Tesla Won’t Offer Future Full Self-Driving Hardware Retrofits: The Pros & Cons for Current Owners

Tesla is not planning to offer Tesla owners the option to retrofit next-generation Full Self-Driving hardware on vehicles that have already been produced, which carries several positive and negative implications.

Pros

The Promise of Full Self-Driving on Current Hardware

By not planning to offer hardware retrofits, Tesla is essentially promising that Full Self-Driving will be achieved on current-generation Hardware 3.0.

Hardware 3.0, also known literally as the Full Self-Driving Computer, is a sophisticated chipset developed in-house by Tesla with a focus on neural network processing.

Tesla’s built prior to 2019 with the previous Hardware 2.0/2.5 do require a present-day retrofit, which Tesla will provide for vehicles equipped with the option or for a nominal fee of $1,000 with a subscription.

The latest version of the Full Self-Driving Beta continues to be built for the Full Self-Driving Computer, and has required no additional hardware upgrades or retrofits for a relatively capable level 3 solution that nonetheless necessitates driver intervention.

The good news is that Full Self-Driving Capability should be available on Hardware 3.0, even if Tesla could backtrack on not utilizing a radar module for Tesla Vision.

No Additional Costs or Service Appointments

Ideally, Tesla owners won’t be tempted to pay for hardware to make Full Self-Driving a better experience or to schedule a service appointment.

A Clear Vehicle Upgrade Path

Tesla owners will however have the option to upgrade to a newer Tesla, experiencing all of the refinements that Tesla makes on a regular basis to the build and drive quality should they want to benefit from the improved Full Self-Driving hardware…

Cons

Increasingly Better Full Self-Driving Functionality

While Tesla is expected to offer a level 4 solution on current hardware, progressively-improved chipsets should offer the processing power for higher quality versions of Full Self-Driving.

What this essentially means according to Elon Musk is that Hardware 3.0 may be 200%-300% safer or better than a human driver, then for the sake of example Hardware 4.0 might be 500%-600% safer or better than a human.

Then there will be Hardware 5.0 beyond that, which should offer a similar step change.

It’s important to highlight Moore’s Law, which applies across the technology sector: transistors have the potential to double nearly every two years, enabling increasingly better and more affordable computers.

We’ve continued to see this incremental transition occur in the computing space, which has also extended to smartphones which have become significantly more powerful and capable with each annual iteration.

Full Self-Driving, as complex as it is, offers no exception: like any computer, the hardware powering the software and incredibly sophisticated neural networks will only become iteratively and significantly better over time.

No Option to Add New Hardware

Should Tesla owners want to add the improved Full Self-Driving hardware to their vehicle, they won’t have the option even if they’re willing to pay for a retrofit.

Unlike software, which will be updated over-the-air for as long as possible, Tesla is now making the distinction with Full Self-Driving that it’s not practical to offer retrofits on new hardware with added complexity.

Unfortunately, the cost of a subsequent retrofit to Hardware 4.0 will be too significant and unlike Hardware 3.0 not economically feasible.

An Imminent Release

As Hardware 4.0 is set to launch with Cybertruck, it will reach production no later than this coming summer.

It’s possible that Hardware 4.0 will launch even sooner on the version of Model Y produced at Giga Berlin, as the vehicle has been spotted with upgraded Full Self-Driving hardware including new cameras.

Thus Tesla owners, particularly those most enthusiastic about Full Self-Driving Capability that have likely already purchased the option, could be tempted by the benchmarks and demonstrations of the improved capability enabled by the more powerful Hardware 4.0.

However, there’s no upgrade path provided besides upgrading and currently recouping little-to-no value on a trade-in or cash offer for the added cost of Full Self-Driving Capability on their current Tesla.

Conclusion

Ultimately, this is the way that technology functions: step changes every few years that can dramatically improve performance as well as cost.

We can’t blame Tesla for offering increasingly better hardware that the automaker doesn’t find worthwhile to retrofit on current hardware that should nonetheless be capable of a polished version of Full Self-Driving.

Tesla owners with vehicles that are equipped with Full Self-Driving are still early adopters, which traditionally carries high cost and limited functionality in tech while also offering the earliest access to the future — and that’s all that they can ask for today.

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