Musk: 4M Tesla Cars Can Never Run Unsupervised Driving

Elon Musk confirmed on Tesla's quarterly earnings call that approximately 4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with the company's Hardware 3 (HW3) computer will never be capable of running unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, despite years of promises that the cars were merely awaiting a software update to achieve this capability. Musk stated that HW3 has only one-eighth the memory bandwidth of Hardware 4, which he identified as insufficient for the demanding processing requirements of unsupervised autonomous driving. The admission marks a significant reversal from previous assurances and could expose Tesla to legal challenges from customers who purchased vehicles expecting future FSD functionality. To address the limitation, Tesla will offer affected customers either a discounted trade-in for vehicles already equipped with Hardware 4 (now referred to as AI4), or the option to retrofit their current cars with new computers and cameras. Musk acknowledged that the upgrade process is "painful and difficult," requiring replacements of multiple hardware components. Given the scale of the undertaking, Tesla plans to establish "micro-factories" in major metropolitan areas rather than relying solely on service centers, which Musk described as "extremely slow" and inefficient for handling the volume of retrofits. The revelation contradicts earlier statements from Tesla's leadership, including Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja's October 2025 claim that the company had "not completely given up on HW3." Musk himself first acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 cars would require hardware upgrades for customers who had purchased FSD. Tesla faces ongoing legal pressure, including a class action lawsuit in Australia alleging that the company made misrepresentations about the hardware's capability to support autonomous driving.