China Fund News reporter Feng Yao
As the market focuses on the continuous price increases of Tesla models in China, this electric vehicle giant is brewing greater action.
The domestic L3 and L4 intelligent driving field has recently seen significant changes. Recently, four ministries jointly issued a notice to deploy the pilot work of intelligent connected vehicle access and road traffic, requiring L3 and L4 level intelligent connected vehicles with mass production conditions to carry out road traffic pilot work within a limited area, especially for the first time clarifying accident liability determination.
In this context, as one of the main players of intelligent driving technology, Tesla's FSD is considered to have entered the countdown stage when it lands in China. On November 23rd, Tesla China also responded to this issue to reporters: "It is indeed underway
FSD introduction has appeared
Recently, it was reported that the owner's manual on Tesla China's official website has added the introduction of fully autonomous driving capability (Beta), also known as the FSD Beta version. From the screenshot of the user manual on Tesla's official website taken earlier, it can be seen that under the Autopilot autonomous driving section, fully autonomous driving capability has been added.
According to Tesla, with the introduction of fully autonomous driving capability (also known as self-service assisted steering on urban streets), Model Y can achieve functions such as driving along curves on the road, stopping before passing at intersections, making left and right turns, navigating through roundabouts, and entering/exiting highways.
Meanwhile, through FSD, Tesla models can not only have autonomous driving capability on clear multi lane roads, but also use fully autonomous driving capability on any type of road, including residential and urban streets.
In other words, Tesla FSD already fully supports high-speed NOA (Navigation Assisted Driving) and urban NOA. Tesla also repeatedly emphasizes in its official manual that the driver is still the first person in charge of the vehicle, pointing out that fully autonomous driving ability is not equivalent to achieving autonomous driving, and the driver still needs to remain focused during the driving process and be ready to take over at any time.
However, as of the time of publication, the user manual on the official website has deleted the FSD related content mentioned above.
Tesla FSD's entry into China has always been a concern for various sectors of the industry, especially major competitors. Regarding this, Tesla China insiders have confirmed to reporters that the implementation of FSD in China is currently being promoted. However, the person also stated that there is currently no definite internal information on when the final landing will take place.
In fact, Tesla has already done a lot of preparation work to implement FSD in China. In 2021, it established a data center in Shanghai, and all data generated by its Chinese business, including production data, sales data, service data, and charging data, are fully stored within China to comply with regulatory requirements.
In addition, Tesla has established an FSD operations team and data annotation team in Shanghai, and has sent engineers from their headquarters to provide training. Moreover, Tesla China has been assisting relevant departments in promoting the development of laws and regulations related to high-level autonomous driving.
What are the advantages of FSD?
According to the data, the FSD architecture creates a full link autonomous driving software and hardware architecture that includes perception, regulation, and execution at various levels such as data, algorithms, and computing power. The name of FSD on Tesla's official website is "Fully Autonomous Driving Capability".
Tesla CEO Musk stated at the May shareholders' meeting that Tesla FSD Beta users have traveled 190 million miles (approximately 306 million kilometers). "The development of FSD beta is very rapid, and in the future, its safety will far exceed that of human drivers, reaching a safety level of 10 times," he said bluntly.
It is understood that Tesla's autonomous driving products can be divided into three categories, including AP, EAP, and FSD. Among them, the automatic assisted driving AP is the most basic version, while EAP enhances assisted driving by adding functions such as intelligent machine calling, automatic parking, and NOA. At present, these two categories of products can be used in China, with the former being free and the latter priced at 32000 yuan.
The highest level is FSD, which mainly features NOA, automatic lane change, automatic parking, intelligent calling, traffic signal recognition, and automatic turning of urban roads based on navigation routes. Currently, the Beta version is only available in North America, priced at $15000 in the United States and $17500 in Canada.
And Tesla has always been regarded as a benchmark by domestic intelligent driving players. So, where does Tesla's advantage come from? In the industry's view, data, algorithms, and computing power are comprehensively leading, building Tesla's core advantages.
