said Tesla would provide for free.<\/p>\n

In March 2019, Tesla began building cars with a new \u201cHW3\u201d computer and started upgrading HW2.5 cars to the new system.<\/p>\n

In early 2023, Tesla still hadn\u2019t delivered on its self-driving promises, but it started producing new cars with a new HW4 suite, which included a much more powerful computer and new cameras.<\/p>\n

At the time, the automaker claimed that this new hardware suite would just enable Tesla to push self-driving capabilities further and that HW3 vehicles would still achieve \u201cunsupervised self-driving capabilities\u201d with upcoming software updates.<\/p>\n

Tesla HW3 reaching its limit<\/h2>\n

A year later, we started to report that Tesla appeared to be reaching the limits of the HW3 computer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It took almost another year before Musk finally admitted that HW3 will not be able to support full self-driving capabilities <\/a>and that Tesla will need to upgrade the computers.<\/p>\n

Musk said on January 29th:<\/p>\n

\n

I mean, I think the honest answer is that we\u2019re going to have to upgrade people\u2019s Hardware 3 computer for those that have bought full self-driving, and that is the honest answer and that\u2019s going to be painful and difficult but we\u2019ll get it done. Now I\u2019m kind of glad that not that many people bought the FSD package.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We are now more than four months after this statement, and Tesla has yet to reveal a plan to make things right for HW3 owners, some of whom paid up to $15,000 for the FSD package, and some purchased it as long as nine years ago. <\/p>\n

As we previously reported, the HW4 computer, as it exists, can\u2019t be installed in HW3 vehicles. It doesn\u2019t have the same camera connectors and overall format.<\/p>\n

Tesla has previously talked about a new HW5 computer to be used in the Cybercab unveiled in October 2024, but it\u2019s unclear if that new computer will be able to be retrofitted inside HW3 vehicles.<\/p>\n

Electrek\u2019s Take<\/h2>\n

I think that if Tesla had deployed FSD without selling it as \u201cfull self-driving\u201d and promising capabilities, it would be a celebrated leading ADAS system.<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s becoming one of the most significant liabilities ever.<\/p>\n

Tesla has delivered millions of vehicles with HW3, which it said would all be capable of self-driving, and hundreds of thousands of those vehicle owners bought the FSD package. <\/p>\n

Musk claims that Tesla only needs to replace the computers in the vehicles of those who bought FSD. That\u2019s not true as Tesla promised that all vehicles delivered since 2016 would be capable of achieving full self-driving, and now that this is not true, it negatively affects the value.<\/p>\n

Either way, even for those who bought FSD, Tesla has no plan for the retrofit yet. It\u2019s a mess.<\/p>\n

There are already several lawsuits related to Tesla\u2019s self-driving claims that now include this situation with HW3, in addition to\u00a0lawsuits specifically about the issue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I think we are going to see billions of dollars in settlements over this, but it is going to take years. In the meantime, I doubt we can count on Tesla to do the right thing.<\/p>\n

HW3 vehicles are barely getting any FSD updates now, and the current version is light years away from what was promised: unsupervised self-driving. Making things right should be Tesla\u2019s top priority, but instead, Tesla is shifting its focus from delivering its promised capabilities in consumer vehicles to an internal fleet providing a ride-hailing service in a geo-fenced area with teleoperation support.<\/p>\n

At this point, it is becoming ridiculous to believe that Tesla will deliver self-driving capabilities in almost 10-year-old vehicles, with or without hardware retrofit. It appears that Tesla is hoping that HW3 owners will change vehicles.<\/p>\n

\n

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.<\/em> More.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tesla still has no plan to make things right for millions of car owners with its \u2018HW3\u2019 system, more than four months after it finally admitted that the hardware won\u2019t support self-driving. At this point, the automaker is just hoping they buy new cars. We are approaching the 10th anniversary of Tesla\u2019s promise and sale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-cars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}