24 Aug 2024, 15:35 UTC • By: driving itself from coast to coast. That has yet to happen. Photo: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons Elon Musk was an avid tweeter even before buying the social media platform and turning it into X. In 2019, he said that all of the now-Texas-based automaker's "cars made since Oct 2016 either have the hardware needed for FSD or are trivially upgradeable." Since 2020, eccentric Elon Musk has been adamant about Full Self-Driving's success. He has declared on multiple occasions that solving autonomy would be the difference between Tesla being worth trillions or nothing. But it's not just Elon Musk who confirmed or promised all sorts of wild self-driving abilities. Ashok Elluswamy, a robotics engineer who is Tesla's director of Autopilot, said in 2022 that "every Tesla that has been built over the last several years has the hardware to make the car drive itself." Just one year later, the automaker started delivering cars with Hardware 4, an upgraded version of the computer that was supposed to turn all Teslas into reliable robotaxis at the press of a button (or a couple of them). The debate about Hardware 3 vehicles remaining eligible for full FSD upgrades started when Elon Musk publicly admitted that it had become more complicated for his company's engineers to deliver the Hardware 4 updates to Hardware 3-equipped EVs. Photo: @greentheonly via Twitter On August 21, 2024, Tesla pushed a renewed version of FSD (12.5.1.4) to its fleet of EVs with Hardware 3, but the same Ashok Elluswamy admitted that it was necessary to adapt the update for the older cars. "We were able to achieve similar performance as the AI4 12.5 release with a relatively smaller model for AI3 (i.e., Hardware 3)," explained the expert. Now, owners of Hardware 3-equipped Tesla are wondering if they will be left behind as FSD is slowly but surely being turned into a system that learns from humans and digests that information to (at some point in the future) make all the right driving decisions while active on public roads. The future of mobility doesn't include everyone, apparently This saga about promising that every Tesla manufactured from October 19, 2016, would be able to become autonomous at some point without requiring extra hardware upgrades started after a dedicated fan of the company said on the website formerly known as Twitter that "neither Tesla nor Elon Musk never 'promised' to" give paying customers EVs capable of running a SAE J3016 Level 5-capable Full Self-Driving software. Essentially, they were referring to the highest level of automation possible. An SAE Level 5-capable car does not need the driver to pay attention to anything or even a steering wheel, for that matter. Ultimately, if you are now thinking that I am somehow against Elon Musk or Tesla for whatever reason you might imagine, I would like you to check out my reasoning for why Tesla's CEO was completely entitled to his payout. Keep in mind that the article was published when many people were actively saying that he shouldn't receive so much money in the form of stock options. Publicly traded companies and huge corporations with a global presence, such as Tesla, need to be held accountable more often. Otherwise, we risk "going with the flow" and waking up to another 2008-like scenario, this time limited to only the automotive world. The ultimate question is: Should Tesla refund the cost of FSD to owners of Hardware 3-equipped vehicles? Hardware 5 (or AI 5, like Elon Musk calls it) is just around the corner. When you want your car to return, tap Summon on your phone. It will eventually find you even if you are on the other side of the country