On the Q1 2026 Earnings Call, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk utters the bitter words expected by owners of the now-legacy Hardware 3 (HW3) Tesla vehicles. These older Teslas will never be able to achieve Unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD).
In the back of their minds, the owners of Tesla HW3 (AI3) vehicles had already expected to get an official confirmation to put a stamp on their fears.
FSD v12.6.4 was the last Full Self-Driving update that was rolled out to HW3 Tesla owners in March last year. Finally, there’s some good news for HW3 owners as well. Tesla plans to roll out a lite version of FSD v14 to HW3 cars by the end of June, the automaker confirmed.
The legacy HW3 on-board car computer has technical limitations in processing AI code and making decisions as fast as the HW4/AI4 processor. The data processing bottleneck in HW3 Tesla cars bars them from running Unsupervised FSD in the future.
When asked, how will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised FSD?
“Uh, unfortunately, Hardware 3, I wish it were otherwise, but Hardware 3 simply does not have the capability to achieve Unsupervised FSD,” Musk responded.
“Relative to Hardware 4, it has only 1/8 of the memory bandwidth, and memory bandwidth is one of the key elements needed for Unsupervised FSD,” he further added.
What Should Tesla HW3 Owners Do Now?
Tesla started installing Hardware 4 (AI4) computers in production vehicles in January 2023. You can also check which AI hardware your vehicle has by going to Controls > Software on the center touchscreen.
Tesla’s Elon Musk didn’t just give out the bad news to HW3 owners. He also provided possible solutions to tackle this problem.
In Q3 2024, Musk proposed a free retrofit upgrade from HW3 to HW4. However, after around 1.5 years, there has been no real-world progress on this.
Yesterday, on the Q1 2026 call, Musk once again said that Tesla will provide free upgrades for HW3 cars. However, he did not give a solid timeline for this free upgrade.
Since there are millions of HW3 Tesla electric cars sold globally, Tesla will need to set up micro factories to perform HW3 to HW4 upgrades.
To upgrade to HW4 (AI4) and unlock Unsupervised FSD capability, cameras are also required to be upgraded to HW4 cameras, along with the FSD AI computer. Musk further said:
For customers that have bought FSD on HW3, we are offering discounted trade-in for cars that have AI4, and also offering the ability to upgrade the car’s computer and cameras. We’re going to have to set up micro-factories in major metro areas. I do think over time it will make sense to convert all HW3 cars to HW4.
Possible Solutions
- Free hardware upgrade from HW3 to HW4 (requires setting up micro factories)
- Discounted trade-ins of HW3 Teslas to upgrade to a new HW4 vehicle (Model Y, Model 3, and the Cybertruck)
FSD v14 Lite on HW3 Tesla Cars
Tesla confirmed that a light-weight version of FSD v14 will be available for Hardware 3 cars by the end of June 2026. Like with all Musk timelines, FSD v14 Lite for HW3 cars might get delayed by a few more weeks.
Although these cars cannot run Unsupervised FSD, some of the advanced features of FSD v14 will be available to HW3 cars in the coming months.
Having FSD v14 on HW3 cars will enable millions of Tesla owners to have improved driver assistance and Supervised FSD, reducing the stress of daily driving for legacy Tesla car owners.
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 CEO Elon Musk finally confirms that Hardware 3 (HW3) cars cannot run Unsupervised FSD (he also gives solutions). FSD v14 Lite coming to HW3 cars in June 2026, more.){kind=link}