Tesla Owner's DIY Upgrade Raises Questions About Company's Ability to Deliver Promised Self-Driving Technology

A Tesla owner's DIY upgrade from HW3 to HW4 has raised questions about the company's ability to deliver its promised self-driving technology.

There are millions of Tesla vehicles on the road today that were sold on the promise of full autonomy, but without hardware capable of doing so. Tesla has hemmed and hawed about solutions to this problem, but one owner has taken it into his own hands.

In late 2016, Tesla announced on its company blog that "All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware." However, the original Tesla self-driving hardware, or HW1, would not be good enough to fully power Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software. Tesla came out with a new version, HW2, and then another, HW3.

For Tesla owners who had purchased the FSD package, Tesla offered free upgrades to HW3. However, even HW3 proved not to be capable enough to let cars drive themselves. So, now we have HW4 (which Tesla has started calling AI4 to capitalize on the AI bubble), and HW4+. Tesla says that HW4 is finally enough for full self-driving tasks, but it also promises a future AI5 and AI6 coming at some point.

The HW3->HW4 swap has proven to be more difficult than HW2->HW3 was, as it requires upgrading the cameras. Tesla says that it's more than a simple swapout, and given that there are millions of HW2 and HW3 cars, there's going to be a lot of parts and a lot of labor involved.

However, one Tesla owner, Michal Gapinski, has taken it upon himself to upgrade his 2022 Model 3 from HW3 to HW4. Michal, a "tinkerer by heart" and the owner of a company that adds various capabilities of Android software to Tesla cars, describes the process as "not as bad as it seemed" and requiring "light ECU hacking." He has posted about his success on Twitter and has shared photos of the project in progress.

## DIY Upgrade Success Raises Questions About Tesla's Ability to Deliver

Michal's experience suggests that the upgrade may be simpler than Tesla has claimed, and that the company may be able to implement a process or machines to accomplish it more efficiently at scale. Michal says that Tesla could "offer a paid upgrade," but given that the company sold these cars with self-driving hardware, it is required to deliver that hardware. Court cases in multiple territories have found Tesla liable to pay back owners for this false advertising, so it is on Tesla to do the right thing and offer these upgrades for free, not as a paid option, for every owner who purchased an FSD license.

While the Tesla "microfactory" plan seemed like nonsense from the moment Musk proposed it, Michal's experience suggests that maybe it is more possible than we thought. Tesla made a big deal out of how difficult it would be to do these replacements, but if one man can do it on his own, surely Tesla can.

## Tesla's Current Plan Raises More Questions Than Answers

Tesla's current plan is to run out the clock, allowing cars to gradually move off of purchased FSD and onto subscribed FSD. This plan allows Tesla to sell the system with its current capabilities, rather than promised future capabilities, and gets rid of the liability that the company created for itself. However, this plan is not without its risks, as more and more owners will seek legal remedies, create legal precedents, and continue to be a thorn in Tesla's side until the company does the thing it has promised all along: provide level 5 self-driving capability to all owners who have purchased it, along with the hardware they bought in the first place.

| Model | HW Version | Cameras | Labor | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | HW2 | HW2 | Standard | Quick service job | | HW3 | HW3 | Standard | Quick service job | | HW3 | HW4 | Upgraded | Light ECU hacking | | HW4 | HW4+ | Upgraded | More complex process |

Note: The table above is based on the information provided in the source text and is intended to illustrate the differences between the various HW versions and the process required to upgrade from HW3 to HW4.