Elon Musk has provided a concrete estimated date for Full Self-Driving’s (FSD) full approval in China. While a version of the system has been deployed to some users in China, the company only holds partial approval for FSD features in the country.

The CEO shared the update during Tesla’s Annual Shareholder Meeting, where stockholders also voted to approve Elon Musk’s ambitious 2025 performance award.

Elon Musk’s China FSD update

During the meeting, Elon Musk stated that Tesla expects to secure full regulatory approval for its Full Self-Driving (FSD) system in China by February or March 2026. This would mark a potential breakthrough in one of the world’s most competitive EV markets.

“We have partial approval in China, and we hopefully will have full approval in China around February or March or so. That’s what they’ve told us,” Musk said.

Tesla’s rollout of FSD features in China began in February 2025 under update 2024.45.32.12, which introduced what the company locally called “Autopilot automatic assisted driving on urban roads.” While not officially branded as FSD, the feature mirrored Tesla’s inner-city capabilities.

Positive feedback from China

Feedback from local drivers suggests strong real-world performance for the company’s “Autopilot automatic assisted driving on urban roads” feature. One driver who used the system for two months described it as “well-calibrated and human-like,” adding that it “slows appropriately on narrow streets and picks up speed on major roads.” The Tesla owner further reported zero safety interventions over his testing period, calling the system “almost too polite” when encountering pedestrians and scooters.

A Tesla Model 3 driver was also able to drive to the base camp of Mount Everest from Henan Province, a journey of about 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles), using “Autopilot automatic assisted driving on urban roads.” The driver’s trip was livestreamed on Chinese social media, where it attracted a lot of interest from viewers. 

During the 2025 Tesla Annual Shareholder Meeting, Elon Musk provided a teaser of the company’s targets for Optimus’s annual production. As per the CEO, Optimus’ pilot line will be capable of producing up to one million units annually. 

And this would just be the beginning. In the future, Musk mused that Optimus’ production could literally be out of this world.

Musk targets world’s fastest production ramp for Optimus robots

Tesla’s first Optimus line will be built in Fremont, California, and is projected to produce around one million robots per year. Other facilities like Gigafactory Texas could scale Optimus production to 10 million units annually. Musk even joked that a 100-million-unit line might one day be built “on Mars.” With Optimus, Musk stated that Tesla is looking to achieve a historic production ramp. 

“So we’re going to launch on the fastest production ramp of any product of any large complex manufactured product ever, starting with building a one million unit production line in Fremont. And that’s Line One. And then a 10-million-unit-per-year production line here (at Giga Texas). I don’t know where we’re going to put the one hundred million unit production line, maybe on Mars. But I think it’s going to literally get to one hundred million a year, maybe even a billion a year,” Musk said.

Optimus and sustainable abundance

Tesla’s Master Plan Part IV is all about sustainable abundance, and Musk highlighted that the humanoid robot will play a huge role in his vision for the future. He noted that Optimus’ mass production could redefine economic and social systems worldwide and open up premium services for everyone across the globe. 

“People often talk about eliminating poverty or giving everyone amazing medical care. There’s only one way to do that, and that’s with the Optimus robot,” Musk said. “With humanoid robots, you can actually give everyone amazing medical care. In terms of Optimus will be more precise. Optimus will ultimately be better than the best human surgeon with a level of precision that is beyond human… People always talked about eliminating poverty, but actually, Optimus will actually eliminate poverty,” Musk said.

Ford is considering a drastic move with its F-150 Lightning, which was the best-selling EV pickup on the market last quarter, beating out Tesla’s Cybertruck.

Ford has had a tumultuous entrance into its more expanded electric vehicle strategy over the past several years. At one point, the company was widely considered to be the most invested legacy automaker in the transition to electrification, but as the company has seen some real backtracking in terms of its sales and demand, it is cooling down its commitment.

At the end of Q3, it seemed to already be considering making some moves to cool off its EV ambitions, especially as the $7,500 EV tax credit was removed and it appeared that consumers would be less attracted to its vehicles without this sizeable discount.

Now, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Ford is considering scrapping the F-150 Lightning altogether, as one employee said “the demand is just not there.”

Despite it being the best-selling EV pickup in the U.S. last quarter, the sales simply do not match up with the pricing, and financially, it is not the time to try to dive further into a project that is not making a profit. Ford has been dwindling in its commitment to EVs over the past several quarters, and its profits are reflecting a slowing interest in its electric vehicles.

Simply put, Ford’s combustion engine lineup of pickups in the F-Series is, by far, the best-selling division of trucks globally. Ford brought an awesome product forth with the Lightning, a mirror of the gas-powered F-Series that had a variety of trim levels for whatever the truck would be used for by the consumer.

However, the demand and sales have caused Ford to take a loss on its electric truck: figures from early last year indicated it was losing between $100,000 and $132,000 per vehicle.

It is not an official announcement, as Ford has not publicly said anything regarding its plans for the Lightning at this time.