Overview
- Tesla, which held its Q1 earnings call on Wednesday, said Hardware 3 vehicles sold from 2019 to early 2023 cannot run an unsupervised version of Full Self‑Driving without a new computer and new cameras.
- Elon Musk cited Hardware 3 having about one‑eighth the memory bandwidth of Hardware 4 as the key limit for running autonomy without a human supervising.
- To handle upgrades at scale, Tesla plans discounted trade‑ins and retrofit programs and is exploring city “micro‑factories” to swap computers and cameras faster than service centers can manage.
- Ashok Elluswamy said a v14 “lite” software build for Hardware 3 is due by late June, bringing many current features but not unsupervised driving.
- Musk now targets a gradual consumer release of unsupervised FSD no earlier than Q4 2026, investor materials show several robotaxi cities moved to “preparations underway,” and he said driverless operations may reach a dozen states this year with revenue not “super material,” as regulators and lawsuits scrutinize the rollout.