If you purchased Full Self-Driving (FSD) and are not on Autopilot Hardware 3 yet, I’m sure you must be wondering when is your retrofit going to be available. Here’s what we know.
Last December 2019, Elon said on Twitter that the AP 2x. To 3 retrofit would happen in Q1 2020:
Regarding 2.X to 3 hardware update, that should happen in earnest in Q1. Software feature delta was zero until now, so not much point in doing it before then.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2019
We’re seeing many folks getting the update but… how?
Some people are recommending to ask about the Autopilot 3 retrofit when you schedule an appointment at the Service Center (or with Mobile Service) for whatever other reason.
Note that Elon also confirmed on Twitter that mobile can do the retrofit, which is awesome:
Mobile can do it no problem
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 8, 2019
Some folks have been scheduling appointments to get the retrofit just to have them canceled a few days before the date arrived.
Since November, we have been twice to the Service Center in Berkeley, CA, we asked about it- since we’re waiting for it ourselves- and this is what we found out:
- In November, we were told our VIN wasn’t in the list yet and that we should ask next time we went to the Service Center
- In January, we were told our VIN was still not in the list and that we would receive a notification via mobile app/ email when the retrofit would be available
They also told us they’ve had many Model 3s and some Model Xs retrofitted but not that many Model S just yet. For the record, ours is a Model S with MCU1 and HW2.5.
So far I haven’t heard of any folks who have been notified via email/ app. Usually, they’d get notified when they go to the Service Center like in this case:
Was in for something else 10 days ago. When I got there they said they have HW3 for me and that they can knock everything at once today.
— Sunil: UNPLGD (@tesla_unplugged) January 27, 2020
After publishing this article, user @robs1011 on Twitter reached out to us to share his experience, which is certainly different than ours. I’d be surprised if the notification system didn’t work the same way in different areas. Even though I don’t know for sure, I’m more inclined to believe that Tesla is not actively notifying owners when the retrofit is available for their cars.
2/2 - he said they were frustrated about the not notifying and best thing to do was check every two weeks by schedule for service in app and type checking on computer update.
— Rob Ace (@robs1011) January 31, 2020
How does the retrofit timeline look like? Tesla owners who have gone through the process have shared turnaround times between five hours and a whole day. However, in rare cases like in YouTuber TeslaJoy’s, it ended up taking 5 days due to complications and having to perform the installation twice.
Have questions? Reach out at contact@tesletter.com
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