Tesla skips shareholders' No. 5 question on HW3 upgrades on Q3 call
Tesla didn't address a top-5 Say question (557 votes) on free computer upgrades for HW3 owners during its Q3 call — uncertainty over compensation for older cars remains.
Electrek reports that a question ranked fifth on Say (557 votes, 652,900 shares) — whether HW3 owners will get a free hardware upgrade and when Tesla will lay out a plan — went unanswered on the Q3 call. IR head Travis Axelrod read nine Say questions and wrapped up; HW3, AI3 and retrofits were never mentioned on the call, and no analyst asked.
AI head Ashok Elluswamy said the same software running Robotaxi and Cybercab will reach customer cars with FSD v15, with the first customer cars joining the Robotaxi fleet around Q2 next year.
Background: on the April Q1 call Musk admitted HW3 can't achieve unsupervised FSD (about one-eighth of HW4's memory bandwidth), and in July said an upgrade would make sense "at some point." No cost, timing or process has been announced. Class actions are pending in the US, China and Australia, and a Dutch claim includes about 7,000 HW3 owners. Electrek reads the omission as a way to avoid cost and legal exposure.
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