On July 11th, 2023, CITIC Securities published an article saying that the trend of Tesla FSD (autonomous driving) entering China is becoming more and more clear, which is expected to accelerate the intelligentization process of China car companies as a whole, benefiting China car companies that deeply cultivate high-level intelligent driving functions and take it as a differentiated selling point, but low-end models may face greater pressure.
As early as the end of June this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed on overseas social platforms that Tesla’s next-generation FSD V12 version will cancel the "Beta" (beta version). Since Tesla FSD was officially pushed to users in 2020, the system has always had the name suffix of "Beta" (Beta version). The cancellation of "beta" this time may mean that the next generation of FSD has been able to achieve full automatic driving ability.
CITIC Securities believes that Tesla’s FSD technology is now close to maturity. Although it is still an L2+ product restricted by laws and regulations, after three years of testing, the technical end may have L3 capability initially, and it is expected to achieve a higher level of automatic driving under the premise that the driver takes over the bottom.
At present, the introduction of Tesla FSD into China still faces two thresholds: qualification and data, in which "qualification" refers to the need to obtain the qualification of map surveying and mapping. Because Tesla needs to achieve automatic driving through shadow mode, the system will automatically detect the surrounding environment when the vehicle is driving and learn the driving style of the driver on the relevant road sections. This practice may be judged as a map surveying and mapping behavior and needs to obtain relevant qualifications before it can be carried out.
In addition, the "data" is well understood. The data collected by Tesla’s autonomous driving system on domestic roads cannot be transmitted back to the United States, so Tesla needs to establish a data center in China to ensure the security of information. It is obviously not so easy to solve these two problems. Even if Tesla FSD has a tendency to enter China, it will take some time to implement it.
According to CITIC Securities, Tesla FSD technology has been ahead of China for 2-3 years, and its performance in algorithm, data volume, data closed loop and hardware is excellent. In these respects, domestic car companies still have much room for improvement. If Tesla FSD is introduced into China, Tesla will cut prices sharply again, which will inevitably pose a threat to many domestic car companies.
However, it is worth mentioning that Musk has reiterated many times that he is willing to share Tesla’s autonomous driving technology with other car companies. If domestic new energy automobile brands are also equipped with Tesla’s autonomous driving technology, then the penetration rate of self-driving cars will be expected to increase significantly.
At the the State Council policy briefing held on June 21st this year, Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology, revealed that he would support the commercial application of L3 autopilot function. According to the latest news, the first domestic "unmanned" commercial pilot license will be issued in Beijing in the near future, and the first batch of enterprises are expected to obtain corresponding business licenses.
From this point of view, it is not too far away for the car to be fully self-driving, so will you consider buying a driverless car when you buy a car? If your car is fully self-driving, do you trust your life safety with the car program?