Tesla manages to greatly improve camera quality on its cars through software update

Tesla has managed to greatly improve the camera quality of its existing electric cars with HW3 through an over-the-air software update.

Lately, Tesla has been flexing its capability to improve its vehicles with over-the-air software updates. Earlier this week, we reported on Tesla making its vehicles safer through an over-the-air software update that automatically activates and speeds up hazard lights after a crash.

Now, the automaker has pushed another impressive new upgrade through an over-the-air software update – this time to its cameras.

With the latest 2023.32 Tesla software update, the rendering quality of the cameras around Tesla vehicles has greatly improved, as highlighted by this side-by-side comparison:

This is a major quality improvement, especially in low-light environments. Tesla confirmed the upgrade on X:

Improved camera quality now rolling out via over-the-air update!

What is most impressive is that this update is coming to Tesla vehicles equipped with Autopilot/Full Self-Driving Hardware 3.0 (HW3).

Tesla has upgraded the camera hardware with its HW4 upgrade on newer vehicles, which has worried HW3 owners who are still waiting for Tesla to deliver on its promised full self-driving capability with the older hardware.

Electrek’s Take

I am happy to see Tesla still finding some major improvements like this despite the hardware constraints of HW3. It gives me some hope that there’s still a lot of room to progress with HW3 and possibly eventually achieve the promised full self-driving capability – even though I know this is a stretch.

Now, it’s not clear if this is the rendering quality inside the vehicles that has improved or if this helps Tesla’s data collection for FSD.

Either way, it’s an improvement to the in-car experience. I’d still like to see Tesla implement some kind of 360 bird-eye view of its vehicles, but better camera views are appreciated in the meantime.