How To Check if Your Tesla Has Hardware 4 (AI4) or Hardware 3

August 8, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

In early 2023, Tesla launched its FSD Hardware 4.0 – now known as AI4 – an improved version of Hardware 3 with various advantages. This hardware launch initially came off to a rocky start with FSD and Autopilot not being available to freshly delivered vehicles.

Today though, AI4 is the next step as Tesla strides towards full autonomy. While Tesla hasn’t abandoned HW3 or declared it as legacy yet – and doesn’t seem to plan to, it’s still important to be able to figure out what hardware your vehicle has. This is especially true for those who have paid for, or are subscribed to FSD – as it seems that going forward, AI4 will receive major FSD updates before hardware 3, which will require optimization.

So, let’s go over what AI4 offers in terms of improvement, the fact that there is no retrofit path from Hardware 3, and finally, a few easy ways to tell FSD Hardware 3 from Hardware 4/ AI4.

HW4 / AI4 Improvements

AI4 brought along several improvements, including new cameras, new electrical and wiring harnesses, and most of all – improved processing power.

The new cameras bring improved resolution for better details. The rear camera on AI4 has a resolution of 1448x938 vs 1280x960 on Hardware 3. However, there’s a much larger differences in the front cameras. HW4/AI4 has a resolution of 2896x1876 while HW3 has a resolution of 1280x960. That’s a huge improvement in quality - additionally, that telltale red tint that they have ensures better performance in low-light conditions. The video below compares the difference between HW3 vs HW4.

Musk previously said that HW4 is about 3-5x faster than hardware 3, although all of that compute power isn’t being utilized yet. We’ll likely see the full power of HW4 come into play with the divergence of HW4 later this year.

How to Tell If You Have HW3 or HW4 / AI4

There are a few easy ways to tell if you have Hardware 3, or AI4. Sadly, Tesla doesn’t provide any information in the app or vehicle that simply tells you which FSD hardware you have, so here are a few ways to tell them apart.

Note the telltale red glint of the HW4 cameras

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Delivery Date

The first is based on your model and delivery date. If you purchased Model S or X, you’ll likely have AI4 if you purchased after March 2023. If you have a Model Y, it’s after late May 2023 for vehicles made in the United States. The updated 2024 Model 3 has HW4, but if you have a 2017-2023 Model 3, you’ll have Hardware 3.

Red Camera Lenses

Next, if you’re not sure of the delivery date of your vehicle, or want to confirm, take a look at the vehicle itself. HW4/AI4 has cameras with red lenses – the easiest place to see this is on the front cameras – where there will be 2 red lenses and one black (fake) lens. AI4 got rid of the 3^rd front-facing camera since the cameras now have a higher resolution.

The repeater cameras are also slightly different, with the same red tint, but include a smaller and narrower turn indicator.

HW4 (top) and HW3 (bottom) repeater cameras

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No Retrofit to HW4

Elon Musk and Tesla have confirmed that unlike AP 2.5 or AP 2, Tesla does not intend to offer a retrofit for older vehicles. This isn’t a surprising move, especially given the fact that there is an entirely new wiring and cooling harness for the compute unit in AI4.

This, in turn with AI4’s different form factor, means that it isn’t feasible to upgrade HW3 vehicles to AI4. A retrofit would be a complex and expensive task that would likely require building a custom solution that would fit into HW3 vehicles. It also comes with other complications such as overwhelming Tesla Service. Instead, Tesla will continue to do it the software way – by optimizing and updating the FSD models to perform well on Hardware 3.

Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

December 11, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Yesterday, we reported that Tesla updated their Steam integration on Model S and Model X vehicles. The update was part of their 2024 Holiday Update, but it looks like there may be more to this than a simple update.

Steam, a video game library app, makes it easy for users to buy or launch games on their computers. However, a couple of years ago, Valve, who created Steam, launched their own standalone device, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs a custom OS based on Linux.

Steam Launch

When Tesla launched the redesigned Model S and Model X, Tesla introduced a dedicated gaming GPU with 16GB of RAM and touted the ability to play top-tier PC games in Tesla vehicles.

In 2022, Tesla finally launched the Steam app for the Model S and Model X as part of its 2022 Holiday Update. The Steam app runs Steam OS, the same OS as the Steam Deck in a virtual environment.

However, earlier this year, Tesla stopped including the GPU and Steam (Beta) in their vehicles, and we haven’t seen any updates to the Steam in quite some time. In fact, we thought Tesla was axing their gaming-on-the-go dreams.

SteamOS Update

The Steam app, which is still in Beta, is getting an interesting update for the Model S and Model X vehicles with the discrete GPU.

