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For about nine geezerhood , Elon Musk has promised Tesla vehicles had the computer hardware need to support a self - driving car . This week , he made his late admission that many are not .
Musk said on a conference call Wednesday eve that Tesla railroad car equipped with so - called Hardware 3 will need an raise before they can stand unsupervised self - drive software the automaker is still explicate . These Hardware 3 vehicles , trade between 2019 and 2023 , are fit out with the older version of the computer that powers the company ’s “ Full ego - Driving ( Supervised ) ” number one wood assistance software .
“ I think the honest solvent is that we ’re locomote to have to advance people ’s Hardware 3 computer for those that have buy Full ego - Driving , ” he say . “ That ’s go to be abominable and difficult , but we ’ll get it done . ”
This is not surprising to anyone who has pursue the company ’s progress closely .
Broadly , Musk has repeatedly overpromised on Tesla ’s timeline for trade a fomite that can drive autonomously without human interposition . But the society has now repeatedly capitulated on its 2016claimthat every railroad car it was building had the hardware required to one day full drive itself with the flip of a switching — an unfulfilled promise that has been key to Tesla ’s valuation for years . ( Tesla has sincedeletedthat blog post from its website . )
Tesla made that call in October 2016 , several months after it parted way with Mobileye , which provided the original estimator for its Autopilot machine driver help software . Tesla dubbed its initial in - household computer hardware — the hardware that it was cite in the 2016 announcement — “ Hardware 2.0 . ” One twelvemonth by and by it started integrating a “ Hardware 2.5 ” computer .
Neither of those estimator were up to the project , though , evidenced by the fact that when Tesla start shipping cars with a “ Hardware 3 ” computer in 2019 , owners with old hardware had to upgrade to this novel figurer in Holy Order to buy the supervised Full Self - Driving package . Tesla initially charged for this upgrade , but one proprietor tookthe company to small claim courtand got a judge to rein that Tesla ’s 2016 hope was “ sham advertising , ” and that the upgrades should be free .
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Tesla has since propel on to building cars with “ Hardware 4 ” computers , which had someowners wonderingwhat that intend for Hardware 3 - outfit cars . Musk and other Tesla executives had said they believe they could germinate software that would enable Hardware 3 cars to aim themselves unsupervised , and one even repeat that title on Wednesday . But Musk adopt up by saying he ’d given up .
His entree on Wednesday only further emphasizes that Tesla and Musk were wrong when they made that notorious annunciation in 2016 .
Musk was univocal and defiant at the time , too , decease so far as saying that the media was “ vote out citizenry ” by writing “ negative ” articles about crashes call for Tesla ’s number one wood assistance system , Autopilot . “ You effectively deter multitude from using an autonomous vehicle , ” he enunciate on a league call in 2016 , a sentence when fully autonomous vehicles did not exist .
That is not the case today , as Waymo maneuver a commercial-grade robotaxi service in multiple cities .
Musk said Wednesday that Tesla intends to prove it can do the same with a buffer course of study that it hopesto launch in Austin this coming June . He then wants to ship a software update to automobile with new “ Hardware 4 ” computers that will allow them to repulse themselves . For these reasonableness , he claimed 2025 will be “ perhaps the most authoritative year in Tesla ’s history . ”
