At the Q3 2024 Investor Call, Elon Musk discussed the future of autonomy. One question that came up was what about FSD Hardware 3? Today, Hardware 3 has been lagging behind Hardware 4, now dubbed AI4.
Given what has been previously said at We, Robot, Elon and Tesla fully believed that autonomy - Unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi, would be possible on HW3. Now, that statement has been backtracked. Elon and Tesla’s top-notch engineers are no longer sure whether HW3 will be capable of meeting the expectations of a safe, autonomously driven vehicle.
With AI 5 entering into production in 2026, even AI4 has a short lease on production life. But what does that mean for HW3 vehicles today? Let’s dig in.
Tesla Will Upgrade HW3 If Needed
Elon has confirmed for the first time that if Tesla can not make autonomy work on HW3, they will upgrade the affected vehicles. That upgrade, of course, would be free for customers who purchased FSD on their HW3 vehicles. For the early Model 3 that came with Hardware 2.5, owners should also be able to get a free upgrade to newer hardware after they purchase FSD. Elon didn’t go into a lot of detail, but it’s not clear whether FSD subscribers would also get a free upgrade if needed, but it sounds like they would.
There are a few things to note here.
Elon didn’t provide a date for this potential future upgrade or any expectation of when HW3 will be officially considered legacy. Elon said that Tesla isn’t 100% sure whether FSD would be possible on HW3. Tesla’s approach to FSD will now be to make it work on HW4, then backport or find ways to make it work on HW3. At some point, it sounds like they may determine this to not be possible.
It’s in Tesla’s best interest financially to delay that decision as long as possible and instead move HW3 owners to AI4 or newer hardware through free FSD transfer opportunities.
However, if Tesla decides that HW3 doesn’t have enough compute power, there will always be a large number of vehicles that need to be upgraded. The Tesla drivetrain—motors and batteries—are built to last, and with less than 2% annual degradation being tracked by third parties, we can expect to see 2018 Model 3s still on the road in 2030 and beyond.
There is some chance that HW3 does not achieve a safety level that allows for unsupervised FSD
What’s the Upgrade?
Here’s the thing—Hardware 3 has lower-resolution cameras and uses a different wiring harness. AI4 and beyond use a unified harness and improved cameras. On the earnings call, Elon said that the upgrade would be an inference computer upgrade only.
That means better and faster processing and an improved FSD experience for users. It can also save Tesla money by having the AI team spend less time backporting FSD to HW3.
No Camera Upgrades
The unified wiring harness and the cameras in HW3 vehicles will remain since Tesla doesn’t see them hindering progress. The harness in HW3 vehicles isn’t capable of carrying more data or power, making upgrades to cameras or hardware difficult.
Tesla is already approaching autonomy-level capabilities on Hardware 3, so in their eyes, it's just a matter of improving the models and decision-making rather than increasing the raw pixel count coming in. According to Tesla, there will be no camera upgrades.
We’re not sure how much of an impact this will have on the robotaxi or Unsupervised FSD, but given that the refreshed Model 3 Highland didn’t come with the bumper camera last year alongside the Cybertruck, it may not be necessary.
HW 3.5 Upgrade
Many users are speculating that HW3 will be upgraded to HW4, but that is unlikely to be the case. As we mentioned, HW4 has a different wiring harness and cameras and those won’t easily fit into a HW3 vehicle due to space and power constraints.
Instead, Tesla will likely create a new inference chip and board made specifically for HW3 vehicles. It’ll need to be as powerful as HW4’s computer but much more efficient.
Tech progresses quickly, and what was once cutting-edge in 2017 is now left behind in the dust. So, this process of getting an HW4-capable computer working with the constraints of an HW3 vehicle will get easier the more time goes on. Tesla will likely start engineering the process in the future, using smaller transistors with a smaller process node, newer chipset-style processor designs, and overall better energy efficiency.