Those vehicles received an update to SteamOS 3.6 - the same version of SteamOS that runs on the Steam Deck. While nothing has visually changed, there’s a long list of performance optimizations under the hood to get things running smoother.

Comparing Steam Deck to Tesla Vehicles

Let’s take a look at the Steam Deck - according to Valve, its onboard Zen4 CPU and GPU combined push a total of 2 TFlops of data, which is fairly respectable, but much lower than today’s home consoles. The Steam Deck is capable of 720p gaming fairly seamlessly on low-to-medium settings on the go and is also built on the AMD platform.

AMD-equipped Teslas, including the Model 3 and Model Y, are packing an older Zen+ (Zen 1.5) APU (processor with a combined CPU and GPU). AMD claims that the V1000 - the same embedded chip as on AMD Tesla vehicles (YE1807C3T4MFB), brings up to 3.6 TFLops of processing power with it, including 4K encoding and decoding with the integrated GPU on board.

While that’s not enough for 4K gaming or comparable to a full-blown console or desktop GPU, that’s enough raw horsepower for light gaming and is currently more powerful than the Steam Deck.

The Model S and Model X’s GPU brings that up to about 10TFlops of power - comparable to modern consoles like the Xbox Series X at 12 TFlops.

Steam Gaming for All Vehicles?

The fact that Tesla is updating SteamOS even though the feature is no longer available in any new vehicles could indicate that Tesla is not only bringing Steam back to Teslas but that it’s going to play a much bigger role.

While SteamOS is run in a virtual environment on top of Tesla’s own OS, we could see Tesla bring SteamOS to all of its current vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck. Steam in these vehicles would likely support any game that’s capable of running on the Steam Deck.

We think this Steam update, which includes performance improvements and a variety of fixes, has quietly passed under most people’s radars. This could be a very exciting update for those who enjoy gaming, especially for those who love to do it in their Tesla.

Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

December 11, 2024

By Karan Singh

Robert Rosenfeld / YouTube

As part of Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, Tesla included two awesome new features - Weather at Destination and the long-awaited Weather Radar Overlay. These two features are big upgrades built upon the weather feature that was added in update 2024.26. The original weather feature added an hourly forecast, as well as the chance of precipitation, UV index, Air Quality Index, and other data.

However, this update also added some smaller weather touches, such as the vehicle alerting you if the weather at the destination will be drastically different from the current weather.

Not a Tesla App

Weather At Destination

When you’re navigating to a destination and viewing the full navigation direction list, the text under the arrival time will show you the expected weather next to your destination. You can also tap this, and the full weather pop-up will show up, showing your destination's full set of weather information.

Note the weather under the arrival time

Not a Tesla App

You can also tap the weather icon at the top of the interface at any time and tap Destination to switch between the weather at your current location and the weather at your destination.

You’re probably considering that the weather at your destination doesn’t matter when you’re three hours away - but that’s all taken into account by the trip planner. It will add in both charge time and travel time and show you the weather at your destination at your expected arrival time.

And if the weather is drastically different or inclement, such as rain or snow, while you’ve got sunshine and rainbows - the weather will be shown above the destination ETA for a few moments before it tucks itself away.

Tesla also recently introduced a new voice command. Asking, “What’s the weather?” or something similar will now bring up Tesla’s weather popup.

The weather pop-up above the ETA

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One limitation, though—if you’re planning a long road trip that is more than a day of driving, the weather at destination feature won’t be available until you get closer.

Weather Radar Overlay

As part of the improvements to weather, Tesla has also added a radar overlay for precipitation. You can access the new radar overlay by tapping the map and then tapping the weather icon on the right side of the map. It’ll bring up a radar overlay centered on your vehicle. It’ll animate through the radar data over the last 3 hours so that you can see the direction of the storm, but you can also pause it at any point.

You’re able to scroll around in this view and see the weather anywhere, even if you zoom out. It also works while you’re driving, although it can be a little confusing if you’re trying to pay attention to the navigation system. If you like to have Points of Interest enabled on your map, the weather overlay will hide POIs except for Charging POIs.

Requirements / Data

Unfortunately, you’ll need Premium Connectivity for any of the weather features to work, and being on WiFi or using a hotspot will not be enough to get the data to show up. The data, including the weather radar, is provided by The Weather Channel.

As for supported models, weather and weather at destination are available on all vehicles except for the 2012-2020 Model S and Model X. The weather radar has more strict requirements and requires the newer AMD Ryzen-powered infotainment center available on the 2021+ Model S and Model X and more recent Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.