Electrek spoke with a well-known Tesla hacker called ‘green‘ who often reveals information about Tesla through his deep dives into the automaker’s software. He actually released the first HW3 images back in 2019.

Green reports that starting in late 2023, Tesla started to use both nodes for its FSD program on HW3 – running some new neural nets on the extra node. Originally, the idea was to have one for redundancy, which is necessary for higher levels of autonomy like levels 4 and 5, but arguably also level 3.

Now, green says that if one of the nodes fails, FSD doesn’t drive anymore. It can still produce FSD visualizations, but that’s about it. That alone basically kisses goodbye to robotaxi-level self-driving on HW3.

It’s also worth noting that shortly after green noticed this change happened, Tesla started to shift its priority from releasing new software on HW4 first rather than HW3.

Tesla is reducing its liability

Tesla has been trying to actively reduce its legal liability regarding HW3 by encouraging people who bought FSD to upgrade to newer vehicles.

For years Tesla owners have been asking Tesla to allow them to freely transfer their FSD package to a new vehicle. It makes sense. Tesla hasn’t delivered the product they have paid for. It’s the bare minimum to allow them to transfer it to a new car.

After years of refusing, Musk eventually agreed to FSD transfer last year, but he called it a “one-time amnesty” and said to take advantage of it.

That turned out not to be true. Tesla brought back the FSD transfer twice more since – with last quarter Musk saying “one more time”. And then, sure enough, Tesla brought it back for a fourth time this quarter.

This fake incentive to upgrade your older car with FSD to a newer one now because it’s the “last time” has a positive effect on Tesla’s liability regarding HW3.

When Tesla resales those used HW3 vehicles with FSD, they use their new language called “(Supervised) Full Self-Driving”, which opens the door for Tesla to say that they are only selling you self-driving that needs to be “supervised” by a driver.

But interestingly, for HW2 vehicle owners who never purchased FSD, Tesla is still selling them a $1,000 HW3 computer upgrade and $2,000 FSD software package ($2,000 if you have Enhanced Autopilot) with still the old language in the upgrade page:

That’s where Tesla would be adding liability as it would be “upgrading” a car to a 5-year-old computer that is already lagging behind on updates to its newer 2-year-old computer (HW4).

Electrek’s Take

Let’s be honest. Tech is rarely supported with software updates after 5-7 years. Tesla Hardware 3 is entering that zone. It is becoming obsolete and normally, it wouldn’t be a problem, but Tesla sold a Full Self-Driving capability package for up to $15,000 based on this hardware that it never delivered.

At the minimum, it will have to reimburse that, but owners can even argue that they bought the car because Elon Musk told them it would become self-driving over time and become an “appreciating asset.”

This could quickly become a very large liability for Tesla, and the way it handles it is also important.

Musk said that retrofits are not economically feasible from HW3 to HW4. It’s true that it would be quite expensive and also likely create an insurmountable amount of work for Tesla’s already overworked service teams. The HW4 computer doesn’t have the same power harness or camera harnesses as the HW3, and it doesn’t share a form factor that fits in the exact same spot.

Also, the cameras have been upgraded with HW4, which raises the question, “Is the computing power the only problem, or does the camera also need to improve?”

If it’s just the computing power, Tesla could potentially design a new computer that could be more easily retrofitted in HW3 cars, but even then, that’s something that needs to be disclosed.

As I said, if Tesla knows that it can’t deliver unsupervised self-driving on HW3, it needs to let owners know right now and stop selling the software package to HW3 owners without a clear plan to make things right. Otherwise, this quickly becomes fraudulent.

The fact that Elon and Tesla have been wrong so many times about self-driving is already not a great confidence builder for them delivering on HW4 vehicles or even on the new AI5 (Robotaxi), but if they are also actively misleading owners, then Tesla becomes untrustworthy.

I am seriously concerned that Tesla is going to rely on the “corporate puffery” defense to frame Elon’s promises as “mere puff”.

After I first brought up the potential of Tesla reaching the limits of HW3 earlier this year, many Elon superfans started to make claims that Tesla and Elon never promised robotaxi-level self-driving capabilities on HW3 cars, which is plain ridiculous.

Tesla could also blame regulators as this is the new language that you have to agree with when buying what is now called “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)”:

The currently enabled Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. Full autonomy will be dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) features evolve, your vehicle will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.

On the very same day that Tesla presented its new Robotaxi, Former President Donald Trump, who Tesla CEO Elon Musk is financially backing to become the next president and who he says he is “all-in” on, said that he would “ban autonomous vehicles on American roads.”

This situation is quite a mess to say the least.