Tesla is counting on FSD as a key to its next growth cycle, so it was no surprise that the advanced driver-assist system became a point of interest for analysts during the first quarter earnings call. One of the inquiries was focused on Tesla’s strategy for FSD’s worldwide rollout — a fitting question considering that FSD’s most current features are only available in the US and Canada today.
During the earnings call, Canaccord Genuity analyst George Gianarikas asked about Tesla’s FSD strategy for markets outside the US and Canada. Elon Musk responded by highlighting that Tesla’s vision-based approach to autonomy should make FSD work fairly well, even without modification, in any market. This, Musk, noted, is similar to how human drivers could generally operate a vehicle competently anywhere as long as they know how to drive.
“The thing about the end-to-end neural net-based autonomy is that just like a human, it actually works pretty well without modification in almost any market… So, yes — just like a human, you can go rent a car in a foreign country and you can drive pretty well. Obviously, if you live in that country, you’ll drive better. And so, we’ll make the car drive better in these other countries with country-specific training. But it can drive quite well almost everywhere,” Musk said.
Tesla Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Vaibhav Taneja explained Musk’s point further, noting that some driving rules in countries like China are completely different than the rules in the United States. However, the CFO stated that the changes to FSD that would be required for the system to work competently within a specific country’s rules will likely not be too extensive.
“There are some road rules that you need to follow. And in China, you shouldn’t cross over a solid line to do a lane change. In the US, it’s a recommendation, I think. In China, you get fined heavily if you do that. We have to do some more actions, but it’s mostly smaller adoptions. It’s not like the entire change of stack or something like that,” Taneja said.
Considering that Tesla is betting a significant portion of its future on the success of FSD, it is quite interesting to see that the system has only been released to two countries today. The demand for the system among Tesla owners in China and countries in Europe is substantial, after all, especially since some owners have purchased FSD with their vehicles several years ago.
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