Tesla brings half-baked FSD to full-price customers in China as it can only use local data for training

Tesla is starting to push its FSD service via an OTA software update to those owners in China who bought the option but haven't been able to use it until now.

The FSD features in China, however, fall short of their expectations, as Tesla is facing limitations on data it can use to train the algorithms there.

Currently, it is nowhere close to the FSD v13 Tesla has released in the US, and Tesla markets it as an upgrade to its Navigate on Autopilot feature there that can change lanes, take ramps, or read traffic lights and make turns in the city. The cabin camera is now used for watching if the driver is paying attention to the road, too.

Tesla has changed the name of the $8,000 option from FSD to "automatic assisted driving kit," as it is basically just a Level 2 driver-assist system of the type that BYD now gives with its vehicles for free.

Tesla reportedly dispatched a team of US engineers this month to deploy the China-specific algorithm that uses raw data from pilot Teslas that have been driving around China since last year, as well as simply driving videos off the Internet.

As per Elon Musk, the launch of FSD in China has been facing very peculiar obstacles, since the US doesn't allow raw driver data to be exported there, while the Chinese authorities don't let it take training videos out of the country, too:

Then in China, which is a gigantic market, we do have some challenges because they weren't, currently allow us to transfer training video outside of China. And then the US government wouldn't let us do training in China. So we're in a bit of a bind there. So like, bit of a quandary. So we are already solving then is by literally looking at videos of streets in China that are available on the Internet to understand and then feeding that into our video training so that publicly available video of street signs and traffic rules in China can be used for training and then also putting it in a very accurate simulator. And so it will train using SIM for bus lanes in China. Like bus lanes in China, by the way, were about the biggest challenges in making FSD work in China is the bus lanes are very complicated. And there's like literally like hours of the day that you're allowed to be there and not be there. And then if you accidentally go in that bus lane at the wrong time, you get an automatic ticket instantly. So, it's kind of a big deal, bus lanes in China. So we're going to put that into our simulator, train on that. The car has to know what time of day it is, read the sign. Anyway, we'll get this solved.

Apparently, Tesla has become confident enough to release at least rudimentary FSD features in China, and, after the US engineers have deployed the algorithm, the local team will take over and feed it with specific data and situations from the roads there to improve its performance over time.

It remains to be seen how many Tesla owners in China will be willing to pay full price for half-baked FSD in the meantime, especially considering the fact that local EV makers like BYD are already offering superior autonomy for free with their vehicles now.

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