A series of articles on Sina Finance, a leading Chinese finance news organization, recently reported that Tesla’s FSD would soon start rolling out in China. Although there have also been reports of delays, Tesla appears to have finally addressed those regulatory issues as it has now officially started rolling out FSD in China.
FSD is being enabled with software update 2024.45.32.12 to owners who have purchased FSD outright. However, it isn’t clear whether this is exactly the same FSD as North Americans know it.
Urban Road Autopilot Assistance
This software update introduces “Urban Road Autopilot Assistance” (let’s call it URAA for short), an FSD-based driver-assistance system for Chinese Tesla owners. On controlled-access highways and urban roads, URAA guides vehicles according to navigation routes, assisting with entering and exiting highways, navigating intersections, and recognizing traffic lights to perform actions like going straight, turning left or right, or making U-turns.
Same FSD as North America?
While URAA shares many similarities with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving based on the information Tesla released, it’s not clear whether its functionality is exactly the same. It could just be FSD under a different name, or it could be slightly different.
Based on initial videos (shown below), FSD looks very capable and similar to what we’re used to. In the video, you can see the vehicle using its turn signals to go around vehicles, stopping at red lights, and making turns. It also slows down appropriately when there are pedestrians nearby. If there are differences between North American “FSD” and URAA, Tesla doesn’t make it clear what they are.
It appears that FSD in China is trained on its own set of data, as China did not want Tesla to use data from other countries to train their system, so there could be some limitations or differences between what’s available in North America and China. However, it’s also possible that it’s just a name change and Tesla was not allowed to use the term “Full Self-Driving" in China.
The full suite of FSD visualizations are also available in China with this update. They appear to be the same ones available in North America and we haven’t been able to detect any differences so far. However, it’s great to see additional owners being able to experience them for the first time.
Navigation Update
In September 2024, Tesla added the FSD option in Chinese vehicles, but it was just greyed out and required a navigation update. With this FSD update going out, Tesla is also requiring users to update the navigation maps to version CN-2025.8 before FSD can be enabled.
Most Teslas Now Have Access to FSD
This is Tesla’s first release of FSD outside of North America, which millions of customers have been waiting to see. Just recently, Tesla released FSD in Mexico, and before that, it expanded it to Puerto Rico, making it now available in four countries. Since North America and China are Tesla’s two largest markets, Tesla’s FSD is now available to the majority of Tesla owners, the first time this has happened.
While Tesla initially faced difficulty in getting regulatory approval in China due to data transmission laws, it appears Tesla is making progress with regulatory laws outside of the United States. Europe and Oceania are the next two phases for FSD, with Europe likely coming first due to it being a left-hand drive market.
While it’s not surprising to see FSD released in China, we expected more of a hold-up due to Chinese laws, so this is an encouraging sign of Tesla being able to work around country-specific laws.
In Tesla’s 2024 roadmap, Tesla said that it’d release FSD in China and Europe in Q1 2025, which it has partially achieved. The next step appears to be Europe, where many users are anxiously awaiting.
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With Tesla’s first major expansion of the Robotaxi Geofence now complete and operational, they’ve been hard at work with validation in new locations - and some are quite the drive from the current Austin Geofence.
Validation fleet vehicles have been spotted operating in a wider perimeter around the city, from rural roads in the west end to the more complex area closer to the airport. Tesla mentioned during their earnings call that the Robotaxi has already completed 7,000 miles in Austin, and it will expand its area of operation to roughly 10 times what it is now. This lines up with the validation vehicles we’ve been tracking around Austin.
Based on the spread of the new sightings, the potential next geofence could cover a staggering 450 square miles - a tenfold increase from the current service area of roughly 42 square miles. You can check this out in our map below with the sightings we’re tracking.
If Tesla decides to expand into these new areas, it would represent a tenfold increase over their current geofence, matching Tesla’s statement. The new area would cover approximately 10% of the 4,500-square-mile Austin metropolitan area. If Tesla can offer Robotaxi services in that entire area, it would prove they can tackle just about any city in the United States.
From Urban Core to Rural Roads
The locations of the validation vehicles show a clear intent to move beyond the initial urban and suburban core and prepare the Robotaxi service for a much wider range of uses.
