Evidence

On the Q1 2026 Tesla Earnings Call of 22 April 2026, Elon Musk publicly admitted that Hardware 3 cannot run Unsupervised FSD. Tesla announced plans to set up "micro-factories" to convert HW3 vehicles to HW4, including camera replacement, and is offering FSD buyers a "discounted trade-in". VP Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed that HW3 owners will receive a "distilled" v14 version by the end of June 2026.

On 16 April 2026, Electrek published an overview of over twenty active lawsuit categories against Tesla, with total potential exposure between $2.7 billion and $14.5 billion. The European HW3 Claim is named explicitly, alongside an Australian class action and a US FSD class action certified in August 2025. Tesla has lost its 'corporate puffery' defence before a jury and has since quietly settled at least four Autopilot lawsuits.

Immediately after the RDW type approval, Tesla updated its Dutch Full Self-Driving product page to announce the new availability. The page claims that 'every Tesla' receives the latest updates and that the system is '7x safer' than a human driver. Not a word about the hardware exclusion of Hardware 3.

When Tesla acknowledged in 2019 that the existing Full Self-Driving Computer (HW2.5) couldn't deliver full self-driving, they gave FSD buyers a free hardware upgrade. That's their own precedent that the hardware promise required a hardware solution; it supports the liability for HW3.

On 10 April 2026, the Dutch RDW issued European type approval for Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system, with provisional validity in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is the first European country to officially permit the system on public roads.

Independent technical reporting from March 2026 documents a measurable performance difference between HW3 and AI4 vehicles on critical disengagement metrics. HW3 performs approximately 3.75 times worse than AI4. That's a fundamental safety difference for the same product name.

Tesla filed a US patent application describing the mathematical workaround required to run Full Self-Driving on Hardware 3. In that same patent, Tesla acknowledges that this method can render the system 'inoperable' for perception in autonomous driving.

Nine months after Musk's firm January 2025 commitment, Tesla changed course. On the Q3 2025 Earnings Call in October 2025, Tesla announced that HW3 owners would receive a stripped-down 'v14 Lite' version instead of a full hardware upgrade.

Tesla's own CEO publicly acknowledged during the Q4 2024 Earnings Call that Hardware 3 computers in vehicles where FSD was purchased must be replaced. The top executive confirmed exactly what this initiative is about.

In August 2024, while lawsuits against Tesla were building, the company quietly deleted the 2016 blog post that stated all Tesla cars have full self-driving hardware. In October 2025, Tesla changed the wording in its Q3 2025 shareholder letter to the legally meaningless "designed for autonomy". A pattern of deliberate evidence removal.

Tesla's VP of Autopilot publicly admitted on X that Hardware 3 vehicles run a 'smaller model' than vehicles with the newer AI4 hardware. Tesla's top FSD engineer confirmed product differentiation himself.

On 30 March 2024, Elon Musk stated on X that all FSD training was for Hardware 3 and that HW4 was running in emulation mode. Two years later, FSD was approved by the Dutch RDW, exclusively for AI4. The March 2024 promise was never kept.

The Dutch Tesla configurator in 2019 sold 'Volledig zelfrijdende besturing' (Full Self-Driving Capability) as a paid option, listed specific features, and promised delivery 'later this year'. The only disclaimer mentioned regulation and reliability. Not hardware.

In 2019, tesla.com/nl_NL/model3 told every buyer, unconditionally, that their Tesla's hardware would enable full self-driving in the future. No disclaimer about hardware replacement. No asterisks. Just a promise.