Musk: AI4 enough for FSD

Elon Musk said Tesla’s current in-car computer, known as Hardware 4 or AI4, is enough to make unsupervised Full Self-Driving safe. (electrek.co) Tesla’s own website says new vehicles are equipped with Hardware 4, or HW4, for Full Self-Driving (Supervised), and says the system uses eight external cameras plus redundant onboard computing. Tesla also says today’s version still requires “active supervision” and “does not make the vehicle autonomous.” (tesla.com 1) (tesla.com 2) In plain terms, the claim is about whether the computer already inside recent Teslas has enough processing power to run a driverless system safely, without waiting for a newer chip. Tesla says the same hardware foundation also powers its Robotaxi and Optimus programs. (tesla.com 1) (tesla.com 2) That question matters because Tesla has spent the past year tying its car business more tightly to autonomy and robotics. In its 2025 fourth-quarter update, Tesla said it had launched Robotaxi service, started installing Cybercab production lines and “began removing” the safety monitor from Robotaxis in Austin in January 2026. (tesla.com) Tesla’s public product language has not caught up to Musk’s latest claim. The company markets Full Self-Driving as a supervised driver-assistance system in the United States, Canada, China, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and South Korea, and says the driver remains responsible. (tesla.com) Regulators are still examining that supervised system. In October 2025, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a preliminary evaluation covering an estimated 2,882,566 Tesla vehicles equipped with Full Self-Driving (Supervised) or Full Self-Driving Beta after reports that vehicles proceeded through red lights or drove the wrong way. (nhtsa.gov) The agency’s filing listed 58 incident reports, including 14 crashes and 10 injury incidents, and said Tesla describes the feature as a Society of Automotive Engineers Level 2 system requiring a fully attentive driver at all times. (nhtsa.gov) Musk has made similar safety claims before. Electrek documented Musk posts in November 2023, August 2025 and April 9, 2026 tying successive software versions to predictions that Tesla’s system would beat human drivers, while the shipped product remained supervised. (electrek.co) Tesla separately publishes a safety page saying Full Self-Driving (Supervised) has logged more than 9.2 billion miles and is “7x safer than a human driver” when engaged. The company does not present that page as proof that the system is already unsupervised, and its sales page still says autonomous driving is a future state. (tesla.com 1) (tesla.com 2) So Musk’s latest message is less a product launch than a line in Tesla’s running argument that existing Hardware 4 cars can cross from supervised assistance to driverless operation by software. Tesla’s own site, for now, still sells the system as supervised. (tesla.com) (tesla.com)