In the west, validation fleet vehicles have been spotted as far as Marble Falls - a much more rural environment that features different road types, higher speed limits, and potentially different challenges.
In the south, Tesla has been expanding towards Kyle, which is part of the growing Austin-San Antonio suburban corridor spanning Highway 35. San Antonio is only 80 miles (roughly a 90-minute drive) away, and could easily become part of the existing Robotaxi area if Tesla obtains regulatory approval there.
In the East, we haven’t spotted any new validation vehicles. This is likely because Tesla’s validation vehicles originate from Giga Texas, which is located East of Austin. We won’t really know if Tesla is expanding in this direction until they start pushing past Giga Texas and toward Houston.
Finally, there have been some validation vehicles spotted just North of the new expanded boundaries, meaning that Tesla isn’t done in that direction either. This direction consists of the largest suburban areas of Austin, which have so far not been serviced by any form of autonomous vehicle.
Rapid Scaling
This new, widespread validation effort confirms what we already know. Tesla is pushing for an intensive period of public data gathering and system testing in a new area, right before conducting geofence expansions. The sheer scale of this new validation zone tells us that Tesla isn’t taking this slowly - the next step is going to be a great leap instead, and they essentially confirmed this during this Q&A session on the recent call. The goal is clearly to bring the entire Austin Metropolitan area into the Robotaxi Network.
While the previous expansion showed off just how Tesla can scale the network, this new phase of validation testing is a demonstration of just how fast they can validate and expand their network. The move to validate across rural, suburban, and urban areas simultaneously shows their confidence in these new Robotaxi FSD builds.
Eventually, all these improvements from Robotaxi will make their way to customer FSD builds sometime in Q3 2025, so there is a lot to look forward to.
For years, the progress of Tesla’s FSD has been measured by smoother turns, better lane centering, and more confident unprotected left turns. But as the system matures, a new, more subtle form of intelligence is emerging - one that shifts its attention to the human nuances of navigating roads. A new video posted to X shows the most recent FSD build, V13.2.9, demonstrating this in a remarkable real-world scenario.
Toll Booth Magic
In the video, a Model Y running FSD pulls up to a toll booth and smoothly comes to a stop, allowing the driver to handle payment. The car waits patiently as the driver interacts with the attendant. Then, at the precise moment the toll booth operator finishes the transaction and says “Have a great day”, the vehicle starts moving, proceeding through the booth - all without any input from the driver.
If you notice, there’s no gate here at this toll booth. This interaction all happened naturally with FSD.
While the timing was perfect, the FSD wasn’t listening to the conversation for clues (maybe one day, with Grok?) The reality, as explained by Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI, is even more impressive.
It can see the transaction happening using the repeater & pillar cameras. Hence FSD proceeds on its own when the transaction is complete 😎
FSD is simply using the cameras on the side of the vehicle to watch the exchange between the driver and attendant. The neural network has been trained on enough data that it can visually recognize the conclusion of a transaction - the exchange of money or a card and the hands pulling away - and understands that this is the trigger to proceed.
The Bigger Picture
This capability is far more significant than just a simple party trick. FSD is gaining the ability to perceive and navigate a world built for humans in the most human-like fashion possible.
If FSD can learn what a completed toll transaction looks like, it’s an example of the countless other complex scenarios it’ll be able to handle in the future. This same visual understanding could be applied to navigating a fast-food drive-thru, interacting with a parking garage attendant, passing through a security checkpoint, or boarding a ferry or vehicle train — all things we thought that would come much later.
These human-focused interactions will eventually become even more useful, as FSD becomes ever more confident in responding to humans on the road, like when a police officer tells a vehicle to go a certain direction, or a construction worker flags you through a site. These are real-world events that happen every day, and it isn’t surprising to see FSD picking up on the subtleties and nuances of human interaction.
This isn’t a pre-programmed feature for a specific toll booth. It is an emergent capability of the end-to-end AI neural nets. By learning from millions of videos across billions of miles, FSD is beginning to build a true contextual understanding of the world. The best part - with a 10x context increase on its way, this understanding will grow rapidly and become far more powerful.
These small, subtle moments of intelligence are the necessary steps to a truly robust autonomous system that can handle the messy, unpredictable nature of human society.
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