The launch of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) in China might be just around the corner, as a recent software update has added a reference to the software in employee vehicles.
Tesla first launched FSD in the US in October 2020, and then expanding it north of the border to Canada in March 2022. However in the two plus years since then, FSD has yet to officially expand beyond North America. While it appears as though the introduction of FSD to Europe might still take a while, its launch in China could happen sooner rather than later.
Last month CEO Elon Musk visited China to discuss the potential rollout of FSD in China. The meetings were an apparent success, and it looks like the first users to receive the software will be employees, according to a photo shared on social media.
The photo was shared by Tesla China watcher Chris Zheng on X, and it shows the in-car “Additional Information” screen that has the wording, “Employee FSD Beta Version Program: Registered.” According to Zheng, this wording was added with the spring update, but no FSD features are active yet on these vehicles.
I can confirm that since the spring update (Tesla OS v12), some Tesla China employees' cars have had the words "Employee FSD Beta Program: Registered" on them, but no features can be enabled. pic.twitter.com/KYP9XKx4mV
— Chris Zheng (@ChrisZheng001) May 26, 2024
This photo does appear to be genuine, as there are other employee-only items on the screen, including “Employee Wave 11 Plan: Registered,” and “Early User Queue: Registered.”
As we noted, Musk personally visited Beijing last month in an attempt to find a path to secure approval for the launch of FSD in China. Since then, Tesla has seemingly met one of the required steps by setting up a data center in Shanghai to keep data storage and processing localized, a vital move given that Chinese law requires that data from vehicles in China be stored and processed within the country.
