Tesla Talks FSD Hardware 4.0, but There Will Not Be Retrofits

Tesla's new hardware 4.0 is close, but don't expect retrofits

Tesla

Tesla's upcoming FSD hardware, hardware 4.0, is nearing completion, and although there is limited information about it, it sounds like it'll bring significant improvements. It's yet to be known when the new hardware will debut, but it is clear Tesla will not be retrofitting the existing fleet.

No Upgrades From FSD Hardware 3.0

Regarding upgrading hardware 3 to hardware 4, Elon Musk told investors:

"The cost and difficulty of retrofitting hardware 3 with Hardware 4 is quite significant. So, it would not be, I think, economically feasible to do so."

Musk said Hardware 3 is five years old but, "is still the most efficient inference computer in the world."

What Will Be In Hardware 4.0

It's believed that the new hardware will use 5-megapixel cameras; the current cameras are 1.2 megapixels. Also, some leaked pictures appear to reduce the amount of front-facing cameras from three to two and allow for heaters and fans.

The higher-resolution cameras will give Autopilot a significant advantage when trying to determine objects that are further away because of the additional pixels. An object that is 100 or 200 feet away may only be made up of a few pixels, but with almost 5x the resolution, the newer cameras will be able to more accurately determine what the object is. This is also true for everything else, such as the curvature of the upcoming turn.

In addition to the cameras, we know that there will be a new FSD computer which is expected to be about 4x more powerful than the current FSD computer in hardware 3.0. Part of this additional processing power will no doubt go toward processing the additional 32 million pixels that the newer cameras will provide.

However, hardware 4.0 will be about more than just a faster computer and better cameras. It is also expected to include an HD radar, which Elon Musk has talked about in the past and has been seen in Tesla's FCC filings. The addition of a high-definition radar could provide a significant advantage to FSD by sensing objects that cameras alone can't.

The difference between radar and HD imaging radars

fierceelectronics.com

When Musk talks about the upgrade from hardware 3.0 to hardware 4.0 not being feasible, that likely means there may be even more to it than we already know. This could just be due to the new radar, new power, or space requirements for the new computer, but it's also possible that there could be more to hardware 4.0 than we know.

We know that Tesla's Robotaxi is already in development and this is a vehicle that is expected to be completely driverless. Tesla won't have the convenience of having a driver behind the wheel here. This could mean that Tesla may need to add additional hardware that we haven't heard about it. This could be different camera placements, or something entirely different.

What we know for sure is that hardware 4.0 will include higher-res cameras, a faster computer and likely an HD radar, but there could be even more that makes it infeasible to retrofit older vehicles.

Elon Talking About Hardware 4

The video below is queued up to the part where Elon talks about FSD hardware 4.0 (segment begins at 30:10).

Hardware 3.0 Will Be Capable of FSD

Musk put the argument into perspective for those who may want to wait. "Hardware 3 will not be as good as Hardware 4, but I'm confident that Hardware 3 will so far exceed the average -- the safety of the average human." He then broke it down further, "let's say, for argument's sake, if Hardware 3 can be, say, 200% or 300% safer than human, Hardware 4 might be 500% or 600%." In fact, stats show that Teslas operating with Autopilot engaged at 10 times safer, and that is with Hardware 3.

Will Teslas With HW3 Really Be Autonomous?

Listening to Musk's choice of words is interesting, he seems to have steered away from words he may have used in the past, such as referring to level 5 autonomy, or using the words robotaxi, or autonomous driving. Instead, he chose to say hardware 3 would exceed the safety of an average human. That could mean that Tesla's current FSD implementation will always require a driver behind the wheel, but the combo of Tesla's FSD system and the driver as a backup would be multiple times safer than a human.

Tesla has to be Careful

The CEO had a tightrope to walk when talking about the existing hardware and what the future system will look like. You may recall in late 2022 when demand for Teslas started to slow down. Many observers believe it was due to the impending tax credits the Inflation Reduction Act would provide for buyers of electric vehicles. Tesla cut prices for the last few days of 2022 to match tax credits, but only for consumers who took delivery before the end of the year.

Now, a new dilemma, how many consumers will wait for the latest hardware? There is no timeline for it, the only vehicle we know it will be in is the Cybertruck, but the Cybertruck won't start production until this summer.

FSD Hardware 5.0

Musk has a point. Hardware 3 is fantastic, but with a new one that is twice as good on the horizon, it losses some exceptionality. Then there is this next line by Musk, "with Hardware 4 coming and then Hardware 5 beyond that where there are significant leaps." So yes, we already have talk of Hardware 5. However, this is not expected for several years.

Once again, mark your calendar for March 1, 2023. Tesla is hosting Investor Day, and along with more information on the next-generation vehicle, we may get more details on hardware 4.0 and what it will contain.

Tesla Smart Voice Assistant Coming - Vehicle Responds for First Time

Not a Tesla App

If you hop into your Tesla and say ‘Hi’ or ‘Hello’ after pressing the Voice Command button, there is a good chance it’ll reply with “Hello!” This is the newest and most interesting piece of news pointing us to the conclusion that a Tesla voice assistant is on the way.

Previously, if you tried this, it would simply return “Command not understood.” This is the first time the vehicle is responding and interacting with the user.

Experience It Yourself

You’ll need to have your vehicle language set to English. Once that’s done, you can use the voice command button on your steering wheel or yoke - for the Model 3 and Model Y, push the right wheel button, and for the Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck, press the button. Then go ahead and say Hi or Hello.

