Hardware 3 Owners Are About to Get Bad News

Welcome to another episode of Behind the Wheel. My name is Rob Greenlee, and I have some terrific news. Over last night, I got my update to my Full Self-Driving software. So the car is currently in Full Self-Driving mode right now with the latest Hardware 3 update, which is the 12.6.3 update with some updates and changes that I've noticed here. This is my first drive with it. I'm sure Many of you out there have probably already gotten this update. Obviously, if I got it, probably a bunch of other people are in the process of getting updated right now as well. And I'm very curious to see what the changes are on this. And I'm also to kind of set it up here a little bit. I will drive with it. I see some changes on the screen. I see it shows Up here in the upper left-hand corner, it says standard. So there's some UI changes that have happened here as well. And supposedly there's some improvements to how it handles freeway driving. It doesn't hesitate randomly as much, but we shall see on this, this particular drive. I haven't seen a lot of changes to it that I thoroughly understand yet. But I'm, I'm gonna be digging into it here in the next, uh, few minutes to see how it, how it does and to see if there's any, any big improvements to it. But so I've been thinking a lot about this whole update process and what it means given all of the news that's come out about Elon's statement that Hardware 3 is not going to be capable of really moving beyond probably where it's at right now. And I think that's been growing in its perception that was going to be the case. So I do have a question about where do we go from here as far as a Hardware 3 platform? Are we going to see any more software updates to the AI 3 Hardware 3? Platform that's out there in such large numbers. I know Elon did state that those that have prepaid for Full Self-Driving in that large payment, I think at one point it was $12,000 and $15,000, um, dollars will get some sort of an update. Now, he wasn't very specific about what that update to the hardware side would actually be. So we shall see. There's speculation that I'm hearing online, if you have not heard, that there's some interest out there in making possibly a new upgrade type of piece of hardware that will fit in this car. The problem with the Hardware 4 is, I guess, at its core, is that there's a different power need for the Hardware 4 platform than the current wiring capability of the Hardware 3 platform has. So the speculation that I'm hearing is, is that a, a new kind of processor install unit that's kind of built for the Hardware 3 platform will have to be made with the power, the, the less power capability. And maybe all they'll do is maybe update the chips to some degree and add more RAM. And L2 memory or something like that so it can store a larger kind of, kind of operating system of sorts for the vehicle. So that may be what's coming. There has been a history of an upgrade path for the Model 3 and the earlier versions of the hardware stack going back to like the 2017, 2018 models. Where it was a 2.5 hardware, um, and, and many car users were able to get an upgrade to 3.0. So there's speculation that will be the case, is that we will see some sort of an incremental update to this, to the hardware. It likely won't go all the way up to the full capability of a hardware 4 processor unit. In these cars. It'll be something less, but it will be an improvement. And I'm sure that we'll do a lot of testing to see if it's capable of running the unsupervised version of the Full Self-Driving software. So we'll have to see what comes from that. If you did spend the, the large amount of money to get the Full Self-Driving full stack with the anticipation of getting continuing to get upgrades forever, then those cars will be probably the priority on getting updated. So, which makes sense. I mean, all those people paid a lot of money for the full self-driving with anticipation of being able to, you know, have the whole thing without having to pay a monthly fee. But I pay a monthly subscription, so obviously I'm interested in trying to find out if there's a possibility that I can get a hardware update to this, or am I gonna have to go out and buy a new car? Well, I think either way, the more I'm thinking about it, what I'm gathering from what I'm hearing, very little of this is confirmed by Tesla, is that if I want to have that full version 4 and potentially hardware 5, AI 5 experience, I'm probably gonna have to buy a new car. And the question that I am faced with right now is, do I wait a few months? And wait until the Hardware 5 cars come out. And I don't know what the timeframe is for that. And then if I do get a new car, it'll be to the Hardware 5 platform, which will have a little bit more of a, I guess, a buffer for what the upgrade path might, might be as you look to the future, because it is possible. We've been through it now with Hardware 3 that Hardware 4 at some point, once, once they get into version 14 or version 15 of the Full Self-Driving stack, back that even the hardware 4 cars will not be able to continue to get upgraded. So this is moving pretty fast, and I think, uh, you kind of have to think a little bit long-term with what's going on here with these cars. And waiting a few months, probably the latter half of the year to probably after June, probably is when the i5 hardware platform will probably come out in, in the newer models is probably what we'll see happen. And that may be the best time to kind of move into a new Tesla. So that's increasingly what I'm thinking about. And I would love to get the upgrade if it's only a couple thousand dollars to at least get me to the higher level or the version 13 at least. Before I trade it in or sell my car and get the AI5 platform. So that's what I'd like to do. But so far, as far as