Tesla’s new self-driving (HW4) computer leaks: Here’s a teardown
Tesla’s new self-driving computer, Hardware 4.0 (HW4), has leaked as the automaker appears to be already building some cars with the upgraded system.
Here’s a first teardown.
We have known that Tesla has been preparing an upgrade to its Autopilot/self-driving hardware for a bit now.
Most notably, Tesla filed with the FCC to add a new radar on its vehicles and said that it planned to start marketing it in January. A new radar would mean that Tesla plans to update its sensor suite for Autopilot and self-driving.
We have also heard that the automaker is changing its cameras, according to a filing with Chinese regulators.
Finally, Tesla is expected to produce a new self-driving computer to merge all those new sensors into a more powerful computing platform.
All these hardware changes have been stressful for Tesla owners since the automaker has been promising that all its vehicles built since 2016 have all the hardware necessary to achieve self-driving through software updates.
It turned out not to be true as Tesla needed a more powerful computer (HW3), but it did supply the retrofit to existing owners for free.
Now CEO Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla will not provide retrofit to HW4, but he said that the automaker still plans to deliver on its self-driving promises with HW3 and that HW4 will only push the performance higher.
Tesla Autopilot/Self-Driving Hardware 4.0
The teardown comes courtesy of Green The Only, a well-known Tesla hacker and tinkerer who has consistently revealed a lot of new information about Tesla vehicles by hacking the automaker’s software and tearing down its hardware.
In this case, he managed to get his hands on a new HW4 computer from a new Model X vehicle. We won’t go into details about how.
There are some indications that Tesla is implementing the new hardware suite in the Model X first with the automaker having just put up for sale its display and test drive fleet, which Tesla generally does later in a quarter. It could mean that Tesla is liquidating its Model X units in preparation for the new hardware.
Green started the teardown by confirming what Musk recently said: Don’t expect a retrofit.
Tesla’s self-driving computer is combined with its infotainment computer, which has also been updated with this HW4 upgrade.
Green said about the change:
Infotainment was reworked compared to current units. The GPU is now on the same board, so no more GPU daughterboard. This makes the whole unit thinner, otherwise no changes there – same 256G NVMe and 16G RAM, same AMD CPU and GPU.
As for Tesla’s actual HW4 computer, Green sees less improvement than what was hoped:
He did note that there are some improvements in security. Musk mentioned hackability of self-driving vehicles was a top concern at Tesla.
On the downside, the hacker’s own measurement shows that the new board has a higher power consumption than HW3 when idle.
Green noted that Tesla has also made improvements to the redundancy of the system, which is obviously important in a self-driving vehicle:
Redundancy is the name of the game this time? The board is mostly symmetric, with identical power connections on each side. There are even two network links to infotainment. Yet… if you unpower the A side, that kills the network switch and the link is lost. Still the improvements are there.
Now for what people have all been waiting for – the sensors.
Obviously, this is the computer and not the sensors, but the connectors can give us more information about the new sensors in HW4.
Now Tesla has been moving to a vision-based (cameras) approach and it has made a big deal of removing its radar and ultrasonic sensors.
There’s good news with HW4. Tesla appears to be including more cameras. There are currently 8 cameras in Tesla’s hardware suite, but now the new computer has connectors for 12 cameras, although one connector is marked as “spare.”
So we are talking about likely 11 cameras. Now as for the camera placement, it looks like all the current cameras remain other than a two camera setup in the windshield rather than the current three-front-facing camera setup.
While the information is hard to decrypt, Green sees indications that Tesla might have added cameras in the bumpers:
What’s SVC you might wonder? According to Tesla EPC, SVC is a bumper cover. So I’d guess these are bumper cameras. There’s a huge blindspot upfront on legacy cars up front (welcome to the legacy camp, Plaid owners!), so front bumper camera and two in the (rear?) bumper corners for cross traffic alerts (esp. with pillar moved forward)?
Green also found a connection for a new GPS module with a triband antenna:
The hacker noted about the new GPS unit:
The unit itself is big and unmarked, so who makes it is unknown, I would not be surprised if it’s somewhat custom Tesla thing. They carry a bootloader for it in firmware.
Finally, Green also found evidence of Tesla’s integrating a radar back into its sensor suite:
Musk told Electrek in June of last year after Tesla stopped using its radar:
The probability of safety will be higher with pure vision than vision+radar, not lower. Vision has become so good that radar actually reduces signal/noise.
However, the CEO also added that Tesla might still use radar if it had a “very high-resolution radar”:
A very high resolution radar would be better than pure vision, but such a radar does not exist. I mean vision with high res radar would be better than pure vision.
We saw some indications of Tesla working on that. We previously reported on Tesla looking to add a new “4D” imaging radar with twice the range of its previous radar.
That high-resolution radar was codenamed “phoenix,” so it might be the very radar that makes it to the new hardware suite.
