Tesla FSD Hardware: HW1 to HW5 and What's Actually in Your Car

Tesla has shipped five generations of self-driving compute since the original Autopilot launched in 2014 — and switched chip vendors three times along the way (Wikipedia: Tesla Autopilot hardware). Which generation sits in your car decides what cameras it has, what version of FSD it can run, whether it will ever get unsupervised driving — and how much you might pay to upgrade if you bought into the long-promised future.

The five generations

Gen	Years in new cars	Chip & vendor	Compute (peak)
HW1	Sep 2014 – Oct 2016	Mobileye EyeQ3	~0.25 TOPS
HW2 / HW2.5	Oct 2016 – Apr 2019	NVIDIA Drive PX 2 (Tegra Parker)	~10 TOPS
HW3	Apr 2019 – early/mid 2023	Tesla in-house (dual chip, Samsung 14 nm)	~144 TOPS
HW4 / AI4	Jan 2023 – present	Tesla in-house (dual chip, Samsung 7 nm)	~243 TOPS
HW5 / AI5	Volume from mid-2027	Tesla in-house, TSMC + Samsung 2/3 nm	~2,000–2,500 TOPS target

The big turning points: the Mobileye partnership ended after a May 2016 fatal crash; Tesla rebuilt vision in-house on NVIDIA hardware (HW2); then Pete Bannon's team designed Tesla's first custom FSD chip in 2019 (HW3). Every generation since has been Tesla silicon.

Which generation is in your Tesla?

Model	Era	FSD hardware
Model S / Model X	2014–2016	HW1
Model S / Model X	2016–2019	HW2 / HW2.5
Model S / Model X	2019–Jan 2023	HW3
Model S / Model X	Jan 2023–discontinued 2025	HW4
Model 3	2017–2019	HW2.5
Model 3	2019–late 2023	HW3
Model 3 Highland	Late 2023 onwards	HW4
Model Y	2020–~2023	HW3
Model Y Juniper	2025 onwards	HW4
Cybertruck	All (Nov 2023+)	HW4 (plus HD radar)
Tesla Semi	All (Dec 2022+)	HW4
Cybercab	Initial production 2026	HW4 (AI5 was the plan; volume slipped — see the AI5 delay reporting)

To check yours: Controls → Software → Additional Vehicle Information → "Computer". A value starting with 3.x is HW3; 4.x is HW4.

Sensors changed too — sometimes by software, after the car shipped

The FSD generation set what the factory wired in, but Tesla has repeatedly turned sensors on and off via over-the-air updates in the years after delivery. The result is that two HW3 cars can have different active sensors depending on when they were built and what Tesla did to their software afterwards.

Cameras — HW1 had a single forward camera. HW2 jumped to 8 cameras (still 1280×960). HW4 kept the 8-camera count but stepped resolution up to 5 megapixels on the front (2896×1876) with repositioned B-pillar and C-pillar units (AutoPilot Review). This is why HW3 can't simply "download" the HW4 vision stack — the input imagery is fundamentally different.
Forward radar — present on every HW1, HW2 and early HW3 car. Removed from new builds in May 2021 (Model 3/Y) and February 2022 (Model S/X) as part of the "Tesla Vision" pivot, then deactivated on older cars via OTA. Re-introduced as high-definition imaging radar on Cybertruck and some HW4 S/X from late 2023.
Ultrasonic parking sensors — 12 sensors standard from HW1 through 2022. Dropped from new builds in October 2022. Existing cars kept their USS hardware but Tesla disabled and partially restored proximity bars via software.
Cabin camera — physically installed on every Model 3 from 2017 but kept dormant for almost four years. Activated May 2021 for driver-attention monitoring.

Infotainment hardware is a separate story

The touchscreen computer (Tesla calls it the MCU) is not the FSD computer. It has followed its own three-generation arc with three different vendors, and you can mix and match.

MCU	Years	Chip	Vendor
MCU1	2012 – early 2018 (S/X only)	Tegra 3	NVIDIA
MCU2	2017 – 2022	Atom A3950 "Apollo Lake"	Intel
MCU3	2021 – present	Custom Ryzen embedded APU	AMD

A 2019 Model 3 Long Range has an HW3 FSD computer and an Intel MCU2 infotainment. A 2021 Model S Plaid has the same HW3 FSD computer but with an AMD MCU3 infotainment — that's how the Plaid can run Steam-class games while the 2019 Model 3 can barely render the modern map. The two boards don't talk much; replacing one does nothing for the other.

The big 2026 story: HW3 won't get unsupervised FSD

For roughly seven years, Tesla maintained that anyone who bought the Full Self-Driving option on an HW3 car would receive unsupervised driving via software. On the Q1 2026 earnings call, the company reversed course: HW3 will not run unsupervised FSD. Three paths for affected owners (Not a Tesla App):

A hardware retrofit to AI4 (new computer, new cameras, new wiring harness — done in dedicated microfactories) at an out-of-pocket cost reported at $3,000–$5,000 USD
A discounted trade-in for a new HW4 (or later) car
A stripped-down FSD v14 Lite stopgap, designed for functional feature parity with the HW4 fleet but with lower-fidelity occupancy and a lower capability ceiling — rolling out from late June 2026

Roughly four million HW3 vehicles worldwide are in scope. Microfactory openings have not yet been announced; first physical retrofits are unlikely before Q1 2027.

And HW5 — when it lands

Tesla taped out the AI5 chip on 15 April 2026, with volume production targeted for mid-2027 (Electrek). It is dual-sourced between TSMC (2 / 3 nm in Taiwan and Arizona) and Samsung's new Taylor, Texas fab — a first for Tesla — and targets 2,000–2,500 TOPS, roughly an order of magnitude over HW4. The Cybercab originally announced for AI5 will launch on AI4 instead because AI5 volume will not be ready in time. AI5 is the platform Tesla is now positioning for true Level 4 / Level 5 autonomy at scale.

For European owners

Most EU-market Model 3 and Model Y cars built after late 2023 come out of Giga Berlin or Giga Shanghai with HW4 from the factory. Model S/X were withdrawn from Europe in 2025; surviving EU examples are HW3. Two collective claims are progressing through European courts — a Dutch HW3-owner action and a wider pan-European claim — both arguing that the Q1 2026 admission constitutes a material breach of the FSD purchase contract. Outcomes will shape what European retrofit pricing eventually looks like.