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Tesla taps into Chinese TikTok for social media-based sales and customer support
Tesla may have temporarily shut down its electric vehicle factory in Shanghai due to the coronavirus outbreak, but the electric car company has taken to other channels to reach its enthusiastic market in China. More specifically, Tesla is using Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, to push knowledge-based content with the goal of driving more sales and deliver customer support to new and existing Tesla owners.
A tweet posted by Tesla owner and electric car enthusiast @Ray4Tesla shows Tesla stores in China are conducting livestreams that put the spotlight on Tesla vehicles and their features. Each store has its own account to stream videos that cover a variety of topics that are of interest to its customers.
Since Chinese mostly stay home these days, @teslacn is quick to come up this ingenious idea to reach ?? consumers thru Douyin (Tik Tok) to livestream sales reps (each store has its own account) featuring Tesla vehicles followed by Q&A. This is a free & powerful marketing tool. pic.twitter.com/DK7QepkGsc
— Ray4️⃣Tesla⚡️?☀️? (@ray4tesla) February 2, 2020
For instance, the Tesla Experience Center in Changsha is conducting live-streamed tours of the Model 3, followed by a Q&A call that allows potential buyers to interact directly with the sales representatives. Other broadcasts include tutorials to inform new buyers of charging and how to use Tesla’s Autopilot driving-assist feature, testimonials from the first Made-in-China Model 3 owners, and demonstrations of Tesla vehicles undergoing energy consumption tests.
Allan Wang, General Manager at Tesla China, has posted a comprehensive schedule of livestreams by each Tesla store on his Weibo page.
Tesla may have struggled with customer service in the US, but the all-electric car company seems to be making sure it doesn’t make the same mistakes in China. Considering China is the largest electric vehicle market in the world, it only makes sense for Tesla to turn to powerful yet severely underused social media channels that allow it to provide a more personalized level of service to a new base of customers.
Douyin, the Chinese version of video app TikTok, is one of the most popular social media apps in China. In its annual earnings report, Douyin parent company ByteDance announced that the app has grown to 400 million active users every day in 2019, up from 250 million daily active users at the beginning of last year. Marketing research firm eMarketer also said that Douyin’s growth outpaces that of earlier players Weibo and WeChat.
Douyin’s claim to fame is its emphasis on knowledge-based content, which it says is the most consumed type of content on its app in 2019. It’s also the largest mobile social network in China, with 67.9 percent of Chinese social network users actively on Douyin. The potential for using Douyin is huge, as it allows Tesla to provide educational broadcasts and reach a broad swath of the Chinese market for free while providing customers a closer look at Tesla’s products and company values.
No doubt, Shanghai-based Tesla competitor Nio recognizes Douyin as a sales and customer service tool, having taken a page out of Tesla’s playbook and creating its own Douyin accounts as well.
Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor is proving to be a difficult task, according to some riders who made the journey to Austin to attempt to ride in one of its vehicles that has zero supervision.
Last week, Tesla officially removed Safety Monitors from some — not all — of its Robotaxi vehicles in Austin, Texas, answering skeptics who said the vehicles still needed supervision to operate safely and efficiently.
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Tesla aimed to remove Safety Monitors before the end of 2025, and it did, but only to company employees. It made the move last week to open the rides to the public, just a couple of weeks late to its original goal, but the accomplishment was impressive, nonetheless.
However, the small number of Robotaxis that are operating without Safety Monitors has proven difficult to hail for a ride. David Moss, who has gained notoriety recently as the person who has traveled over 10,000 miles in his Tesla on Full Self-Driving v14 without any interventions, made it to Austin last week.
He has tried to get a ride in a Safety Monitor-less Robotaxi for the better part of four days, and after 38 attempts, he still has yet to grab one:
Wow just wow!
It’s 8:30PM, 29° out ice storm hailing & Tesla Robotaxi service has turned back on!
