Today (Friday 11/22) I went for my 2:00pm appointment at the Austin SC for a HW3 upgrade, an appointment that had been scheduled for 10 days.
I arrived to a full and busy shop. When I was helped, Tim pulled my car up in the computer and confirmed I was to get an HW3 upgrade. "Thats gonna be a Monday thing for sure" , he said. Explaining that the physical upgrade takes just under two hours - no problem - but then the firmware issues can take "all day" he said. Apparently they have to reinstall the entire OS kernel or something nearly as dramatic when they do this - nothing like an over the air software upgrade. He said I could leave the car OR take the car because they would not get to it until Monday and they wanted all day for HW3 firmware/software issues if they needed it. He did say some were easy but most took a long time.
Having a backup plan just for this occurrence I told him I needed to go to Costco anyway (nearby) and said I would take the car. So he put me at the top of the schedule for Monday morning and said most likely it would be done the same day that way.
I then asked what differences I would see after the upgrade, since my HW2.5 MCU2 combo already had cone visualization and all the other HW3 bells and whistles I had heard of. "None", he said, "right now your car has every FSD feature available, but it will be faster to execute, and HW2.5 will not be sufficient for future FSD upgrades". that is paraphrased but accurate.
I feel like they are still testing the waters with the newest cars and the simplest path - and it is not happening fast at this point. That was my impression.
I arrived to a full and busy shop. When I was helped, Tim pulled my car up in the computer and confirmed I was to get an HW3 upgrade. "Thats gonna be a Monday thing for sure" , he said. Explaining that the physical upgrade takes just under two hours - no problem - but then the firmware issues can take "all day" he said. Apparently they have to reinstall the entire OS kernel or something nearly as dramatic when they do this - nothing like an over the air software upgrade. He said I could leave the car OR take the car because they would not get to it until Monday and they wanted all day for HW3 firmware/software issues if they needed it. He did say some were easy but most took a long time.
Having a backup plan just for this occurrence I told him I needed to go to Costco anyway (nearby) and said I would take the car. So he put me at the top of the schedule for Monday morning and said most likely it would be done the same day that way.
I then asked what differences I would see after the upgrade, since my HW2.5 MCU2 combo already had cone visualization and all the other HW3 bells and whistles I had heard of. "None", he said, "right now your car has every FSD feature available, but it will be faster to execute, and HW2.5 will not be sufficient for future FSD upgrades". that is paraphrased but accurate.
I feel like they are still testing the waters with the newest cars and the simplest path - and it is not happening fast at this point. That was my impression.