One thing to look out for is redundancy. This lets the FSD computer work on two separate chips, making sure they both reach the same conclusion before the vehicle acts on it. Redundancy helps with errors due to component failures, errors in processing or other issues. Hardware 3 was built with redundancy in mind, but Tesla has since removed it in order to use both nodes for processing power instead of redundancy. If and when Tesla releases the HW3 retrofit computer, it’ll be interesting to see if they include this back in.
When?
Right now, Tesla isn’t even sure whether an upgrade for HW3 will be needed. It sounds like that may be the case, but for now, Tesla isn’t for sure. They simply want to reassure owners that an upgrade will be available for HW3 if needed.
Tesla also doesn’t want to have to upgrade vehicles twice, so this upgrade will be the absolute last-ditch effort to get HW3 vehicles up to a safe level of autonomy. Even Tesla can’t be sure what it will take to completely solve autonomy yet, so they can’t build an upgrade until they know what it’ll take.
Don’t expect a HW3 upgrade before FSD is solved. Once Tesla knows the computing power and potentially other hardware required, then they can start thinking about retrofitting vehicles that don’t meet those requirements. Our best guess is that a HW3 upgrade is still years away.
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Tesla appears to be preparing to expand its Robotaxi geofence in Austin, Texas, with numerous engineering vehicles taking to the road. One of the most interesting sights, between the short and tall LiDAR rigs, was a Cybertruck validation vehicle, which we don’t often see.
Tesla’s expansion is moving the Robotaxi Network into downtown Austin, a dense urban environment that is currently outside the geofence. It appears Tesla is content with the latest builds of Robotaxi FSD and is ready to take on urban traffic.
The inclusion of a Cybertruck in the validation fleet is noteworthy, as the rest of the vehicles are Model Ys. This suggests that Tesla may be addressing two challenges simultaneously: expanding its service area while also addressing the FSD gap between the Cybertruck and other HW4 Tesla vehicles.
Tesla Validating Downtown Austin before expanding the Robotaxi geo-fence area. pic.twitter.com/ylFATtjcDi
Recent sightings have shown a fleet of Tesla vehicles, equipped with rooftop validation sensor rigs, running routes throughout downtown Austin and across the South Congress Bridge. While these rigs include LiDAR, it’s not a sign that Tesla is abandoning its vision-only approach.
Instead, Tesla uses the high-fidelity data from the LiDAR as a ground truth measurement to validate and improve the performance of its cameras. In short, it essentially uses the LiDAR measurements as the actual distances and then compares the distances determined in vision-only to the LiDAR measurements. This allows Tesla to tweak and improve its vision system without needing LiDAR.
This data collection in a new, complex environment right outside the Robotaxi geofence is an indicator that plans to expand the geofence. Tesla has previously indicated that they intend to roll out more vehicles and expand the geofence slowly. Given that their operational envelope includes the entire Austin Metro Area, we can expect more locations to open up gradually.
Once they expand the operational radius to include downtown Austin, they will likely also have to considerably increase the number of Robotaxis active in the fleet at any given time. Early-access riders are already saying that the wait time for a Robotaxi is too long, with them sometimes having to wait 15 minutes to be picked up.
With a larger service area, we expect Tesla to also increase the number of vehicles and the number of invited riders to try out the service.
After all, Tesla’s goal is to expand the Robotaxi Network to multiple cities within the United States by the end of 2025. Tesla has already been running an employees-only program in California, and we’ve seen validation vehicles as far away as Boston and New Jersey, on the other side of the country.
Cyber FSD Lagging Behind
One of the most significant details from these recent sightings is the presence of a Cybertruck. Cybertruck’s FSD builds have famously lagged behind the builds available on the rest of Tesla’s HW4 fleet. Key features that were expected never fully materialized for the Cybertruck, and the list of missing features is quite extensive.
Start FSD from Park
Improved Controller
Reverse on FSD
Actually Smart Summon
It may not look like a lot, but if you drive a Cybertruck on FSD and then hop in any of the rest of Tesla’s HW4 vehicles, you’ll notice a distinct difference. This is especially evident on highways, where the Cybertruck tends to drift out of the lane, often crossing over the lane markings.
Tesla was testing parts of Downtown Austin, TX with this Cybertruck which had a massive roof rack, and sensors.
