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interface news reporter | zhou shuqi

teslaceo elon musk on tesla's second quarter earnings call two months ago, will launch fully autonomous driving technology (fsd) in the chinese market before the end of this year, but now the launch schedule has to be further postponed.

on september 5, tesla officially announced on social media that it plans to launch fsd in china and europe in the first quarter of next year, but it still needs approval from regulators. this is one of the few clear responses from tesla to rumors that tesla fsd will be introduced in china in the past year.

influenced by the news, tesla's us stocks rose more than 2.5% in pre-market trading.

due to the aging of its product portfolio and the rise of local chinese new energy brands, tesla's share of the new energy market in china fell from 9.5% in the same period last year to 6.8% in the first half of this year. the introduction of fsd in china is a key node to stimulate sales growth before the next round of product cycles.

on the other hand, tesla's self-developed "end-to-end" autonomous driving software algorithm uses a neural network model to replace hundreds of thousands of manually written codes. in order to keep this architecture iterative, millions of actual driving video clips are needed for training. china is tesla's second largest market in the world, with more than 1.7 million vehicles in operation. the driving data of these 1.7 million vehicles is very important to tesla.

in april this year, musk made a "lightning visit to china" to speed up the implementation of fsd. soon after, he said in an internal letter that tesla had obtained permission to test some assisted driving systems in china. in june, media reported that the shanghai autonomous driving demonstration zone had issued a road test license to tesla, and fsd may be being tested.

however, foreign media reports pointed out that due to concerns about tesla software causing accidents in the united states and data security issues, even if tesla's fsd is approved in china, it may initially be limited to a few cities such as shanghai. tesla has also not yet obtained permission to transfer driving data from chinese tesla owners to american computers for training its autonomous driving models.

tesla may consider increasing investment in chinese data centers. in 2021, tesla established a data center in shanghai to achieve local data storage. in april this year, the china association of automobile manufacturers issued a notice on the inspection of data processing security requirements, stating that all models produced by tesla's shanghai super factory meet the compliance requirements, making it the only foreign-funded enterprise that meets the compliance requirements.

domestic consumers expect tesla to introduce fsd, as it may be the most advanced intelligent driving software solution. gu junli, who once worked in tesla's autonomous driving department, said that tesla may be up to two years ahead of china in driving assistance technology. she is now in charge ofchery automobileself-developed autonomous driving.

jiemian news reporter experienced tesla fsd v12.4 in new york, usa. the actual feeling is that it can accurately identify road conditions and make judgments similar to those of human drivers. when turning and braking, it can also prepare in advance so that passengers will not feel obvious setbacks.

however, it is currently difficult to determine whether tesla fsd can achieve a considerable level of actual performance in the chinese market.xpeng motorswhen testing tesla's latest intelligent driving function in california in june, ceo he xiaopeng pointed out that china's urban roads are more complicated than those in the united states and may be 10 times more difficult.

ideal autojia peng, head of intelligent driving research and development, believes that tesla fsd has obvious differences in user experience in cities on the east and west coasts of the united states.in unfamiliar cities with more complex road conditions, tesla's intelligent driving performance dropped sharply and its takeover rate increased significantly.

although the final launch date is still to be expected, all tesla models sold in china can be equipped with fsd, which costs up to 64,000 yuan. in contrast, domestic auto brands have taken advantage of this gap to provide consumers with similar high-end intelligent driving solutions at a cheaper price or even for free. this price difference has reduced the appeal of tesla fsd to a certain extent.

xpeng motors claims to be the world's second automobile company to achieve mass production of end-to-end large models. the version it pushes to users on a large scale can be applied to all public roads in the country. li auto has also conducted internal testing of the end-to-end model for some users, and claims that the gap with tesla will be shortened within half a year.

interface news，bydthe company has set up a separate tianxuan development department to increase its investment in self-developed intelligent driving. this leading new energy vehicle brand has also reached a cooperation with huawei, which will provideequation leopardthe models provide intelligent driving functions with end-to-end capabilities. traditional luxury brand manufacturersbenzwe have also decided to implement this in next year’s new car.。

auto brands that aspire to gain a foothold in the chinese market will not easily give up on the research and development of intelligent driving. at a time when new energy products are caught in homogeneous competition, this function is an important factor in differentiating models. at the same time, it is also a means for auto companies to strengthen their brand technology leadership and enhance their brand technology premium capabilities.

seizing the minds of users is very important in the current oversupplied auto market. we may see the answer next year as to which of tesla and china's local new energy brands have better intelligent driving capabilities.