Industry judgment shows that the trend of FSD entering China is obvious, and Tesla responds to the data security crisis as a sentinel | model | data
On the evening of August 14th, Tesla responded to the recently discussed Sentinel mode on the internet. Tesla stated that Sentinel mode is currently a safety standard for mainstream smart cars and is not unique to Tesla, and the company has established a data center in China.
The reason is that on August 12th, a netizen revealed that there was a notice in the parking lot of Sanhe Airport in Yueyang, Hunan Province, indicating "classified control area, Tesla is prohibited from entering". Subsequently, the media confirmed with the airport public security line personnel that there were indeed such notices posted in the parking lot of Sanhe Airport. The reason for prohibition is that Tesla vehicles have a certain mode, and the owner will record the surrounding environment of the vehicle after leaving. The staff member also stated that many units now prohibit Tesla from entering, and Tesla for airport employees is also not allowed to enter.
This mode involving data collection is called the Sentinel mode. In its response on the 14th, Tesla stated that Sentinel mode is currently a mainstream intelligent security configuration, and some brands also refer to it as Guard mode. When Tesla vehicles leave the factory, this feature is turned off by default and needs to be manually activated by the owner before it can be used. At present, these data of Tesla vehicles are only stored offline on USB devices inside the vehicle, and both the owner and Tesla cannot view them remotely online.
The purpose of setting up sentinel mode is to improve vehicle safety. After manually activating Sentinel mode, when the vehicle is locked and parked, if a threat such as damage or theft is detected nearby, the system will sound an alarm to the owner and record suspicious activity around the vehicle. The video clip will be saved on an installed USB device.
Tesla's response focuses on emphasizing data security. The response also mentioned that Tesla has established data centers in China to achieve localization of data storage. All data generated by Tesla's sales of vehicles in the Chinese Mainland market will be stored in China. After the government regulatory authorities jointly released the "Several Regulations on Automotive Data Security Management" in October 2021, Tesla, as one of the first pilot enterprises, actively participated in the compliance pilot work organized by the regulatory authorities.
Coincidentally, there have been frequent reports of FSD entering China by Tesla recently. On August 10th, a blogger named Tesla China Analyst on Twitter revealed, "It is basically confirmed that the FSD beta has been pushed to the China region, and data collection will begin in shadow mode initially. After completing the relevant feasibility verification, it will gradually be activated for small-scale testing."
The blogger's judgment is based on Tesla's latest OTA update proposing to obtain user consent for data sharing and clarifying that the data is used for analysis and improvement of Autopilot's autonomous driving assistance.
On August 3rd, Musk publicly announced again that the next system update for FSD, FSDV12, will cancel the beta and be pushed to all users. Since the beginning of this year, Tesla CEO Musk has made multiple predictions about FSD, believing that later this year, Tesla may have fully autonomous driving capabilities for L4 and even L5.
Musk and Tesla have high expectations for the implementation of FSD internally. Since 2020, Tesla has been conducting FSD beta testing in North America, with versions continuously iterating over the course of three years. CITIC Securities pointed out that in terms of intelligent driving algorithms, Tesla is leading domestic top players by about 2 years. Since 2020, Tesla has introduced BEV+Transformer on the perception algorithm side, combined with the Occupancy Network concept, to significantly improve the perception accuracy of visual solutions.
The industry generally believes that Tesla FSD has arrived on the eve of its landing, and the trend of entering China is obvious. However, data security is an issue that Tesla FSD must consider when entering China. CITIC Securities pointed out that Tesla faces two barriers to entry into China: one is qualification, and Tesla's shadow model is highly likely to be judged as a mapping behavior. There is still room for discussion on how to cooperate with A-level surveying and mapping qualified enterprises and legally and compliantly collect road data in China; Another aspect is data, Tesla needs to establish a data and supercomputing center in China and build an engineering team for data closed-loop.
