Tesla FSD (Full Self-Driving) reportedly received tentative approval in China. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently arrived in China during the ongoing Beijing Auto Show.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Chinese officials have stated that Beijing has tentatively approved Tesla’s FSD plans. Tesla FSD has cleared a few critical regulatory hurdles that have kept it from releasing in China. Among those hurdles is Tesla’s mapping and navigation functions in China.
Tesla resolved concerns about its mapping and navigation functions by allegedly collaborating with Chinese tech giant Baidu. Tesla and Baidu’s partnership quells any concerns about data-security risks related to FSD. Interestingly enough, Baidu recently announced a partnership with Hyundai to develop car connectivity, including autonomous driving and AI.
During the TSLA Q1 2024 earning call, Musk said that Tesla plans to release FSD (Supervised) in other countries. He added that releasing Tesla FSD (Supervised) in other markets would not be that difficult. Tesla would have to do some country-specific training, but otherwise FSD (Supervised) is believed to be capable enough to drive on any roads.
“So, think about the end-to-end neural net-based autonomy is that just like a human, it actually works pretty well without modification in almost any market. So, we plan on — with the approval of the regulators, releasing it as a supervised autonomy system in any market that — where we can get regulatory approval for that, which we think includes China. So, yes, it’s — just like a human, you can go rent a car in a foreign country and you can drive pretty well.
“Obviously, if you live in that country, you’ll drive better. And so, we’ll make the car drive better in these other countries with country-specific training. But it can drive quite well almost everywhere,” said Elon Musk.
Musk’s visit to China isn’t all about Tesla FSD. On Monday, the chairman of China’s top battery supplier, CATL, Robin Zeng, visited Musk at his hotel. He also met with Tesla China executives Tom Zhu and Grace Tao.
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