Elon Musk: Older Tesla cars set for full self-driving chip upgrade in Q4
Tesla boss Elon Musk says the company will "most likely" be able to replace the Nvidia chip in older Tesla models with its own FSD chip by the end of the year. The new computer plus software updates promise to bring full self-driving (FSD) to Tesla vehicles.
Featured
Musk made the claim in a tweet in the past few hours, referring to the FSD computer the company unveiled to investors in April along with a plan to test a network of one million 'robotaxis' by the end of 2020.
SEE: Autonomous vehicles and the enterprise (ZDNet/TechRepublic special feature) | Download the free PDF version (TechRepublic)
Musk says all Autopilot Hardware 2.0 (HW2+) vehicles can be upgraded to full self-driving with the FSD chip. HW2 was released in 2016.
"All HW2+ cars are upgradable to full self-driving capability with Tesla FSD computer and all production in past few months has FSD computer," Musk tweeted.
Tesla shipment estimates by MIT researcher Lex Fridman suggest Tesla has delivered over 500,000 HW2 vehicles, and Musk reckons it can ship about 500,000 more with FSD already built-in.
"This is why it's possible for Tesla to have a million robotaxis by end of 2020 if we upgrade existing HW2 fleet of ~500k & make at least ~500k FSD cars," Musk said.
Tesla in May raised the price of its Full Self Driving package to $6,000 from the $5,000 it announced in March.
Full self-driving confusingly isn't actually fully autonomous driving, but does include on-ramp/off-ramp assistance, the ability to change lanes on the highway, auto parking, and summon.
Musk has caused controversy over his insistence that lidar sensors, which are used by Waymo, are unnecessary and that Tesla's neural network is sufficient.
End of Q4, most likely
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 8, 2019
All HW2+ cars are upgradable to full self-driving capability with Tesla FSD computer & all production in past few months has FSD computer
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 8, 2019
More on Elon Musk, Tesla and self-driving cars
- Elon Musk on Tesla's Autopilot: In a year, 'a human intervening will decrease safety'
- Elon Musk's new Tesla: Self-driving Model Y SUV out in 2020 from $47,000
- Elon Musk: $35,000 Tesla Model 3 arrives but job cuts coming as sales shift online
- Tesla starts to release its cars' open-source Linux software code
- Tesla fatal crash: Parents of dead teen sue over alleged faulty battery
- New NTSB Tesla fatal crash report: Model S battery reignited twice after Florida crash
- NTSB's Tesla fatal crash report: Autopilot sped up, no braking in final seconds
- Tesla Model S allegedly in Autopilot hits parked police car
- Elon Musk: Tesla Autopilot gets full self-driving features in August update
- Tesla's Autopilot: Cheat sheet TechRepublic
- Tesla to close retail stores, only sell cars online CNET