China plans to use Tesla's FSD as a tool in its trade war against the US

According to sources familiar with the matter, the Chinese government is going to use Tesla's Full Self-Driving system as a bargaining chip amid rising trade tensions between China and the US.

According to Elon Musk, Tesla was close to making a deal with the Chinese government last year to release its FSD in the country and make it an unsupervised self-driving experience by the end of 2025. However, during an earnings call last month, Musk said that China won't let Tesla transfer training videos outside of China, while the US doesn't allow the company to do its entire training in China.

As a result, Tesla is using publicly available videos of Chinese streets and simulators to train its model outside of the country.

The company is in a bit of a conundrum as the pressure is mounting. Chinese car manufacturers are releasing competing FSD solutions, and Tesla is losing its competitive edge, giving all the more reasons to use the FSD against the US in its trade war. Probably because of Musk's close ties to the current Trump Administration.

Source