The Hello! response may even have regional differences. For a German Tesla owner, after setting his language to English, the response came back as “Hallo.” We’re interested to see what the responses may be in other regions, so let us know if you notice anything interesting.

We’ve tried a few other basic things, but it seems that, for now, the vehicle only replies to a simple greeting. Asking it what time it is or the $TSLA stock price doesn’t seem to do much yet - unless you’re in China with the updated Smart Assistant.

Not a Tesla App

Server-Side Update

This update appears to be happening over Tesla’s voice system backend and doesn’t require the Holiday Update. Users who aren’t on the Holiday Update are reporting that they’re getting this new response as well.

We already know that Tesla interprets speech remotely, and the driver’s voice is not processed in the vehicle. Instead, the voice snippet is transmitted to Tesla’s servers, where Tesla processes it and sends a response back to the vehicle so that the vehicle can interpret it. This is unlikely to change with a smart assistant, as Elon Musk has already said that Grok will still process data server-side instead of on-device.

Many users recently also noticed significant improvements to voice commands, saying that the system understands them better and that responses now come back faster.

All of these things point to a new backend system for voice processing that Tesla is testing. It’s not unusual for a company to switch to a new backend process but keep the capabilities the same as the legacy system until it’s ready to roll out the new features. At that point, it’s simply a flip of a switch to allow the new capabilities.

The new smart assistant that was rolled out in China is mostly a backend change, with the in-vehicle experience largely remaining the same. The activation method (button press) and user interface remain the same. What changed is the response that comes back from the server, and the assistant gained a voice. The new voice we receive with a smart assistant could very well be the new voice users are experiencing in the navigation system in newer vehicles.

Below is a video of the voice assistant in China:

Vehicle Support - Intel?

When China received the Smart Assistant, it was locked to cars equipped with AMD Ryzen processors only. Shortly after its initial launch, it became available to older cars with Intel Atom processors as well.

However, we’re not sure whether it would apply to legacy Model S and Model X owners. A legacy vehicle owner had their vehicle report “Command not understood” when they tried the ’Hi’ voice command.

Grok for Tesla

Elon has previously mentioned that Tesla vehicles would receive Grok AI. Grok, as of yet, still doesn’t have live speech support like other LLM models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. However, a major update to Grok just brought massively improved image generation via a new model called Aurora.

xAI has been hard at work improving Grok, and we’re sure that live speech support is on its way soon. Once that feature arrives on X, Tesla will likely be well-positioned to enable a Grok-powered smart assistant fleet-wide with a flick of a switch.

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Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

Not a Tesla App

Yesterday, we reported that Tesla updated their Steam integration on Model S and Model X vehicles. The update was part of their 2024 Holiday Update, but it looks like there may be more to this than a simple update.

Steam, a video game library app, makes it easy for users to buy or launch games on their computers. However, a couple of years ago, Valve, who created Steam, launched their own standalone device, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs a custom OS based on Linux.

Steam Launch

When Tesla launched the redesigned Model S and Model X, Tesla introduced a dedicated gaming GPU with 16GB of RAM and touted the ability to play top-tier PC games in Tesla vehicles.

In 2022, Tesla finally launched the Steam app for the Model S and Model X as part of its 2022 Holiday Update. The Steam app runs Steam OS, the same OS as the Steam Deck in a virtual environment.

However, earlier this year, Tesla stopped including the GPU and Steam (Beta) in their vehicles, and we haven’t seen any updates to the Steam in quite some time. In fact, we thought Tesla was axing their gaming-on-the-go dreams.

SteamOS Update

The Steam app, which is still in Beta, is getting an interesting update for the Model S and Model X vehicles with the discrete GPU.

Those vehicles received an update to SteamOS 3.6 - the same version of SteamOS that runs on the Steam Deck. While nothing has visually changed, there’s a long list of performance optimizations under the hood to get things running smoother.

Comparing Steam Deck to Tesla Vehicles

Let’s take a look at the Steam Deck - according to Valve, its onboard Zen4 CPU and GPU combined push a total of 2 TFlops of data, which is fairly respectable, but much lower than today’s home consoles. The Steam Deck is capable of 720p gaming fairly seamlessly on low-to-medium settings on the go and is also built on the AMD platform.

AMD-equipped Teslas, including the Model 3 and Model Y, are packing an older Zen+ (Zen 1.5) APU (processor with a combined CPU and GPU). AMD claims that the V1000 - the same embedded chip as on AMD Tesla vehicles (YE1807C3T4MFB), brings up to 3.6 TFLops of processing power with it, including 4K encoding and decoding with the integrated GPU on board.

While that’s not enough for 4K gaming or comparable to a full-blown console or desktop GPU, that’s enough raw horsepower for light gaming and is currently more powerful than the Steam Deck.

The Model S and Model X’s GPU brings that up to about 10TFlops of power - comparable to modern consoles like the Xbox Series X at 12 TFlops.

Steam Gaming for All Vehicles?

The fact that Tesla is updating SteamOS even though the feature is no longer available in any new vehicles could indicate that Tesla is not only bringing Steam back to Teslas but that it’s going to play a much bigger role.

While SteamOS is run in a virtual environment on top of Tesla’s own OS, we could see Tesla bring SteamOS to all of its current vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck. Steam in these vehicles would likely support any game that’s capable of running on the Steam Deck.

We think this Steam update, which includes performance improvements and a variety of fixes, has quietly passed under most people’s radars. This could be a very exciting update for those who enjoy gaming, especially for those who love to do it in their Tesla.

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