After seven years a Dutch HW3 owner who paid €6,400 for Full Self-Driving in 2019 was told by Tesla customer service there is "no information about when it comes, or if it comes at all" and to "just be patient," according to a recorded call and thread on X reported by Electrek (https://electrek.co/2026/04/17/tesla-hw3-owners-be-patient-7-years-fsd/).

Tesla obtained Dutch RDW type approval for FSD Supervised on AI4 hardware only; the same 2019 invoice promised "full self-drive capability" through software updates alone (Electrek, 2026). Musk stated on the Q4 2024 earnings call that Tesla "would need to replace all HW3 computers" where FSD was purchased, calling the process "painful," while a company patent describes a "math trick" workaround that can render perception units "inoperable" (Tesla IR transcript, Jan 2025; USPTO patent filing, 2025). A Tesla VP of AI had acknowledged in August 2024 that HW3 runs a "relatively smaller model" with workarounds as the gap to AI4 widened (Electrek, 2026).

Electrek coverage captured the call but did not connect the European collective claim of 3,000 owners (€6.5 million) to parallel U.S. class-action patterns citing identical 2019 promises, nor to industry compute-scaling realities where transformer-based models have grown beyond HW3's fixed 144 TOPS capacity, a transition also required by Mobileye and GM Cruise hardware refreshes (Reuters, 2024; IEEE Spectrum, 2023). No European retrofit or refund policy exists as of April 2026.