Tesla stated it believes it can install a lightweight version of full self-driving. This approach would apply to hardware 3 (HW3) vehicles. I am now wondering if Tesla is experiencing unintended consequences.

A recent Electrek article reports that Hardware 3 cars running the light version of FSD seem to have overheating faults. The article notes that overheating has been an issue for some time, not just related to FSD Lite. The article notes that overheating has been a problem for some time, so this problem may not be caused by FSD Lite. However, at least one other online news source is covering overheating of HW3 computers.

However, if there seems to be an uptick in these overheating problems, then we may be seeing cause and effect. If that’s the case, the real question then becomes: what is the remedy if the car is outside its four-year warranty? Will Tesla argue that the warranty is over, and that the delayed installation of software for a feature (for which some people paid as much as $15,000) caused the problem and then require the owner to buy a new computer, which may or may not have the same problem?

People will likely think, or hope, that Tesla should do the right thing. In my personal experience, the “right thing” is clearly based on your perspective. Besides, isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different result? Would placing the HW3 computers back in the car after overheating caused by ‘FSD Lite’ cause another failure (if FSD Lite is the cause)? Tesla appears to have already admitted that retrofitting computers that can handle real FSD (in its current form as “supervised”) is not an easy task.

This may be an instance of Tesla shooting itself in the foot. If FSD Lite is causing the overheating, then isn’t this a case of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole? Or, in a more technology-oriented example, trying to run Windows 11 on a PC that was manufactured 15 years ago.

Regardless of the cause, overheating is not a good thing.