Elon Musk says he expects China to approve Tesla's Full Self-Driving by the end of the year

BEIJING — Tesla CEO Elon Musk has again touted the impending rollout of advanced driver-assist software in China, after reporting another quarter of disappointing earnings.

Since last year, driver-assist has become a selling point for cars in China's fiercely competitive electric car market. Chinese authorities have also started to support the use of limited driver-assist technologies on the road for some companies.

Tesla's Autopilot for navigating on highways is available locally, but not Full Self-Driving, which uses cameras and artificial intelligence to enable cars to automatically park, change lanes and slow down at stop signs. FSD is an upgrade to Tesla's Autopilot driver assistant. For interested customers, Tesla has offered a limited version of its FSD technology in China for years.

"Pretty soon, we will ask for regulatory approval of the Tesla-supervised FSD in Europe, China and other countries. And I think we are likely to receive that before the end of the year," Musk said on a second-quarter earnings call Wednesday Beijing time. That's according to a FactSet transcript.

Musk has a long history of promising investors that futuristic Tesla products or services will be ready soon, even if they do not exist beyond a design concept. During the latest earnings call he announced Tesla's robotaxi event would be postponed to October, after previously saying it would be held in August.

Musk in April had said FSD's rollout to China "may be possible very soon," according to his response to a question on X.

About a week after the social media post, Musk unexpectedly appeared in Beijing for a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang during the first major auto show in the city in four years. Local authorities also removed