Tesla will use Samsung for as a supplier for its self-driving computer’s next-gen hardware in a $16.5 billion deal, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

But despite planning two generations ahead, the company still doesn’t have a solution to bring the promised full autonomy to hardware that it’s been promising that capability to since 2016.

Earlier today, Samsung announced a 22.8 trillion won ($16.5 billion) deal that would run through 2033. In that filing, Samsung did not name the customer, only that it is a “large global company”. Later, Bloomberg reported that the customer is Tesla, and Musk confirmed this on twitter. Then in his usual bravado, he stated that the deal is “likely much more than that.”

Musk also stated that the chips will be made in Samsung’s facility in Taylor, Texas. Manufacturing is likely to start in 2026.

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Samsung makes the chips for the self-driving computers in Tesla’s current vehicles, but the next generation will be made by TSMC, first in Taiwan and then later in Arizona. Then the next-next generation will be covered by this new Samsung deal.

The new deal is significant due to TSMC’s global dominance of chipmaking. Samsung has had significant unused capacity, so the Tesla deal is a big boost for the company’s chip foundry business.

Tesla has gone through several generations of chips, previous referred to as “HW,” standing for “hardware,” with a number indicating their generation. More recently, Tesla started referring to its chips with “AI” instead of “HW,” in order to incorporate the tech buzzword du jour.

Currently Tesla is on HW4/AI4, and TSMC will make HW5, then Samsung will make HW6 again.

These generations of hardware each get successively more capable, and can handle more data and thus theoretically become better at self-driving tasks.

Current Tesla HW4 vehicles cannot drive themselves, and are only capable of SAE level 2 operation, which requires an attentive driver behind the steering wheel (though Tesla’s solution does work better than most others). Tesla’s ‘Robotaxi’ system is currently operating in Austin without anyone in the driver’s seat, but has a “safety rider” who can take control of the vehicle, blurring the line somewhat on which SAE level it is operating at.

But what about HW3?

There’s a problem with the differentiation between these generations of hardware: ever since 2016, when Tesla was on version 2 of its hardware, it has promised full self-driving capability on all of its vehicles.

This was announced in a blog post on October 19, 2016, which has since been deleted from Tesla’s website but is still available through archive.org.

Tesla stated, at the time, that every single Tesla vehicle produced after that date had the hardware that would allow for full self-driving.

It eventually became apparent that HW2 would not be capable of full self-driving tasks, and Tesla upgraded to HW3, promising all HW2 customers that they would get a free upgrade to HW3 if they bought Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system, which has varied in price over time but once cost $15,000.

However, Tesla still tried to charge owners $1,500 for that hardware upgrade, even though Tesla sold cars claiming that they had all the hardware needed for full self-driving.

One owner had to take Tesla to court to get them to deliver on this promise, and Tesla is still charging $1,000 for this hardware owners already bought. And that’s not the only one, there are a number of other self-driving false advertising cases that have gone to court, arbitration, or reached a settlement.

Now, with the change from HW3 to HW4, we’re seeing indications of a similar run-around.

We’ve already seen differing FSD software versions based on which hardware level vehicles have, with HW3 vehicles getting updates later than HW4 vehicles do. On last week’s Q2 earnings call, Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja said:

What we want to do is get unsupervised done on hardware four first. Once it’s done, then we’ll go back and look at what we need to do with the hardware three cars. Like I said, the focus is first to get unsupervised out and then we’ll go back and see what more work we need to do.

“Unsupervised” is Tesla’s new name for actual full self-driving, which would allow a vehicle to drive without the supervision of someone in the driver’s seat. This as opposed to “supervised FSD,” a phrase Tesla started using after about a decade of promising full self-driving without delivering it.

Here, Taneja said that HW3 cars will eventually get FSD, but Tesla hasn’t really figured out the path to that, and it’s focusing on new cars first, then will go back around to see what needs to happen.

Previously, Musk had stated that Tesla “will have to upgrade people’s hardware 3 computer,” but more recently it has become apparent that Tesla really doesn’t have a plan for that upgrade. And Taneja’s comments suggest that Tesla will still try to wedge FSD onto HW3, despite previously admitting that the system is not capable of it.

The existence of future HW5 and even HW6 chips also suggest that current systems are not capable of full self-driving. If HW4 is FSD-capable, then why would Tesla need two more generations of chip in the next two years in order to do the tasks that it promised all of its cars could do a full decade prior?

So, much more than having no solution for HW3 cars (or even HW2 cars, some of which have gotten free upgrades, but others who have been charged $1,000 to upgrade to a computer they already paid for), does this mean that Tesla is going to kick the can further down the road, and eventually have no solution for HW4 and HW5 either?

And, when will we know about these solutions? Tesla has sold millions of vehicles with the promise of self-driving which will seemingly need an upgrade at some point. And many of those vehicles are old enough, at this point, to be retired, despite spending up to $15,000 on a piece of software that has never been delivered to them.

An HW6/AI6 computer will surely have all sorts of new whizbang capabilities, but we were promised those capabilities years ago, and they’re still not delivered yet.

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