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Elon Musk discusses Tesla FSD rollout challenges for Europe and China
It is no secret that Tesla’s future relies largely on the company’s ability to achieve true autonomous driving through its Full Self-Driving (FSD) program.
However, while FSD is making huge headways in North America, the program has yet to be rolled out in key markets such as Europe and China.
FSD milestones:
- Tesla has been initiating a continued push to roll out improvements to FSD, with recent v13 releases getting positive reviews from users.
- As hinted at by Tesla’s Q4 2024 Update Letter, FSD users have likely passed 3 billion cumulative miles since the program was launched in October 2020.
- Prior to the Q4 2024 earnings call, Tesla posted a video demonstrating Unsupervised FSD in action at the Fremont Factory.
- Elon Musk also reiterated during the recent earnings call that customers who bought FSD with their HW3 vehicles will get an AI4 hardware upgrade for free.
Europe challenges:
- While FSD is already training very well in North America, Elon Musk noted during the Q4 2024 earnings call that there are challenges to rolling out the system in Europe.
- In Europe, Musk noted that tons of regulations and bureaucracy make it difficult to roll out FSD in the region.
- “Europe is a layer cake of regulations of bureaucracy, that really needs to be addressed. This is like America innovates, Europe regulates. So, guys, there’s too many reps in the field. For example, for us, just to release supervised full self-driving in Europe, even though it works really well, we have to go through a mountain of paperwork with the Netherlands, which is our primary regulatory authority.
- “Then the Netherlands presents this to the EU in, I think, May. And there’s like this big EU country committee. We expect it to be approved at that time. There’s nothing we can do to make that happen sooner.
- “In fact, nobody seems to do — but I guess all the countries would have to somehow vote in some way to have it happen sooner than May. Otherwise, it wouldn’t happen sooner than May. So, when is unsupervised FSD a lot in Europe? I’m like May next year, maybe? I don’t know. Sometimes it’s a 12-month cadence, sometimes it’s six-month cadence,” Musk said.
China challenges:
- It’s not just Europe that is proving challenging. As per Musk, even China has some challenges when it comes to the rollout of FSD.
- “Then China, which is a gigantic market, we do have some challenges because they weren’t — they currently don’t allow us to transfer training video outside of China. And then the US government won’t let us do training in China. So, we’re in a bit of a bind there. It’s like a quandary.
- “So, we’re resolving that by literally looking at videos of streets in China that are available on the internet to understand and then feeding that into our video training so that publicly available video of street signs and traffic rules in China can be used for training and then also putting it in a very accurate simulator. And so, it will train using sim for bus lanes in China. Like bus lanes in China are one of our biggest challenges in making FSD work in China. Their bus lanes are very complicated. And there’s like literally like hours of the day that you’re allowed to be there and not be there.
- “And then if you accidently go in at bus lane at the wrong time, you get an automatic ticket instantly. And so, it was kind of a big deal, bus lanes in China. So, we put that into our simulator train on that, the car has to know what time of day it is, read the sign. Anyway, we’ll get this solved,” Musk said.
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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla is starting to prepare for the launch of the Optimus robot in its smartphone app, new coding strings show. Elon Musk has referred to Optimus as what will be the greatest-selling product of any kind of all time, and now, Tesla is getting ready for its launch.
Tesla’s smartphone app had several first-time mentions of the Optimus program, according to Tesla App Updates, who intially reported on the appearance. Here’s what they found:
A Dedicated “Robot” Phone Key Authentication
Tesla is working on a Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE, authentication that is specifically for robots. This does not only apply to Optimus, though, as Robotaxi, which is Tesla’s autonomous ride-hailing platform, might also identify vehicles within the fleet as robots as well.
Tesla shows rapid teardown of Model S and X lines, paving the way for Optimus at Fremont
Essentially, pairing your phone as a key to anything Tesla identifies as a robot to a “whitelist” of authorized devices. Optimus, Robotaxi, or other products that fall into this category will only respond if the device trying to communicate with it is authorized.
This is a great security feature that will eliminate at least face-value and low-level threats.
Home Data Collection and System Alerts
This appears to be somewhat of a neural network for Optimus within your house. There will be a dedicated screen that asks for consent to collect both video and spatial data while Optimus performs in-home tasks. Everything from vacuuming, washing dishes, dusting, and other activities will be tracked.
There will also be a comprehensive alert system that will track everything from low battery to mechanical issues.
Other Changes
Most of the changes tracked in this particular app update are related to Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, and include things such as image assets for new features, a preview of the new custom wraps feature, and other unique features.
You can check out our coverage on what is included with the 2026 Summer Update here:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla is about to make parking in busy lots less stressful than ever