Zhejiang Securities analysis suggests that Tesla has a long driving distance, with FSD Beta driving over 300 million miles as of June 2023; Secondly, there are many vehicles sold, with over 1.3 million delivered in 2022 and approximately 1.8 million expected to be delivered in 2023; Thirdly, its shadow mode supports running on mass production vehicles and collecting data, which is equivalent to transforming every sold vehicle into a "data acquisition vehicle", fully leveraging the advantages of mass production vehicles covering a wide range of scenarios and low costs.
L3 and L4 level road test start
It should be noted that the countdown to the domestic landing of Tesla FSD is also subtly related to the recent issuance of heavyweight notices from four departments.
On November 17th, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development, and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued a notice to deploy the pilot work of intelligent connected vehicle access and road access. Overall, L3 and L4 level intelligent connected vehicles with mass production conditions are required to carry out road access pilot work in limited areas.
At the same time, relevant departments have also started the selection process for the first batch of enterprises. More importantly, for the first time, the four departments have clarified the responsibility for high-level intelligent driving accidents.
According to the trial scheme, if an accident occurs when the auto drive system is not activated, the vehicle shall bear the responsibility according to the current regulations. In case of any violation or accident under the active status of the auto drive system, the pilot enterprise and the pilot user shall provide supporting materials to the relevant departments within the specified time. If the materials are not provided according to regulations, the accident responsibility shall be borne.
In addition, intelligent connected vehicles can be used as the object of liability determination in accidents, and the pilot user must bear compensation liability in accordance with the law for the relevant liability determination.
This is also seen as a "milestone" breakthrough in the industry. As is well known, responsibility determination has always been a "stumbling block" that hinders the landing of L3 or above intelligent driving in the past.
Four dimensional Tuxin, one of the players of the intelligent driving track, told reporters that the difficulties in the identification of automatic driving responsibility before were that the subject of responsibility had changed, the causal relationship was difficult to identify, the way of assuming criminal responsibility was uncertain, and autonomous vehicle lacked relevant legal provisions. A vehicle model with L3 or above autonomous driving function is the true subject of vehicle behavior, and requires the support of corresponding supporting regulations to have the conditions for large-scale opening up on the road
Regarding the issuance of this notice, the company believes that the conditional opening of L3 level autonomous driving vehicles on the road by domestic regulations will likely advance the time point for L2/L2+to become standard, and the penetration rate of autonomous driving in the entire industry is expected to significantly increase. The primary beneficiaries will be intelligent driving suppliers (including some self developed main engine manufacturers).
Industry welcome catalyst
In the secondary market, concept stocks related to intelligent driving have become popular. On November 23rd, concept stocks including Wanji Technology, Huayang Group, and Yongxin Optics rose their limit one after another, while Junsheng Electronics and Desai Xiwei also saw significant gains.
In the market's view, conducting road tests within the limited area of L3 and L4 level intelligent driving, as well as the approaching domestic landing of Tesla FSD, will become important catalysts for the industry.
Guohai Securities Research Report believes that China is currently in an important stage of transition from L2 to L3, with autonomous driving rapidly advancing from high-speed NOA to urban NOA. The institution believes that the implementation of policies is expected to open a fast track for the commercial implementation of advanced autonomous driving, and the logic of intelligent cars remains unchanged. Market sentiment is expected to benefit from the favorable policies.
From the content of the notice, the current requirements for vehicle manufacturers and pilot cities are relatively high, but cities with corresponding infrastructure in the early stage are more likely to be approved. Compared to the previous L3 pilot projects, which mainly focused on local areas, this pilot implementation is more universal, "a person from the main engine factory told reporters. In his view, as construction experience accumulates and restrictions are gradually relaxed in the future, the popularization process of advanced intelligent driving will accelerate.
On the eve of the upcoming road test of L3 and L4 level intelligent driving and the entry of Tesla FSD into China, domestic manufacturers have also entered a fierce competition.
Huawei recently announced a new strategy for smart travel solutions, with ADS 2.0 being the first to achieve no map within the year, and will also cover the entire country. The Xiaopeng XNGP intelligent driving assistance system will open 20 new cities at the end of November, and is expected to increase to 50 cities within the year. In addition, the extremely Krypton NZP assisted driving has also unlocked Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Ningbo in advance, while the Deep Blue OTA has been upgraded to Deep OS2.0.
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