It’s not clear when Tesla plans to make the new HW4 official, but the timing of the March 1 Investor Day makes it a likely contender for an official announcement.
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Germany’s largest offshore wind farm under construction, EnBW’s He Dreiht, just hit a big milestone: The first enormous turbine is now up in the North Sea.
He Dreiht – which means “it spins” in Low German – is using Vestas’s massive 15 megawatt (MW) turbines, the first project in the world to install them. Just one spin of one of the rotors can generate enough electricity to power four households for an entire day.
When it’s finished, He Dreiht will have 64 mega turbines cranking out 960 megawatts (MW) of clean power – enough to supply around 1.1 million homes. And it’s being built without any government subsidies.
EnBW, one of Germany’s major energy companies, has been working in offshore wind for more than 15 years, but He Dreiht is their biggest project yet. “It will play a key role in helping us to significantly grow our renewable energy output from 6.6 GW to over 10 GW by 2030,” said Michael Class, who heads up EnBW’s generation portfolio development.
The project is a win for Vestas, too. “With the installation of the first V236-15.0 MW, we have reached an important milestone for both the He Dreiht project and our offshore ramp-up, which helps Germany build a more secure, affordable, and sustainable energy system,” said Nils de Baar, president of Vestas Northern & Central Europe.
He Dreiht is located about 85 kilometers (53 miles) northwest of Borkum and 110 kilometers (68 miles) west of Helgoland. At peak times, more than 500 workers will be out at sea building the farm, using a fleet of more than 60 ships. EnBW’s offshore team in Hamburg is running the show.
The installation process is a major operation. The 64 foundations were already set in the seabed last year. Parts for the turbines are loaded onto the installation vessel Wind Orca in Esbjerg, Denmark, and shipped out in a 12-hour journey to the construction site. From there, the turbines are lifted into place. Meanwhile, crews are also working on internal wind farm cabling.
A partner consortium made up of Allianz Capital Partners, AIP, and Norges Bank Investment Management owns 49.9% of the shares in He Dreiht.
Read more: Trump admin halts $5 billion NY offshore wind project mid-build
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Tesla has released a quick update about its Tesla Semi factory in Nevada. It says that it is on track for volume production of the electric semi truck in 2026.
The Tesla Semi was first scheduled to go into production in 2019, but it has faced numerous delays.
Now, it appears that there is finally some momentum to bring it to volume production.
For the last two years, Tesla has been working to build a new factory next to Gigafactory Nevada, where it builds the battery packs and drive units for most of its electric vehicles built in North America.
Today, Tesla released a “progress update on the factory, confirming that it finished building and it’s now working on deploying the production lines:
Tesla had previously mentioned aiming for volume production by 2025, but it is now only talking about starting production toward the end of the year and ramping up next year.
The automaker reiterated its planned production capacity of 50,000 units.
We recently reported that an early Tesla Semi customer, Ryder, stated that the electric truck program is experiencing more delays and a price increase described as “dramatic.”
They now expect to take deliveries of their first trucks later in 2026 and said that the price has increased “dramatically,” leading them to scale back their pilot program from 42 to 18 Tesla Semi trucks.
When originally unveiling the Tesla Semi in 2017, the automaker mentioned prices of $150,000 for a 300-mile range truck and $180,000 for the 500-mile version. Tesla also took orders for a “Founder’s Series Semi” at $200,000.
However, Tesla didn’t update the prices when launching the “production version” of the truck in late 2022. Price increases have been speculated, but the company has never confirmed them.
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Vietnamese solar panel maker Boviet Solar just opened the doors to its first US factory — a huge new PV module plant in Greenville, North Carolina.
The company dropped $294 million into the state-of-the-art facility, which will pump out Boviet’s Gamma Series monofacial and Vega Series bifacial solar panels. They’re using advanced PERC and N-Type solar cell tech, which basically means these panels are built to deliver higher efficiency and better performance across residential, commercial, industrial, and utility-scale projects.
The Greenville factory’s first phase is now online with an annual PV module output capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). For Phase 2, which is scheduled to come online in the second half of 2026, Boviet will invest another $100 million to add 600,000 square feet and ramp up to another 2 GW. It will make high-efficiency solar cells.
Once both phases are complete, Boviet’s campus will cover more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing and R&D space. It’s one of the biggest clean energy manufacturing projects North Carolina has ever seen.
The jobs impact is significant, too. The first phase will create 460 skilled local jobs. Phase 2 is expected to add another 908, bringing the total to over 1,300 direct jobs, plus nearly 2,000 more indirect jobs across the region. That’s good news for Pitt County’s economy, real estate market, and workforce training programs.
“This facility is not just creating jobs, but creating opportunity, innovation, and a stronger foundation for eastern North Carolina,” said Senator Kandie Smith. Governor Josh Stein added that Boviet Solar’s move shows how North Carolina is leading the way in clean energy growth.
Read more: Thomas Built Buses debuts its next-gen electric school bus
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