A few new Tesla owners have been surprised to discover after picking up their cars that they have come equipped with Tesla’s upgraded Hardware 4.5 computer.
Eric, an owner who picked up a January-built Tesla Model Y, spotted that the car includes a new front camera housing and the larger 16-inch infotainment screen.
Looking a bit deeper, the computer’s part number is AP45 for this car, which was manufactured in Fremont, California.
At this stage, it’s unclear as to what the difference is between previous Hardware 4.0 cars and the new 4.5 version. This could also be referred to as AI 4.5, going with Tesla’s new terminology for the hardware stack.
Tesla has recently ramped up efforts in its autonomous driving developments with its chips and camera hardware in the car.
Last week, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk revealed that the design of the company’s next-generation chip, which powers its full-self-driving (FSD) computer in all its cars, is “almost done”, and has hinted at production and deployment into its vehicles in the not-too-distant future.
On top of that, hints were given on the upcoming AI6 chip design, which is already in early stages of development.
This AI5 chip is expected to be much more powerful than the current AI4 and now 4.5 chips found in vehicles that the company delivers today.
It helps with enabling FSD supervised capabilities in Australia, while Robotaxi capabilities for its cars in parts of the US.
Late last year, in November, the company shared: “AI5 has potential to be 50x more performant than AI4 (our current hardware)”.
Tesla has been designing and engineering its own chip hardware for over 12 years now, starting with Hardware 1 that was developed in collaboration with Mobileye and was used on Model S as well as early Model X vehicles that were made between 2014-2016.
That Hardware 1 computer also helped bring the first version of Autopilot using a front-facing camera, ultrasonic sensors and a radar to customers.
After that first version, multiple iterations have been seen with Model 3 & Y, coming equipped with more camera hardware, enabling enhanced autopilot.
This, of course, has been superseded by the latest iteration, providing FSD Supervised on all Hardware 4.0 cars.
We look forward to seeing more details on this hardware upgrade and to seeing the improvements it can make for owners using the car’s FSD Supervised software in the US and globally in the coming months.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.