[TechWeb] On April 29, it was reported that the China Automobile Association (CAAC) officially released the Notice on the Detection of Four Safety Requirements for Vehicle Data Processing (the first batch), among which 76 models of six enterprises, BYD, Ideals, Lutes, Hezhong New Energy (Nezha Automobile), Tesla and Weilai, met the four compliance requirements for vehicle data security.
These four compliance requirements include: anonymous processing of external face information, default not to collect cockpit data, in vehicle processing of cockpit data, and significant notification of processing personal information.
Tesla FSD gets tickets?
All the models produced by Tesla Shanghai Super Factory meet the compliance requirements, and it is the only foreign-funded enterprise that meets the compliance requirements.
Some media quoted analysts as saying that currently Tesla has passed the authoritative standards and requirements for national vehicle data security, which is conducive to the comprehensive lifting of the restrictions on the movement and parking of Tesla and other smart cars (such as agencies, airports, highways, etc.). It is a great benefit to Tesla.
It is reported that Tesla has realized localized data storage in Tesla Shanghai Data Center in 2021. Tesla introduced a third-party authority to audit the company's information security management system and passed the security management system certification (ISO27001).
Just before the morning of April 28, according to the WeChat news of CCTV's news officer, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Corporation, arrived in Beijing on the afternoon of April 28. Ren Hongbin, President of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, met with Musk to exchange views on topics such as the next step of cooperation.
Musk's trip to China has attracted much attention.
Long before Musk landed in China, some foreign media called his trip to China an "unexpected trip", which had not been exposed before, and disclosed that Musk would discuss launching FSD software in China and be allowed to transmit the data collected in China to overseas to train the FSD algorithm.
The Chinese name of FSD (Full Self Driving) is "fully automatic driving", which is an automatic driving system developed by Tesla. FSD is one of Tesla's biggest selling points, but it has not been implemented in the Chinese market, mainly because it involves obvious data security issues.
Some people in the car circle said that the Tesla models produced by the Shanghai factory meet the four compliance requirements for auto data security, which means that Tesla intelligent driving has got a ticket in China. However, whether FSD can land in China and succeed depends on its own actual performance.
$10 billion to re pledge FSD
On April 28, Musk, who is in China, posted on X that Tesla will invest about 10 billion dollars in comprehensive training and reasoning artificial intelligence this year, the latter being mainly used for cars.
At present, it is very clear that Musk will build the automatic driving ability into Tesla's competitive advantage in the circle of cars.
In the first quarter financial report conference call, Musk repeatedly stressed the significance of FSD for the company. He stressed that Tesla is an AI company. "If someone does not believe that Tesla can solve the problem of autonomous driving (FSD), they should not be investors in Tesla." "I strongly recommend again that anyone considering buying Tesla stock should really drive the car with the software and experience the latest version of FSD."
In the first quarter of this year, although Tesla's revenue and net profit both declined significantly, Tesla's gross profit margin of sales did not decline significantly by 15.6%. The revenue of each car sold (excluding carbon credits and car rental sales) was $43500, a decrease of only $35 compared with the previous quarter.
In this regard, financial analysts pointed out that FSD V12 brought high gross margin business under the trend of Tesla's vehicle price reduction, and FSD's revenue growth partially offset the decline in vehicle sales and stabilized Tesla's gross margin.
On March 31 this year, Tesla launched the FSD V12 (Supervised) version to some users in the United States, announcing that FSD will be free for trial for one month. In order to keep customers after the FSD free period, Tesla has opened the price reduction mode. Reduce the FSD package price from $12000 to $8000, and the subscription price from $199 per month to $99.
Many challenges
However, Tesla's autopilot/auxiliary autopilot capability itself also faces many challenges.
On April 26 local time in the United States, the US auto safety regulatory authority announced that it had started a new investigation on Tesla. The survey covers Model Y, X, S, 3 and Cyber truck vehicles equipped with the auxiliary driving system Autopilot produced in the United States from 2012 to 2024.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said that Tesla announced the recall of more than 2 million vehicles in December 2023, and upgraded the function of the auxiliary driving system Autopilot, but they doubted whether it was safe enough.
American regulators also revealed that in the first Autopilot safety investigation launched in August 2021, at least 13 Tesla accidents were found, resulting in one or more deaths, and several serious injuries, among which "foreseeable driver abuse of the system played a significant role".
Tesla faces more challenges than these.
On April 23 local time in the United States, Tesla released its financial report for the first quarter of this year, with revenue of US $21.3 billion, down 9% year on year; Net profit was US $1.13 billion, down 55% year on year; The main reason is that the competition is intensifying and the electric vehicle market is always "under pressure".
At the shareholders' meeting, Tesla reiterated its pessimistic outlook for 2024 and told investors that "the growth rate of sales may be significantly lower than that of 2023".
From the perspective of delivery, Tesla delivered only 386800 vehicles globally in the first quarter, down 8.5% year on year, far below the average analyst expectation of 449000 vehicles, which is the first decline in sales since the second quarter of 2020.
In terms of share price, Tesla's share price has been falling all the way since this year, with the largest cumulative decline once exceeding 44%.
On April 15 this year, Tesla announced that it would lay off more than 10% of its staff worldwide due to the drop in delivery in the first quarter.
Tesla's delivery volume has declined, revenue has declined, and profits have shrunk. Musk urgently needs new growth stories to impress investors and consumers. The vision of FSD is very good, but it is not easy to just rely on it to boost sales and profitability in the short term.
