Tesla FSD V14 Lite Update Triggers HW3 Overheating Issues, Highlighting US-China Autopilot Regulatory Divide

On August 6, international media reported that Tesla encountered widespread safety issues after rolling out the FSD V14 Lite update to approximately 4 million older vehicles equipped with Hardware 3 (HW3). Some owners reported that during use, the onboard computing motherboard temperatures soared to 96°C, frequently forcing the driver-assistance system to shut down. In some cases, motherboards were completely burnt out, leaving owners whose vehicles were out of warranty to bear replacement costs themselves. Additionally, this software version fails to detect pedestrians and obstacles while reversing, leading to multiple near-collision incidents. Around the same time, China issued two mandatory national standards for intelligent connected vehicles in June and July 2024: "Safety Requirements for Combined Driving Assistance Systems in Intelligent Connected Vehicles" (GB 47955–2026) and "Safety Requirements for Automated Driving Systems in Intelligent Connected Vehicles" (GB 44721–2026), both scheduled to take effect in 2027. The standards stipulate that over-the-air (OTA) updates involving intelligent driving algorithms and perception systems must be filed with regulators in advance and undergo comprehensive testing—including extreme thermal dissipation and full-scenario perception evaluations. Automakers are prohibited from pushing high-computational-load models to legacy hardware lacking sufficient processing power or thermal management capabilities. Vehicles must not abruptly disable intelligent driving functions solely due to high temperatures, nor may they remove critical safety features—such as pedestrian detection—via software updates. Furthermore, marketing terms like “FSD” or “fully automatic” that could mislead consumers are banned. Major software updates must pass triple-layer validation through simulation, closed-course, and real-road testing, with all records archived. After OTA deployment, automakers must continuously monitor for mass failures and promptly issue patches or initiate recalls upon identifying systemic issues. In contrast, the United States currently lacks a unified pre-deployment filing system for intelligent driving OTA updates, relying primarily on post-incident regulatory actions. Tesla classifies FSD as Level 2 beta software, thereby circumventing comprehensive pre-market safety validation and enabling it to autonomously push major updates to millions of older vehicles. Because Tesla did not develop a lightweight algorithm tailored for HW3 hardware and instead directly deployed the computationally intensive V14 model, widespread overheating failures occurred. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) typically intervenes only after numerous complaints or safety incidents emerge, reflecting a regulatory framework that lacks proactive risk-prevention mechanisms.