Musk pledges to fix 2019-2023 Teslas that can’t fully self drive

Tesla still doesn’t have a solid solution for giving Hardware 3 cars full self-driving (FSD) capabilities, based on what Elon Musk said during the company’s latest earnings call. The automaker has known for some time that its Hardware 3-equipped vehicles are not capable of unattended FSD, even though the company built the system specifically to give its cars that capability. Tesla used Hardware 3 on cars manufactured from 2019 until early 2023 before Hardware 4 shipped.

During a previous earnings call in January 2025, Musk admitted that the company was “going to have to upgrade the Hardware 3 computer of the people who bought into fully autonomous driving.” During Tesla’s latest earnings conference call, Musk said that Hardware 3 “simply doesn’t have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD.” Tesla thought it could do this at one point, but Hardware 3 apparently has 1/8th the memory bandwidth of Hardware 4. Musk explained that memory bandwidth is “one of the key elements” needed for unsupervised FSD.

Tesla will offer to upgrade and replace computers and cameras in older vehicles, but does not yet have a concrete plan in place. “I think over time it will make sense for us to convert all Hardware 3 cars to Hardware 4,” he said. Doing it in service centers would be extremely slow, Musk admitted. About 4 million cars are equipped with Hardware 3, although not everyone has paid for FSD. Still, to be able to effectively replace the hardware in its vehicles, Musk said Tesla will need to create “micro-factories or small factories in major metropolitan areas.” However, he gave no indication that Tesla had already started building these microfactories, or even that construction was already planned. He said that in the meantime, the company is going to release FSD version 14 for Hardware 3 towards the end of June.

Musk also said during the same conference call that Tesla’s Fremont factory would begin manufacturing the company’s Optimus humanoid robots in late July or August. The Tesla CEO is known for announcing very optimistic and aggressive deadlines. Tesla made the decision to phase out its Model X and S cars earlier this year, so it could convert its Fremont facility into the Optimus factory. The latest Model S and