After more than a year of outdated self-driving software, millions of Tesla's older cars are finally beginning to receive a new update. Even so, content creator The Electric Viking (@electricviking) reports that owners of Hardware 3 vehicles still are not getting the fully autonomous experience many say they already paid for. What's happening? On June 29, Tesla began rolling out firmware 2026.20.51, called Full Self-Driving Supervised version 14 light, to Hardware 3 vehicles, as The Electric Viking details in a YouTube video. Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy later confirmed that the release had begun. Hardware 3 owners had reportedly remained on version 12.6 for over a year even as Tesla kept improving the software on Hardware 4 vehicles. To adapt some of that newer behavior to the older computers, The Electric Viking noted the company reportedly trained a smaller model through "knowledge distillation" so it could imitate the newer system. With this update, Hardware 3 cars gain features such as parking, unparking, reversing, starting self-driving from park, more arrival choices, extra speed profiles, and fewer false slowdowns. "The features are actually real," The Electric Viking states in the video. He does note some of the limitations of the changes later on. Why does it matter? Older EVs may stay useful longer without needing to be replaced. If software can meaningfully improve the driving experience on cars already sitting in driveways, it can help protect resale value and reduce the waste associated with retiring otherwise functional vehicles too early. At the same time, the update shows how far Tesla's earlier sales pitch and today's limits appear to diverge. The Electric Viking says many Hardware 3 cars were sold with assurances that they were ready for Full Self-Driving, and some customers spent up to $15,000 for that option. However, the creator said