Tesla working with Baidu to improve assisted driving system in China, sources say

Tesla is moving with Chinese tech elephantine Baidu to amended the show of its precocious driving assistance (ADAS) strategy successful China, 2 radical with cognition of the substance said, aft a caller update drew lawsuit criticism.

Baidu dispatched a radical of engineers from its mapping squad to Tesla's Beijing bureau successful caller weeks to enactment connected amended integrating Baidu's navigation representation information, specified arsenic lane marking and postulation airy signals, with Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) Version 13 software, the sources said.

The sources did not accidental however galore engineers were sent to Tesla oregon whether they were inactive there. They said the purpose was to amended FSD V13's cognition of Chinese roads with much close and updated mapping information.

The sources declined to beryllium named due to the fact that they were not authorised to talk to the media. They did not disclose a fiscal worth to the collaboration.

The deepening narration with Baidu comes arsenic Tesla navigates information and regulatory restrictions imposed by Beijing and Washington, which person made it tricky for the carmaker to bring afloat Autopilot and FSD systems to its 2nd largest market.

U.S.-listed shares of Baidu were up astir 2%, portion Tesla's stock, which gained astir 12% successful the past 2 sessions, was down astir 1% successful premarket trading.

In the United States, Tesla's FSD strategy does not necessitate navigation maps to beryllium close oregon up-to-date, due to the fact that section grooming of the AI helps the exertion thrust better.

But successful China, Tesla has been incapable to bid the strategy with information from its 2 cardinal EVs due to the fact that of the country's information laws and the institution is nether expanding unit from rivals specified arsenic BYD and Xpeng, which connection cheaper vehicles and bash not complaint an further interest for akin software.

A deepened concern with Tesla could besides boost Baidu whose different initiatives, including AI, are lagging rivals specified arsenic DeepSeek and ByteDance.

Tesla, which is aiming for the afloat rollout of FSD this year, did not respond to a petition for comment. Baidu besides did not respond to a petition for comment.

The concern follows a long-awaited but arguable bundle update Tesla sent to Chinese owners successful February. The update added municipality navigation features to the strategy but customers complained it fell abbreviated of Chief Executive Elon Musk’s committedness of a afloat FSD rollout successful China.

FSD is simply a suite of driving-assistance technologies developed with generative artificial quality to header with much analyzable postulation conditions.

FSD V13 had not received capable grooming for it to accommodate good to Chinese roads, 1 of the sources said, starring to drivers committing predominant postulation violations specified arsenic changing to the incorrect lane and driving done reddish lights if they failed to announcement and respond.

Tesla has been incapable to transportation information collected from Chinese streets to the United States to bid the driving strategy due to the fact that information laws necessitate the institution to store the information locally and question support for outbound transfers.

The U.S. besides does not let Tesla to bid its AI bundle successful China.

In an net telephone successful January, Musk described the concern arsenic a "quandary".

Baidu has supplied navigation maps to Tesla since 2020 and is 1 of China’s ascendant representation providers.

Tesla is anxious to support its marketplace stock successful China arsenic income plunge successful the United States and Europe and section rivals propulsion income much aggressively.

Tesla's stock of China's EV marketplace fell for the archetypal clip past year, to 10.4% from 11.7% successful 2023, information showed.

The automaker charges a 64,000 yuan ($8,834.04) interest for its assisted driving strategy connected apical of EVs priced from $32,500.

Published - March 14, 2025 10:46 americium IST