Good news has reached the European Tesla owners as the details and videos we share below mark the start of the much-awaited FSD Computer upgrades. This is also known as the Hardware 3.0 upgrade or HW3 in short.
Elon Musk just yesterday posted on Twitter that the retrofits in Europe should be happening soon and today we have a real story on this matter.
Tesla Service Center in Antwerp, Belgium had the opportunity to upgrade an early 2017 Tesla Model S P100D which was equipped with the previous NVIDIA Drive PX2 computer.
The owner and one of my long time Tesla peep Steven Peeters also upgraded the deprecated MCU* version 1.0 (MCU1) to the latest MCU2 along with the instrument cluster replacement.
*MCU (Media Control Unit) in a Tesla is basically the infotainment system that consists of the center touchscreen and the graphics processor and works independently of the main Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supercomputer.
Tesla FSD / HW3 Upgrade
Before the big Tesla Autonomy Day last year, Elon Musk had announced on Twitter that anyone who has ever bought the Full Self-Driving (FSD) package will get a free upgrade to the HW3/FSD Computer.
Steven had bought the FSD package in its early days. He is enthusiastic about constantly testing the Autopilot features and performance on his Tesla Model S on his YouTube channel.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk‘s promise is getting fulfilled in Europe now and the FSD computer upgrade did not cost Steven anything. He just had to take his car to the Tesla Service Center and the Tesla staff there retrofitted both components in around 3 and a half hours.
A new input to output wire from the rear-view/backup camera had to be inserted into the FSD computer. Previously, the rear camera feed went directly to the MCU but now it has to go through the FSD computer to the MCU for Autopilot neural net vision and Sentry Mode functions.
MCU2 upgrade and cost
Upgrading to the MCU2 was a costly choice for Steven as he got the upgrade for a whopping €2,770 (~$3275 USD). But getting the old MCU replaced with a newer and faster one was a wise choice.
With the new MCU, the car’s infotainment and graphics will run faster and smoother. The new touchscreen and instrument cluster will now be able to keep up with new features descending to the fleet with Tesla’s frequent over-the-air software updates.
With the MCU2 upgrade, the owners of older Teslas will also be able to play the new video games and experience enhanced browser & app performance.
Let’s listen to Steven Peeters about his day at the Tesla Service Center yesterday and the driving experience after getting the FSD and MCU2 upgrades.
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