During the Q4 2024 earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk noted that FSD’s rollout in China is quite challenging because the country does not allow the transfer of training data outside its borders.
It appears that Tesla was able to work around this challenge through a collaboration between its engineering teams in China and the United States.
The reports:
Citing several people reportedly familiar with the matter, Chinese news outlet LatePost claimed that a team of engineers from Tesla’s U.S. headquarters traveled to China in early February to help with the local deployment of FSD features in the country.In theory, the collaboration was expected to optimize the performance of Tesla’s FSD features domestically without transferring any training data outside China.With this arrangement, Tesla China’s team would not have to train FSD from scratch. The Tesla China team is also expected to take over the algorithmic optimization of local road scenarios in the country once the U.S. team’s work is complete, as noted in a CNEV Post report.The data used for algorithm training in China were from Tesla’s engineering vehicles that have been driven on specific roads around the country since last year, LatePost‘s sources claimed.
FSD smart driving at night in China 🇨🇳#FSD #SelfDriving $tsla @TeslaZoa @zhongwen2005 @TeslaNewswire @SERobinsonJr @ray4tesla pic.twitter.com/Fu2j8Wi7Yu
— DriveGreenLiveGreen (@DriveGreen80167) February 25, 2025
Tesla China’s “Not-an-FSD” update:
Tesla China started rolling out update 2024.45.32.12 to qualified vehicles across the country.The update did not mention FSD, but it included a feature locally called “Autopilot automatic assisted driving on urban roads,” which is very similar to FSD’s inner city streets driving.Tesla China described its new “Autopilot” feature as follows:“Using Autopilot automatic assisted driving on controlled roads (main roads where road users enter and exit through ramp entrances and ramp exits) and urban roads will guide the vehicle out of ramps and intersections according to the navigation route, and identify traffic lights at intersections to go straight, turn left, turn right, turn around, etc. It will also 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 road conditions.”Tesla watchers have observed that China’s “Autopilot automatic assisted driving on urban roads” feature is only available for AI4 vehicles.
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