Image: Tesla
During its Q3 2025 earnings call on Wednesday, Tesla confirmed that it is working on a “V14 Lite” version of its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software designed specifically for older vehicles equipped with Hardware 3 (HW3) computers. The update is expected to arrive in the second quarter of 2026.
The confirmation came from Tesla’s AI chief Ashok Elluswamy, who said, “Once the V14 release series is fully done, we are planning on working on a V14 Lite version for hardware 3, probably expected in Q2 next year.”
Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja also reassured owners of HW3 vehicles that the company hasn’t forgotten about them. “We do want to solve autonomy first, and then we will come back with a way to take care of these customers. For what it’s worth, my daily commuter is a Hardware 3 car,” said Taneja.
The comments came as part of Tesla’s Q3 2025 earnings call, which followed the company’s report of record quarterly revenue of $28.1 billion and $1.37 billion in net income. CEO Elon Musk and other executives joined the call to discuss Tesla’s progress across its energy, AI, and vehicle programs while addressing questions from shareholders.
The update is especially relevant for longtime Tesla owners who purchased FSD years ago and are still driving vehicles running on HW3 computers. Earlier this year, during Tesla’s Q4 2024 earnings call, Musk had noted that HW3 vehicles would eventually require a (paid) hardware upgrade to support full, Unsupervised FSD once it’s released. Still, it appears Tesla is committed to pushing the limits of its older hardware by bringing newer FSD versions to HW3 cars as long as the system can handle them.
The latest FSD 14 software, which began rolling out publicly earlier this week, marks Tesla’s most significant autonomy update since version 12. Musk has teased that upcoming FSD 14 releases will introduce reasoning capabilities, making the system “feel almost like it is sentient.”
Musk also briefly mentioned Tesla’s next-generation AI5 (HW5) hardware during the call, calling it “40X better than AI4″ by some metrics and saying it could offer the best performance per dollar by a factor of almost 10. With the AI5 platform on the horizon and a “Lite” build of FSD 14 for HW3 cars on the way, Tesla continues to bridge the gap between legacy and next-generation autonomy.
