Li Xiang, founder and CEO of Chinese carmaker Li Auto, praised Tesla’s Full Self Driving (FSD) software on Wednesday, while noting that the version currently seen in China appears to be behind what Tesla has deployed in the United States.
Speaking at Li Auto’s in-house “AI Talk” series, Li said that based on real-world testing, the version of Tesla’s FSD being evaluated in China seems to be earlier than v12.5 — and does not reflect the U.S. automaker’s most advanced capabilities.
“The performance after FSD 13.0 is still very strong,” Li said, according to local media outlet ITHome. The executive that versions prior to 12.5 still rely on semi-rule-based algorithms, which may give an incomplete picture of Tesla’s AI progress. “What we can see is that Tesla’s fundamentals are very solid,” he added.
Li emphasized that leading American technology companies, including Apple and Tesla, have exceptionally strong underlying capabilities. “In the AI era, mastering the fundamentals is essential and cannot be skipped,” he said.
Tesla has rolled out its FSD software in the United States, Canada, Mexico and China, and job openings in March showed the company has been hiring vehicle operators or similar roles in several other countries, including the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Israel.
Tesla’s FSD rollout has encountered regulatory challenges in China as regulators have increased scrutiny of autonomous driving features over concerns related to safety and data security.
In response to stricter advertising rules introduced last month by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), several Chinese EV makers — including Li Auto, Nio, XPeng, Avatr, and Xiaomi — have recently revised the way they promote autonomous driving systems across websites, social media, and sales channels.
Tesla, which aims to achieve a broader FSD rollout this year, is working with Chinese tech giant Baidu to enhance localization and mapping capabilities. In late March, the company began rolling out software version 2024.45.32.12 in China, allowing it to resume a previously halted one-month free trial of its driver assistance package, now branded locally as “Intelligent Assisted Driving.”
Earlier this year, Tesla also modified how it refers to FSD in China, removing the “FSD” label from its user interface and shortening the name from “FSD 智能辅助驾驶” (FSD intelligent assisted driving) to simply “智能辅助驾驶” (intelligent assisted driving).