how the car's driving with my first drive here, it seems to be pretty smooth. Now granted, I haven't been going through any kind of major intersections or difficult situations, but it, it does seem to be driving a little bit smoother and I haven't felt any kind of need to get involved in the driving of the car, so that's definitely a good sign. I have heard from commenters in my comment area, and you, you can go find this in my last episode where I actually talked about the delays in the 12.6 update, is in my last episode video that I made in this series talking about that. And in that thread, it talks about some of the shortcomings of the, of this version of it, the 12.6 version. And so we shall see if I experience any of those. I'm sure I probably will, but I do know that some of the, the reviews that were out there on this version 12.6 were in the, I, I believe they were 12.6.2 So I believe this 12.6.3 is a version of the software that they maybe got some bugs back on and maybe they fixed some of that stuff. So we shall see if that's the case and why there was such a long gap between the updates this time. I think it's been like maybe 3 months or something like that since I had my last software update to, to Full Self-Driving. So, so anyway, those are my thoughts. And as I drive with the car and, and experience what it's doing, it's not really having to work hard on this route that I'm going to. I'm on my way down to New Haven, Connecticut, so trying to go down there and go to a different grocery store. So on my weekend trips to grocery stores, so So I would love to hear from you and get your experience and what your feedback is and what you are experiencing. Then maybe update me on what I should be looking for in this car with this software update and what all of you are thinking about what you're going to do with your Hardware 3 cars that you have. And there's a couple million of us out there, so it's a big group of people that are faced with this same dilemma that I'm grappling with right now to figure out what my path forward is and do the, the right thing. I would love to be able to keep this car. The car seems to be doing terrific. I haven't had any problems with the car at all. I've really only had to add wiper fluid to, to the car and rotate the tires, and everything else has been going very smooth. I've had a very safe experience with the car, and I've really kind of paid attention to the car too and not taken anything for granted. With the car, and that's kept me out of trouble. Now, there's been many situations where I've been driving and the car has not done the right thing, and I've had to intervene. And I anticipate that's probably still the case with even the 12.6.3 update here, but hopefully they'll come out with a 12.6.4 and a 12.6.5 where they'll continue to fix any kind of abnormalities in the functioning of the vehicle, maybe we'll never get up to the 13.0 version capability with the current hardware. And, but I think Tesla's gonna have to find kind of like this place to end, right, with the Hardware 3 that is a good enough experience for their owners that don't necessarily want to upgrade to another vehicle or feel they don't need to upgrade to another vehicle. And I think there is gonna be a tier here that a certain amount of Tesla owners will say, well, this is good enough. And I guess the question Tesla is going to have to face is what's the value of that? Are they going to continue to be able to charge the same amount every month for access to a static software installation as they do to other car owners that have happened to have the hardware for that are continuing to get updates and improvements for the same amount of money. So I would think at some point they will probably just bundle this with any, any car and you probably won't have to pay anything extra for it. Or if you do have to pay extra to have the Full Self-Driving turned on these Hardware 3 cars, that it will probably be maybe half this price, maybe $50 a month or something like that as a concession And then those that paid for the full self-driving stack will probably get that hardware update that at least get them to unsupervised full self-driving. I think that's the real goal that Tesla has, but even that may cap out at some point. So, so, well, thank you for being with me and hearing my diatribe of my dilemma. And I think that dilemma is going through a lot of people's minds right now about what they want to do. With these cars. So those that are really paying attention to this issue, and like I said, I appreciate you being here and following my channel. If you like following my channel, please go subscribe to my channel and you'll get notified. Okay, I did see the car kind of get into the intersection there, so I, I did see a, a, a mistake there that the car made. So kind of a weird deal there. So I had to— it started to drive through a, like, a four-way intersection that had a stoplight on it. So, so that, that was a— I think it saw a green turn signal, kind of light turn, and that caused it to go, and then it realized that it still had a red light and it stopped. But they stopped right in the middle of the intersection. So, so anyway, we're getting on the freeway here, so let's see how it does in this process. It's kind of tricky. Oh, it's stopping. All right, let's see if it has— if it accelerates quickly. Okay, it managed that complicated on-ramp safely. So that, that was good. It was a challenging decision that it needed to make. So that was good right at the end of my video to have a couple of challenging things with the software. So like I said, thank you so much for watching, and I'll go do my grocery shopping and I'll bring another video back to you after I've driven the software a little bit longer, and maybe I'll come across some more bugs that Tesla still needs to work on. So thanks, bye-bye.