Tesla has put a pause on its Full Self-Driving (FSD) trial in China as it seeks further approval from the regulatory authority due to new and stricter regulations on issuing over-the-air updates for this technology.
A message was posted on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging website highlighting a comment by Grace Tao Line, Vice President of External Affairs at Tesla China stating — According to the requirements of the newly released “Notice on Further Strengthening the Management of Product Access, Recall and Online Software Upgrade of Intelligent Connected Vehicles”, the team is completing the approval of the 3.0 and 4.0 hardware corresponding to the intelligent assisted driving software. As these enhancements are subject to new regulatory requirements governing recalls, self-driving capabilities, and over-the-air updates, Tesla will implement the upgrades pending authorization from the relevant authorities.
Tesla previously confirmed that its FSD feature would be available as a complimentary trial for customers between March 17 and April 16, 2025. According to reports, Tesla had asked participants in the Beta testing of FSD not to share or make any information public including taking screenshots or talking about their experience.
Why was Tesla forced to slam the brakes on FSD?
China’s Industry Ministry recently implemented new autonomous driving regulations prohibiting companies from directly collecting local driving data. The approach is a contrast to Tesla’s US operations, where regulatory frameworks permit the Elon Musk-led company to train its AI systems via crowd-sourced driving data collected from its vehicles.
The new autonomous driving rules recently issued by China’s Industry Ministry stated that companies cannot directly collect local driving data as Tesla does in the U.S. where the system is trained by large information collected by the Elon Musk-led company’s fleet. Therefore, according to Reuters, Tesla is working with Baidu, a local tech giant, to make the FSD more accurate for the Chinese market.
Tesla is still looking to launch the complete FSD technology with the latest updates in China by the end of this year, though the company has not revealed a timeline.
Earlier at the Tesla Q4 2024 earnings call, Elon Musk said, “China, which is a gigantic market, we do have some challenges because they weren’t — they currently don’t allow us to transfer training video outside of China. And then the US government won’t let us do training in China. So, we’re in a bit of a bind there. It’s like a quandary.”