Waymo is offline & vast majority of humans are home in the storm
Ride 38 was still supervised but by far most impressive yet pic.twitter.com/1aUnJkcYm8
— David Moss (@DavidMoss) January 25, 2026
Tesla said last week that it was rolling out a controlled test of the Safety Monitor-less Robotaxis. Ashok Elluswamy, who heads the AI program at Tesla, confirmed that the company was “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader Robotaxi fleet with Safety Monitors,” and that “the ratio will increase over time.”
This is a good strategy that prioritizes safety and keeps the company’s controlled rollout at the forefront of the Robotaxi rollout.
However, it will be interesting to see how quickly the company can scale these completely monitor-less rides. It has proven to be extremely difficult to get one, but that is understandable considering only a handful of the cars in the entire Austin fleet are operating with no supervision within the vehicle.
Tesla has given its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent, as a new feature seems to show that the company is preparing for frequent border crossings.
Tesla owner and influencer BLKMDL3, also known as Zack, recently took his Tesla to the border of California and Mexico at Tijuana, and at the international crossing, Full Self-Driving showed an interesting message: “Upcoming country border — FSD (Supervised) will become unavailable.”
FSD now shows a new message when approaching an international border crossing.
Stayed engaged the whole way as we crossed the border and worked great in Mexico! pic.twitter.com/bDzyLnyq0g
— Zack (@BLKMDL3) January 26, 2026
Due to regulatory approvals, once a Tesla operating on Full Self-Driving enters a new country, it is required to comply with the laws and regulations that are applicable to that territory. Even if legal, it seems Tesla will shut off FSD temporarily, confirming it is in a location where operation is approved.
This is something that will be extremely important in Europe, as crossing borders there is like crossing states in the U.S.; it’s pretty frequent compared to life in America, Canada, and Mexico.
Tesla has been working to get FSD approved in Europe for several years, and it has been getting close to being able to offer it to owners on the continent. However, it is still working through a lot of the red tape that is necessary for European regulators to approve use of the system on their continent.
This feature seems to be one that would be extremely useful in Europe, considering the fact that crossing borders into other countries is much more frequent than here in the U.S., and would cater to an area where approvals would differ.
Tesla has been testing FSD in Spain, France, England, and other European countries, and plans to continue expanding this effort. European owners have been fighting for a very long time to utilize the functionality, but the red tape has been the biggest bottleneck in the process.
Tesla Europe builds momentum with expanding FSD demos and regional launches
Tesla operates Full Self-Driving in the United States, China, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship V3 gets launch date update from Elon Musk
The first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.
Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX’s next Starship launch, Flight 12, is expected in about six weeks. This suggests that the first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.
In a post on X, Elon Musk stated that the next Starship launch is in six weeks. He accompanied his announcement with a photo that seemed to have been taken when Starship’s upper stage was just about to separate from the Super Heavy Booster. Musk did not state whether SpaceX will attempt to catch the Super Heavy Booster during the upcoming flight.
The upcoming flight will mark the debut of Starship V3. The upgraded design includes the new Raptor V3 engine, which is expected to have nearly twice the thrust of the original Raptor 1, at a fraction of the cost and with significantly reduced weight. The Starship V3 platform is also expected to be optimized for manufacturability.
The Starship V3 Flight 12 launch timeline comes as SpaceX pursues an aggressive development cadence for the fully reusable launch system. Previous iterations of Starship have racked up a mixed but notable string of test flights, including multiple integrated flight tests in 2025.
Interestingly enough, SpaceX has teased an aggressive timeframe for Starship V3’s first flight. Way back in late November, SpaceX noted on X that it will be aiming to launch Starship V3’s maiden flight in the first quarter of 2026. This was despite setbacks like a structural anomaly on the first V3 booster during ground testing.
“Starship’s twelfth flight test remains targeted for the first quarter of 2026,” the company wrote in its post on X.
Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor proves to be difficult
Tesla gives its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent
