Elon Musk admits millions of Tesla owners need upgrades for true ‘Full Self-Driving’

Source: TechCrunch

Elon Musk said Wednesday that millions of Tesla owners will need hardware upgrades to run a future version of its Full Self‑Driving (FSD) software that doesn’t require human supervision — after he and Tesla spent years promising that wouldn’t be the case.

The admission could open the company up to legal challenges from customers who bought Teslas on the belief that the cars were just one software update away from being able to drive themselves.

Musk’s statement on the earnings call

• Cars equipped with the third version of Tesla’s driver‑assistance hardware, known as Hardware 3, will need a new computer and new cameras to run the advanced FSD version.

• Musk said the replacements will be so burdensome that Tesla is looking at building “micro‑factories” in major metropolitan areas so service centers don’t become overwhelmed:

  “If it’s done just at the service center, it is extremely slow to do so, and inefficient. So we basically need, like many production lines, to make the change.”

• Hardware 3 owners have spent years asking for a straight answer about whether they could run the advanced FSD version — which Tesla has not yet released or proven capable of. Those cars were sold between 2019 and 2023.

• In January 2025, Musk acknowledged that Hardware 3 was insufficient for more advanced FSD versions:

  “I think the honest answer is that we’re going to have to upgrade people’s Hardware 3 computer for those that have bought Full Self‑Driving. That’s going to be painful and difficult, but we’ll get it done.”

  (Source: TechCrunch)

Contrasting comment from CFO Vaibhav Taneja

Six months earlier, in October 2025, Tesla’s chief financial officer said the company might still be able to make FSD work on existing Hardware 3 hardware:

“We have not completely given up on HW3.”

(Source: Teslarati)

Tesla announced Wednesday that it will still release slightly more advanced versions of the current FSD software to Hardware 3 owners, but Musk was unequivocal that upgrades will be needed for anything beyond that:

“Hardware 3 simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD.”