According to a well-known Tesla hacker, Tesla has designed a new self-driving computer retrofit, but it’s not even for HW3 cars.
Teska has two primary computational hardware generations for its self-driving program: HW3 cars (up until 2023) and HW4 cars (since 2023), sometimes called AI4.
The computer in the HW4 suite has much more computing power and uses different cameras.
Since Tesla had promised to deliver “unsupervised self-driving” on both hardware, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that software development on the older HW3 cars that have been waiting longer would lead about 6 months ahead of newer HW4 cars.
Tesla gave up on the strategy last year and now releases all new software on HW4 vehicles first, and HW3 owners are stuck with much older and less-performing versions of Tesla’s (Supervised) Full Self-Driving package.
As we have previously reported, most people following the program agree that it is impossible for Tesla to deliver on its unsupervised self-driving promises on HW3 cars – something that Tesla finally started to hint at late last year.
Tesla would have to offer a new computer retrofit to HW3 car owners and even then, many doubts that this would lead to Tesla delivering on its self-driving promises.
Now, with this context, we are encouraged to see Green, a well-known Tesla hacker who often finds new features in software and Tesla computers, discovering a new Tesla self-driving computer that appears to be meant as a retrofit:
I just came across a Model Y HW4 car computer that’s not unlike any other I’ve seen. It has the front bumper cam connector populated. Before you say it’s just a Model Y Juniper refresh car computer, it’s not because it does not actually have a second screen connector.
Here are a few pictures of the new Tesla computer:
Greem believes that this computer is going to be a retrofit for existing HW4 vehicles:
This car computer is also labelled “MY Reloaded” (where as previously it was just “MY” ) and according to the other markings it’s a service replacement unit. Overall it almost looks like Tesla is gearing to replace old hw4 with new ones and add a bumper cam while they are at it?
It can’t replace HW3 computers since it doesn’t have the same connectors for cameras.
We previously reported that Tesla had launched a new computer internally called “AI4.1”. It’s not clear if this is related to this new “MY Reloaded” computer.
Since this is now the only HW4 Model Y hardware in Tesla’s part catalog, it’s likely the new updated computer that we previously reported and that the automaker is having issues with.
The new information that is interesting is that it is apparently retrofittable to existing HW4 Tesla vehicles.
Electrek’s Take
For a second, I thought Tesla was doing the right thing and upgrading HW3 computers, but no.
The bumper cam is something that we are also seeing on the new Model Y and Tesla likely is starting to see that this is needed to achieve higher levels of autonomy.
I doubt that you will be able to retrofit that unless you already have wiring harnesses for it, but it doesn’t matter much anyway.
I, like many, have serious doubt that Tesla will even deliver unsupervised self-driving on HW4 cars. HW3 cars, you can forget it.