Tesla owners who shelled out as much as $15,000 for Full Self-Driving software now face a stark reality. Their cars’ Hardware 3 computers can’t handle unsupervised autonomy. Elon Musk laid it bare during the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call: “Unfortunately, HW3 simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD.” Memory bandwidth, he explained, sits at just one-eighth of Hardware 4’s level—a gap too wide for the neural nets powering true hands-off driving. HW3 powered Teslas from 2019 through early 2023. Millions still roam roads. Tesla once promised these vehicles packed all needed gear for full autonomy; that claim vanished from the company’s site years ago. Now, with unsupervised FSD rolling out in limited robotaxi tests in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, the company must fix its past. Two paths forward. Owners can trade in for a discounted HW4-equipped car. Or they visit a microfactory. These aren’t your standard service bays.…