Musk revealed Tesla (TSLA.US) FSD's progress in China: it is expected to be fully approved early next year

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Tesla (TSLA.US) CEO Elon Musk revealed at the shareholders' meeting on Thursday local time that Tesla's fully autonomous driving technology (FSD) has received “partial approval” in China. He was told that FSD is expected to be fully approved around February or March 2026.

According to reports, despite being called “fully automated driving,” the software still requires continuous human supervision and frequent intervention. At a time when Tesla is facing fierce competition in the Chinese market, FSD is an important pillar for Tesla to revive sales in the Chinese market.

Tesla's FSD feature launched in the Chinese market in February of this year. However, the FSD function introduced by Tesla this time is positioned as “intelligent assisted driving” in China, rather than the FSD fully autonomous driving that has been promoted until now. It is a simplified version of FSD. It mainly focuses on assisted driving in specific scenarios on urban roads. It is an L2 level in the “partial automation” stage, which is indeed different from Tesla's US FSD.

Tesla's FSD feature has been partially approved in China to enable the US electric vehicle manufacturer to conduct tests, but broader testing remains suspended until full approval is obtained from Chinese regulators.

Additionally, Musk called on European consumers to pressure local regulators to approve the FSD. Europe has yet to approve Tesla FSD for public use.

Notably, although Tesla claims that its FSD improves safety, the company's safety record is being scrutinized. The US Auto Safety Supervisory Authority is investigating several incidents against Tesla. In these incidents, Tesla vehicles ran red lights and violated other traffic regulations while using some FSD features. Other investigations focused on Tesla's car doors, autonomous driving features, and whether to report collisions in a timely manner.

Musk's shareholders' meeting released a large amount of information

At Tesla's shareholders' meeting on Thursday, about 75% of shareholders voted to approve Musk's salary plan of up to 1 trillion US dollars (about 7 trillion yuan). Tesla shareholders also re-elected three directors of the board of directors and voted for the annual election of all directors. Tesla said it will take time to review the voting results of a non-binding shareholder proposal to invest in Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI. In the votes submitted, there were more votes in favour of the plan than against it, but the number of abstentions was too high to merit further discussion.

In addition to FSD's progress in China, Musk also revealed a lot of information at Tesla's shareholders' meeting on Thursday. Musk is hyping up Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus. He reiterated that humanoid robots will be the largest product ever made, and everyone will have a robot in the future. He expects tens of billions of Optimus units to be “put into use” in the future.

Optimus will start mass production next year. Musk said that once Tesla reaches an annual production volume of about 1 million Optimus units, the production cost may be around 20,000 US dollars under the same production scale.

Musk also said that both the robot taxi Cybercab and the Tesla Semi truck will be put into production next year. Specifically, mass production of Cybercab will begin in April next year. The goal is to produce one vehicle in 10 seconds, aiming for an annual output of 5 million units; the Tesla Semi truck's annual production target is 50,000 units.

Furthermore, although Musk has stated many times that Tesla is more than an electric car manufacturer, he still believes that cars are an important part of the company's future. According to reports, Tesla's goal for next year is to increase automobile production by about 50%, reaching 4 million vehicles per year by the end of 2027.