Following Tesla’s rollout of its “Full Self-Driving” package, China responded by announcing a crackdown on autonomous driving capabilities, introducing new restrictions to govern their use.
Tesla introduced its flagship “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) package in China, available for owners of vehicles equipped with the latest “Hardware 4.0” (HW4) technology, in February.
Due to prioritizing North American market training and regulatory constraints elsewhere, many options under Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) package are currently limited to the North American region.
Following Tesla’s initial launch of Full Self-Driving capability in China, the company was compelled to temporarily halt rollouts due to updated regulatory requirements issued by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
MIIT has officially confirmed its meeting with key stakeholders from the automotive industry, providing further insight into the phased rollout of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).
CNEV reported on the assembly:
Automobile manufacturers were directed to cease using terms such as “self-driving,” “autonomous driving,” “advanced driving,” and “superior advanced driving” and instead adopt the term “mixed-assisted driving” to prevent misleading consumers, according to meeting minutes.
Following its Chinese market launch, Tesla had quietly tweaked the branding, renaming ‘Full Self-Driving’ to “Farsighted Assisted Navigation”.
According to a recent announcement by MIIT, the meeting focused on implementing the updated regulations introduced shortly after Tesla’s FSD launch in China.
The assembly emphasized that automotive manufacturers must thoroughly understand the requirements of the “Discover” platform, comprehensively conduct mixed driving assistance testing and validation, clearly define the system’s practical limitations and security response protocols, and refrain from making exaggerated or misleading claims. Companies must rigorously uphold their commitment to transparency by taking on the primary responsibility for ensuring consistency and delivering high-quality security, thereby significantly enhancing the protection level of intelligent connected car products.
Regulators are urging automakers to reduce the pace of recent software updates, instead opting for more thorough testing before releases.
In recent months, chaos has reigned supreme in China’s ADAS landscape. As Tesla rolled out its Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, a cluster of Chinese companies simultaneously unveiled their own autonomous driving solutions, including industry giants BYD, Xiaomi, and Huawei.
Xiaomi has faced criticism after a fatal accident involving its advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS), which was reportedly active just seconds before the crash occurred. Meanwhile, Tesla owners using Full Self-Driving (FSD) have been slapped with thousands of dollars in fines due to FSD’s propensity for errors.
