Tesla owners report Hardware 3 computer failures after the FSD v14 Lite update
Owners running Tesla's older Autopilot computer reported overheating and dropped driver-assistance functions after an over-the-air update, in accounts collected by Electrek that Tesla has not addressed.
Owners of Tesla vehicles running Hardware 3, the company’s older Autopilot computer, reported that the module overheated and in some cases stopped working after the FSD v14 Lite over-the-air update reached wide release in late July, Electrek reported on August 3.
According to the outlet, owners posted service-mode screenshots showing the Autopilot control unit triggering a thermal fault that Tesla sets when the board climbs above 90 degrees Celsius, with several measuring 96. On the road, the outlet said, the fault appeared as a hands-on warning, a forced disengagement and an unavailable state until the computer cooled. More serious accounts went beyond throttling: some owners said the computer shut down entirely and had to be replaced. Electrek said four owners contacted it directly within days of installing the update, in addition to accounts posted publicly.
The outlet was explicit about the limits of the evidence. The thermal fault is long documented on this hardware, is usually traced to the cooling system, and predates the update by years, so an aging cooling loop is a competing explanation for any individual case. Tesla has not confirmed that the software is causing hardware to fail.
No primary source corroborates the accounts. Tesla has not commented publicly. A check of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s records on August 4 found no open defect investigation matching the reports — the newest Tesla investigation, opened July 29, concerns a suspension component — and no corresponding safety recall report had been filed.
Hardware 3 carries substantially less memory bandwidth than the generation that replaced it. Electrek reported that Tesla is already committed to replacing the computer in roughly four million cars, or compensating their owners, after acknowledging the hardware could not deliver the unsupervised self-driving it was sold with.
Source: reported by Electrek, August 3, 2026. SDV Sector has not independently verified the owner accounts.