Musk's big move is coming, Tesla announces FSD roadmap to China and Europe next year, surges over 7% intraday

Tesla's fully autonomous driving system FSD once again caused cheers among stock market investors.

On Thursday, September 5th, Eastern Time, Tesla's stock price accelerated, rising to around $235 in early trading, hitting a new intraday high since July 23rd, with an intraday increase of 7.1%. The gains narrowed later, rising by about 4% at midday, potentially closing up over 4% for the second consecutive day, reaching a new high since July 29th. The gains on Wednesday and Thursday may accumulate to nearly 9%.

Before the significant rise on Thursday, Tesla's official account Tesla AI on social media platform X posted a roadmap for the release of new products by Tesla's AI team. It was mentioned that the FSD system is expected to be launched in China and Europe in the first quarter of 2025, pending approval from regulatory authorities in both regions. A Tesla China representative later confirmed to Securities Times that the news is true, and the current status is awaiting regulatory approval.

The roadmap released on Thursday implies that the most advanced autonomous driving technology of FSD may land in the Chinese market as soon as four months from now. This is slightly later than Musk's previous estimate. During the Q2 earnings call in July this year, Tesla CEO Musk mentioned that Tesla will apply for regulatory approval for supervised FSD implementation in China and Europe, expected to be approved by the end of this year. The FSD system will enter "China, Europe, and other countries" when it iterates to version V12.5 or V12.6.

In the latest X post, Tesla's AI team also introduced recent iterative improvements to FSD, including the release of version V12.5.2 in September, with a 3x increase in takeover rate, adaptation to the HW3.0 platform, achieving a unified model with the 4.0 platform; the introduction of true intelligent summoning function; the release of Cybertruck automatic parking; attention detection supporting wearing sunglasses; a unified technology stack for highways and cities, all based on end-to-end; the release of FSD functions for Cybertruck; in October, the release of FSD reverse parking and spot-to-spot capabilities, with an average 6x increase in takeover rate for version V13.

In recent months, there have been frequent reports of FSD landing in China. Wall Street CN once mentioned that after Musk's visit to China in April, the process of FDS entering China seemed to have been fast-tracked. Tesla entered the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers' compliance list during his visit; subsequently, Baidu granted mapping qualifications to Tesla and provided lane-level navigation systems, with Tesla China launching Baidu Map V20 in June; in early June, a Tesla employee "accidentally" leaked during a live broadcast that the internal test version of FSD V12 was suspected to be tested in China; at the end of June, Tesla's Vice President Zhu Xiaotong was asked when FSD would land while inspecting stores in Shanghai, and his response was "soon" The roadmap for Tesla's FSD implementation has further raised investors' expectations for revenue from autonomous driving technology. Analyst Susannah Streeter from Hargreaves Lansdown believes that given Tesla's collaboration with Baidu, obtaining approval for Tesla in China may be easier than in Europe. Ping An Securities predicts that the introduction of FSD to China may become a "catfish" in the domestic autonomous driving field, accelerating the landing process of advanced intelligent driving in the country. Leading companies or suppliers in the field of advanced intelligent driving will benefit more.

Some commentators believe that in addition to the disclosure of the timeline for FSD's entry into China and Europe, another factor driving Tesla's stock price higher this Thursday is the well-known Tesla bull and automotive industry analyst Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley. In his coverage of U.S. automotive stocks, Jonas reiterated that Tesla is the "preferred choice." In a recent report, Jonas gave Tesla a buy rating and a target price of $310. This target price implies that he expects Tesla's stock price to rise by over 41% from Wednesday's closing price