Musk appeared to tout Tesla’s full self-driving (FSD) software on Monday as the company received major attention for reportedly taking a major step toward bringing it to China.
The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported Monday that the electric vehicle (EV) maker was getting the go-ahead from the Chinese government for the software.
FSD gives "access to a suite of more advanced driver assistance features" than Autopilot "designed to provide more active guidance and assisted driving under your active supervision," per Tesla’s website.
In a move seeming to promote FSD, Musk on Monday shared footage from 2023 of himself telling Tesla shareholders the technology will be "much, much better" than a human driver.
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"The thing to appreciate is not that full self-driving will be as good as a person. It will be much, much better, like a lot. Over time, ten times safer than a person. It’s not even going to be a contest frankly. So, this is a really big deal," he said in the video from Tesla’s shareholder meeting last year.
Tesla’s Autopilot has faced scrutiny from the U.S. government regarding its safety after some crashes.
The company’s reported FSD approval in China came after the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Tesla had met the country’s data security standards with its Model 3 and Y vehicles and after Musk had in-person talks with high-up Chinese politicians over the weekend.
"Musk winning FSD approval in the key China market is a watershed moment for the Tesla story in our view," senior equity research analyst Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities said in a Monday research note.
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The note labeled FSD as a "key ingredient" for Tesla’s long-term growth. Tesla launched its latest version of FSD, which requires driver supervision, earlier this year.
"If Musk is able to obtain approval from Beijing to transfer data collected in China abroad this would be pivotal around the acceleration of training its algorithms for its autonomous technology globally," Ives wrote. "We also believe this trip will be significant for Tesla and Musk further strengthening its EV footprint within the Chinese market at a pivotal time."
The market for EVs in China is a particularly crowded and competitive one, with Tesla having to vye with many Chinese-based car companies.
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Musk has talked up Tesla’s autonomous vehicle efforts in recent weeks, saying late last week that the company was "super excited" about its road map for it, for example.
"I think it should be obvious to anyone who’s driving Version 12 [of FSD], and it tells that it is only a matter of time before we exceed the reliability of humans and not much time with that," he said April 23. "And we’re really headed for an electric vehicle, an autonomous future."
The company also has new Tesla models in the pipeline that Tesla said last week would hit the market next year. Some of those will be lower-cost models.
