Tesla’s new FSD V12, Elon Musk dropped a bombshell tweet, revealing that while Tesla’s Hardware 4 chip is along for the ride, it’s not really doing the driving – at least not yet.
According to Elon Musk, Tesla’s autonomous vehicle training has been totally focused on optimizing the Hardware 3 (HW3) computer silicon. The more powerful Hardware 4 chip? It’s just running the same old Hardware 3 code in emulation.
“Hardware 4 will ultimately be better,” Musk admitted, “but all training is for Hardware 3, with HW4 running in emulation mode.” Whoa, talk about a computer not living up to its potential!
Is Tesla’s focus on optimizing its HW3.0 assistant driving algorithm a forward-thinking approach, or a sign of the company’s inability to let go of its large fleet of vehicles that still use this hardware? By developing and training the algorithm to a very high level on HW3, Tesla can make sure its autopilot feature is compelling enough to attract and retain existing customers, before making optimizations and improvements for HW4. This approach may indicate that Tesla is confident in both its hardware and software capabilities.