Tesla
Tesla CEO says his company will upgrade HW3 vehicles to run latest FSD

Tesla CEO, Elon Musk has said that his company will have to upgrade the HW3 (AI3) vehicles in order to run the latest FSD software. According to Musk, HW3 vehicle owners who have bundled the FSD during purchase will be getting an upgrade, and chances for monthly subscription holders to receive the same treatment are nowhere near.
“That’s going to be painful and difficult, but we’ll get it done. Now I’m kinda glad that not that many people bought the FSD package haha,” said Musk during the Q1 2025 Earnings call.
Full Self Driving is an autonomous driving solution developed by Tesla for its vehicles. It can self-drive on public roads and highways, detect on-road objects, make turns, react to stop signs, and more. Its current version is supervised, which means, a driver will have to monitor all movement upfront and take control when needed.
At last year’s We Robot event, Musk unveiled a plan to rollout unsupervised FSD with future products including Cybercab. This version will also be available with the latest generation of consumer-based vehicles.
That brings us to the HW4 (AI4), Tesla’s most advanced hardware, which received the FSD v13, the company’s latest FSD version with many new upgrades.
Meanwhile, HW3 users were limited to FSD v12. That triggered concerns from customers about whether they’ll also get an upgrade to the latest FSD version.
During the Q3 2024 Earning, Musk stated this situation by saying “We are not 100% sure”, that’s what he said about the upcoming FSD version compatibility for HW3 cars.
He said that the safety standard on HW3 is lower than the company can offer with HW4 vehicles. However, he did promise that these old vehicles would get a retrofit if they failed to meet the compatibility.
For now, the Tesla CEO has shared no expected upgrade timeline to start the HW3 vehicles.