We previously released an exclusive mentioning that a well-positioned internal source confirmed with us that a new FSD build for the Cybertruck was upcoming, but we never ended up receiving that particular build, only a point release to V13.2.9. The AI team’s focus had clearly shifted to getting the latest Robotaxi builds running and validated, and while a flagship, the Cybertruck fleet was small and new, and really a secondary task.
The Cybertruck’s larger size, steer-by-wire, rear-wheel steering, and different camera placements likely present a bigger set of challenges for FSD. Deploying it now as a validation vehicle in a complex environment like downtown Austin suggests that Tesla is finally gathering the specific data needed to bring the Cybertruck’s capabilities up to par. This focused effort is likely the necessary step to refine FSD’s handling of the Cybertruck before they begin rolling out new public builds.
When?
Once Tesla’s validation is complete, we can probably expect the Robotaxi Network to expand its borders for the first time in the coming days or weeks. However, we’ll likely see more signs of the expansion, such as Robotaxi vehicles driving themselves around the area, before the expansion actually happens.
Hopefully, the Cybertruck will also learn from its older siblings and receive the rest of its much-needed FSD features, alongside an FSD update for the entire fleet.
Tesla is rolling out a fairly big update for its iOS and early-access-only Robotaxi app, delivering a suite of improvements that address user feedback from the initial launch last month. The update improves the user experience with increased flexibility, more information, and overall design polish.
The most prominent feature in this update is that Tesla now allows you to adjust your pickup location. Once a Robotaxi arrives at your pickup location, you have 15 minutes to start the ride. The app will now display the remaining time your Robotaxi will wait for you, counting down from 15:00. The wait time is also shown in the iOS Live Activity if your phone is on the lock screen.
How Adjustable Pickups Work
We previously speculated that Tesla had predetermined pickup locations, as the pickup location wasn’t always where the user was. Now, with the ability to adjust the pickup location, we can clearly see that Tesla has specific locations where users can be picked up.
Rather than allowing users to drop a pin anywhere on the map, the new feature works by having the user drag the map to their desired area. The app then presents a list of nearby, predetermined locations to choose from. Once a user selects a spot from this curated list, they hit “Confirm.” The pickup site can also be changed while the vehicle is en route.
This specific implementation raises an interesting question: Why limit users to predetermined spots? The answer likely lies in how Tesla utilizes fleet data to improve its service.
Here is the new Tesla Robotaxi pickup location adjustment feature.
While the app is still only available on iOS through Apple’s TestFlight program, invited users can download and update the app.
Tesla included these release notes in update 25.7.0 of the Robotaxi app:
You can now adjust pickup location
Display the remaining wait time at pickup in the app and Live Activity
Design improvements
Bug fixes and stability improvements
Nic Cruz Patane
Why Predetermined Pick Up Spots?
The use of predetermined pickup points is less of a limitation and more of a feature. These curated locations are almost certainly spots that Tesla’s fleet data has identified as optimal and safe for an autonomous vehicle to perform a pickup or drop-off.
This suggests that Tesla is methodically “mapping” its service area not just for calibration and validation of FSD builds but also to help perform the first and last 50-foot interactions that are critical to a safe and smooth ride-hailing experience.
An optimal pickup point likely has several key characteristics identified by the fleet, including:
A safe and clear pull-away area away from traffic
Good visibility for cameras, free of obstructions
Easy entry and exit paths for an autonomous vehicle
This change to pick-up locations reveals how Tesla’s Robotaxi Network is more than just Unsupervised FSD. There are a lot of moving parts, many of which Tesla recently implemented, and others that likely still need to be implemented, such as automated charging.
Frequent Updates
This latest update delivers a much-needed feature for adjusting pickup locations, but it also gives us a view into exactly what Tesla is doing with all the data it is collecting with its validation vehicles rolling around Austin, alongside its Robotaxi fleet.
Tesla is quickly iterating on its app and presumably the vehicle’s software to build a reliable and predictable network, using data to perfect every aspect of the experience, from the moment you hail the ride to the moment you step out of the car.
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