Soon, Older Teslas Will Also Have Access To Tesla FSD, Although They Will Be “Lite”

The fact that FSD only works on the newest Teslas, such as the facelifted Model 3 and Model Y, has everything to do with the hardware installed in them. The HW4 computer installed in those cars is necessary for the complete suite of functionalities of FSD Supervised, as Tesla’s self-driving feature is officially called.

However, a solution is coming for older Teslas, such as the Model 3s and older Model Ys. These have an older HW3 computer and are therefore not compatible with the current form of FSD but will instead receive a significantly improved version of the FSD assistant that was already available on those older models. In America, Tesla has started with FSD v14 Lite.

Can do almost anything

That ‘Lite’ is essential, because that is the major difference compared to the regular FSD v14. Lite relies, among other things, on data collected by HW4 cars and should therefore be able to do almost everything those cars can do, although, according to earlier reports, it operates somewhat more cautiously and ‘safer’ due to hardware limitations. FSD v14 Lite, however, can ‘simply’ drive off from a standstill, just like the full-fledged version of FSD. On X, the first experiences with the system seem positive: the cars drive smoothly and safely from A to B. According to Musk, that was quite a challenge because the older computer only uses about 15 percent of the HW4 computer’s working memory.

We hope to find out in the future whether FSD v14 Lite also works well in the sometimes somewhat chaotic European traffic. It seems to be Tesla’s intention to offer the system here as well, as our colleagues at Tweakers reported back in April. To be sure, we also asked Tesla itself for information, but that usually yields little result.

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