The Slow Death of HW3: How Tesla Perfected the Art of Never Finishing

They won’t die in a crash. They’ll die of old age — waiting for an update that never comes.

1. The Tweet That Told the Truth

“There is 0 reason for them to upgrade HW3 cars now… Once HW4 is capable of unsupervised on customer cars that’s when they will evaluate what to do with HW3.”

It read like another forum post — yet it may be the most honest summary of Tesla’s autonomy strategy ever written.

Strip away the jargon and you see the pattern: Tesla has no reason to finish what it started.

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2. From ‘Beta’ to ‘Supervised’ — A Quiet Rebrand with Massive Consequences

When “Full Self-Driving Beta” became “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)”, the change seemed cosmetic.
But supervised is a legal firewall. It moves liability from Tesla to the driver and turns delay into policy.

That single word ensures FSD can be sold indefinitely without ever being certified as complete.

“Supervised isn’t a label — it’s a shield.”

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3. The Robotaxi Proof Tesla Won’t Talk About

Tesla’s robotaxi demos shocked critics by performing flawlessly without a driver in the seat. Turns, merges, unprotected lefts — handled.

Technically, the dream was realized.
Publicly, Tesla said nothing.

Why? Because admitting success would invite a storm: regulation, liability, insurance. The company chose silence — proving capability privately while denying it publicly.

“The cars drove themselves beautifully — and Tesla said almost nothing about it.”

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4. HW3 vs HW4 — The Divide Tesla Pretends Doesn’t Matter

HW3 and HW4 are worlds apart: new camera layouts, higher-res sensors, different wiring, greater compute power.
A retrofit isn’t a “chip swap”; it’s surgery.

So when Musk says upgrades will be “evaluated later,” he’s really saying: by then, those cars won’t be worth the effort.

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5. The Economics of Abandonment

Retrofitting millions of cars is a logistical and financial nightmare.
Each upgrade adds cost and risk; each delay saves both.

By letting HW3 fade while selling new HW4 vehicles, Tesla turns deferred promises into recurring revenue — the business model of “almost there.”

“Delay isn’t failure; it’s profit.”

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6. Regulatory Headwinds — The Perfect Excuse

In October 2025, NHTSA opened an investigation into 2.9 million Teslas for red-light and lane-violation incidents in FSD mode.
With regulators circling, claiming “unsupervised” would be suicidal.

So Tesla hides behind the safest word in the English language: supervised.

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7. The Slow Death Strategy

Tesla doesn’t need to recall HW3; it only needs to outlive it.
While HW4 becomes the showcase, HW3 settles into quiet stagnation — competent, never autonomous.

Owners wait, hope, trade up. Time does the cleanup.

“Obsolescence by design — patience disguised as progress.”

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8. The Beautiful Lie: ‘Almost There’

Every Tesla presentation since 2016 has repeated the same mantra: We’re almost there.
It’s not a delay; it’s a business model.
Each “almost” sells new cars, new subscriptions, new dreams.

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9. Liability vs. Legacy

Declaring “unsupervised” would reclassify Tesla from a carmaker to a transport company — dragging it into regulatory quicksand.
Musk will never do that. Instead, he’ll reframe success:
“Supervised autonomy is the responsible kind.”

And for Tesla, that’s true — because it keeps the responsibility yours.

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10. The Closing Image

Picture HW3 cars, years from now, gliding down highways on their final firmware — calm, capable, forever supervised.

They’ll never crash spectacularly, never evolve again, just fade away like old servers aging out of the cloud.
Each one a quiet monument to a company that achieved autonomy — and refused to name it.