Elon Musk promised that legacy Tesla vehicles with the old HW3 FSD computer may be retrofitted with the HW4 goods to run unsupervised FSD, if necessary. That promise is quite far away, it seems, at least when it comes to the Robotaxi platform.
Elon Musk initially said that Tesla would allow individual owners to add or remove their cars from its Robotaxi ride-share services at the beginning 2026. He clarified that the platform is currently in a pilot phase, but that it will eventually allow owners to earn money by lending their cars to the fleets of driverless roboticaxis when they are not in use.
Elon said that again at the last quarterly earnings call. He was referring to the cheapest Model Y, which is expected to be released during Q4.
The timeframe for opening the Robotaxi fleet to vehicles that aren’t owned by Tesla has now slipped into the more nebulous “next year,” and Elon even admits that Tesla hasn’t “really thought hard about that.”
Tesla is apparently still focused on expanding the Robotaxi service area in Austin, then launching it in California, Arizona, Nevada and other areas with its own Model Y units running on a specialized unsupervised FSD software branch. Elon admits that Tesla still hasn’t opened the Robotaxi fleet for vehicles that aren’t owned by Tesla.
Tesla appears to be focused on expanding the Robotaxi service in Austin and then launching the service in California, Arizona and Nevada with its own Model Ys running on a specialized, unsupervised FSD branch. Tesla’s CFO said that to add individual owners to its fleet, it must think of a process to validate them, even down to the tread on the tires. It hasn’t done this yet.
Older Tesla cars will not be able to earn money on the Robotaxi platform, as their HW3 computer is too slow. At least at first:
We want to get unsupervised done with Hardware 4 first. After this is done, we will then look at what needs to be done with the Hardware 3 vehicles. I’m saying that the first priority is to get unsupervised drivers out of the cars, and then we will go back to see what else we need to work on.
This doesn’t sound encouraging for Tesla owners who have old HW3 cars, which is the majority. Unlike the previous quarter’s call, Elon did not mention his free HW4 upgrade promise if Tesla cannot make the unsupervised FSD required for a robotaxi system run on the old Hardware 3 computer.
Tesla appears to be focusing on making unsupervised FSD run on newer HW4 cars and overcoming regulatory hurdles in order to launch it to end users. They are also working on the “spectacular” AI5 processor that is so powerful, it may need to be neutered before export.
It is less clear than it was a quarter ago where this leaves owners of older HW3 Teslas in terms of lending them to Robotaxi and earning money.
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– 1814 articles on Notebookcheck published since 2021
Having been fascinated by technology since the industrial espionage and pixelized Nintendos of the 1980s, Daniel opened a gaming lounge when personal computers and consoles remained a rarity. Today, the fascination is no longer with specs and speeds, but rather the lifestyle that the computers in our pockets, houses, and cars have forced us into, from the endless scroll and privacy hazards to authenticating our every move and bit of existence.
