Elon Musk is keeping true to his promise of trying to design as many Tesla parts in-house as possible: the company now announced that it will supply the new Tesla-made FSD chip to older vehicles by the end of this year.
According to Tesla, the chip performs 21 times better than the previous Nvidia-made chip the cars used to feature.
The chip had been previously fitted to Model S, X and 3 vehicles before Tesla officially announced it and, soon enough, the company will offer it to half a million Tesla owners in the shape of an upgrade.
The CEO believes the new chip is capable enough to eventually allow the cars to be fully autonomous in the near future, when the software is going to be ready.
The upgraded FSD computer features two of these new chips for redundancy. Tesla announced the new chip costs 20 percent less than its previous “HW2+” Nvidia, even though is way more powerful.
The FSD chip upgrade will be offered for free to Tesla owners who opted for the $6,000 Full Self-Driving add-on package. However, it’s not clear yet if all owners will receive it.
The company estimates that there are approximately 500,000 cars that are compatible with the new chip. The Full Self-Driving option allows the drivers access to Tesla’s Navigate on Autopilot feature, which can guide them from “on-ramp to off-ramp” on highways and can also suggest lane-changes and take exits on its own.
Last year, it was believed that the name Full Self-Driving will cause “too much confusion” and that is understandable. However, the company decided to stick with it anyway.
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