On February 26, Tesla's FSD function was officially launched in the Chinese market. Previously, FSD only provided services in North America. According to feedback from the first batch of users, FSD performed well in China's driving environment and has demonstrated its adaptability to China's traffic rules and road conditions.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to user feedback on X on Tuesday, saying that Tesla used publicly available Chinese road and traffic sign videos to train FSD through an innovative video simulation environment, successfully allowing the FSD system to quickly adapt to China's road signs and traffic regulations. This method not only greatly improved the training efficiency, but also enabled the FSD system to better adapt to the driving environment in different regions.
On February 25, Tesla China's WeChat applet began to push the 2024.45.32.12 software update to customers in batches. The most important upgrade of this software update is "Urban Road Autopilot Automatic Assisted Driving".
According to Tesla, after the update, the vehicle will use Autopilot automatic assisted driving on controlled roads (main roads where road users enter and exit through ramp entrances and ramp exits) and urban roads, and will guide the vehicle out of ramps and intersections according to the navigation route, and identify traffic lights at intersections. And automatically change lanes according to speed and route. When the navigation route is not set, the optimal road will be selected according to the actual situation of the road.
Previously, Tesla has been actively preparing for the entry of FSD into China. The training of intelligent driving functions is inseparable from the training of massive data (rights protection). Since Tesla does not have map surveying qualifications, it has cooperated with Baidu Maps since 2014 to provide basic map services. Tesla established the Tesla Shanghai Data Center in 2021 to realize local data storage. After the road data is structured in the car, only the desensitized feature vectors are transmitted to the local server.
According to the update instructions, this function requires the vehicle to be equipped with HW4.0 assisted driving hardware, that is, Model Y/3 after February 2024, and new Model S/X models. The range of compatible models will be gradually expanded in the future.
However, an industry insider of intelligent driving told the media that the subscription purchase fee of FSD, which exceeds 60,000 yuan, is difficult for most Chinese consumers who are accustomed to free software to accept. FSD may not have a particularly significant effect on sales in the short term.
At the same time, Tesla is also facing competition from intelligent driving technology in the Chinese domestic market. This year, major car companies have increased their investment in high-end intelligent driving. Many companies have launched L2 intelligent driving systems that are not inferior to FSD, and some have begun to develop L3 autonomous driving technology.
According to a research report by CITIC Securities, it is expected that the penetration rates of urban NOA (navigation-assisted driving) and high-speed NOA in China will reach 14% and 30% respectively in 2025.
