Autonomous driving

Chinese drivers to train Tesla AI

According to insiders, data from Chinese Tesla drivers will in future be used locally to train artificial intelligence for self-driving cars. The US provider of electric cars is planning its own data center in the People's Republic for this purpose, several people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

So far, the company has tried to obtain permission to transfer the data abroad in order to refine the software for its "Full Self Driving" (FSD). However, it remained unclear whether Tesla was pushing ahead with local data processing as an alternative in the event of a transfer ban or whether the company wanted to pursue a two-pronged approach. Tesla was initially unavailable for comment.

Tesla's new China plans are being driven by the growing tensions between the USA and China. In order to slow down the technological and military rise of the People's Republic, the government in Washington has severely restricted exports of high technology. As a result, Tesla is unable to offer the latest version of its FSD system in China and is falling behind local competitors such as BYD.

Chinese chips needed
One of the insiders emphasized that Tesla would probably have to switch to Chinese chip suppliers to set up an AI data center in the People's Republic. The car manufacturer had also negotiated with global market leader Nvidia. However, the latter is not allowed to supply state-of-the-art AI processors to China due to the US embargo. Nvidia did not want to comment on possible talks with Tesla.

China is the world's largest sales market for cars and has the largest fleet of vehicles equipped with all kinds of sensors. These collect countless amounts of information about the often dense traffic in the country's numerous metropolitan areas, which makes the wealth of data particularly valuable for car manufacturers.

"Milestone for Tesla"
According to insiders, Tesla has been trying to obtain an export license for its Chinese customers' data since 2021. "It would definitely be a milestone for Tesla to introduce FSD in China and use the Chinese data for algorithm training," said Yale Zhang, Managing Director of the consulting firm Automotive Insight.