A consumer owning a Tesla Model YL electric car at a Tesla store in Shanghai, China on October 19, 2025.
Photo | Future Publishing | Getty Images
After years of delays, tesla The company announced Thursday that its “full self-driving” feature is now available on its electric vehicles sold in China, long after domestic EV brands have rolled out their own self-driving technology.
In a statement, X, which is also owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, listed China as one of 10 markets where its FSD (supervised) system is currently available. Although details were not disclosed, the post marks the first time the automaker has confirmed that the technology is available in China.
The announcement came a week after Musk, along with a delegation of American business executives, accompanied US President Donald Trump to a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing.
Prior to Thursday’s announcement, the availability of the company’s FSD technology in China was in limbo.
Unlike U.S. consumers, Tesla customers in China could only access the company’s Autopilot and Enhanced Autopilot systems (the predecessor to the FSD system), and only select users had access to limited versions as the automaker awaited regulatory approval.
Intelligent Assisted Driving is available on the Model 3 sedan for a one-time fee of 64,000 Chinese yuan ($9,409), according to the company’s Chinese website.
Musk had touted the company’s plans to bring its FSD system, first announced in the United States in 2020, to China starting in 2024, but those plans did not materialize as expected.
In July 2024, Musk said during a second-quarter earnings conference that he expected to receive regulatory approval from Chinese authorities by the end of the year. Musk’s stated timeline was pushed back further to September 2024 after he said the technology was still “pending regulatory approval.”
During Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja said that as of April this year, the company had said it was still awaiting regulatory approval for its FSD system.
But speculation over the approval of Tesla’s own self-driving technology in China has increased in recent days, with Bloomberg reporting on Wednesday that Tesla has begun hiring in the country for positions related to self-driving technology, such as an autopilot test engineer.
While Tesla waited years for regulatory approval, Chinese rivals such as Xiaomi and Xiaopeng expanded their own self-driving technology.
Chinese robotaxi companies such as Pony.ai and Pony.ai BaiduApolloGo has also advanced the development of autonomous driving technology.
In April, Tesla China sold the fourth-highest number of electric vehicles in the country after BYD and the auto conglomerate. geely and Cheryaccording to the monthly wholesale statistics of the China Passenger Car Association.
A representative for Tesla China declined to comment, while the Chinese embassy in Singapore did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
—CNBC’s Anniek Bao and Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.
