Tesla's Over-the-Air (OTA) FSD Software Enters China

Tesla's official tweet this morning announced the latest layout of the Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta, mentioning that the FSD Beta can now be used in China. This marks an important breakthrough for the American electric vehicle manufacturer in achieving a global software layout in the world's largest new energy vehicle market.

As of May, the FSD Beta has been approved for use in about ten countries and regions worldwide, covering North America (United States, Canada, Mexico), the Asia-Pacific region (Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea), and Europe (Netherlands and Lithuania). The explicit inclusion of the Chinese market in this system is the latest step in its global layout.

Tesla's entry into China's autonomous driving software market has gone through several years of twists and turns. As early as the annual shareholder meeting in November 2025, CEO Musk indicated that Chinese regulatory authorities had "partly approved" and expected to obtain full authorization between February and March 2026, but this timeline was not met as anticipated.

When it comes to regulatory aspects, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) had previously banned automobile companies from using terms like "autonomous driving" or "full self-driving," prompting Tesla to rename the system "Smart Driver Assistance" in China. In February this year, Tesla set up a local AI training data center in China to comply with strict data localization regulatory requirements and to obtain Chinese road scene data for model training.

The current latest version of Tesla's FSD Beta is v14.3.3, which is reported to have significantly reduced the frequency of intervention required from the driver. At the same time, it has been revealed that Tesla is secretly testing FSD v14.3.2 among its Chinese internal staff members, and the City Autopilot feature is already in operation on some vehicles in China.

Tesla faces fierce competition in China from local automobile companies such as BYD and NIO, which have accumulated a substantial amount of localized training data on Chinese road scenarios, forming a first-mover advantage. In a quarterly earnings call in April this year, Musk reiterated his goal to launch the full FSD in China as soon as possible and expects the consumer deployment of the non-supervisory FSD to be initiated in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Tesla formally ceased the outright purchase of FSD on February 14, 2026, shifting to a pure subscription model, with a monthly fee of $99 in the United States. The European market also ended the outright purchase option on May 21, with a monthly fee of approximately €99. The cumulative driving mileage of FSD worldwide has surpassed 10 billion miles.

Tesla currently has about 1.1 million FSD paying users globally, with nearly 70% of them being outright purchase users.