TMTPOST -- Tesla Inc. shares tumbled as much as 10% before settling 8.4% lower on Tuesday. Hitting their lowest close since November 7, shares almost wiped out gains after the U.S. election, and the capital market accordingly dived below $1 trillion for the first time in three months. Shares logged their biggest daily losses in seven months as the electric vehicle (EV) heavyweight suffered sales crash in Europe and launched less-capable Full Self-driving (FSD) advanced driver assistant in China.

Credit：Tesla

New EV registrations in Europe grew by 34% to 124,341 units in January, capturing 15% of the local auto market share, up from a 10.9 share the same month of last year, according to trade body Acea. However, Tesla’s new car registrations across the European Union, the European Free Trade Association and the U.K. slid 45.2% year-over-year to 9,945 cars in January, with a market share of 1% down from 1.8% a year ago, data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association showed on Tuesday.

Besides the increasing competition, Tesla sales in January were also dampened by CEO Elon Musk’s controversial political remarks backing far-right parties and attacking incumbents. Some car buyers may be taking a "principled stand" on Musk's political interventions, AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said.

Tesla on Tuesday updated its autopilot software in China. The new version have a new feature called Urban Road Autopilot Assistance (URAA). On controlled-access highways and urban roads, URAA can guide vehicles according to navigation routes, assisting with entering and exiting highways, navigating intersections, and recognizing traffic lights to perform actions like going straight, turning left or right, or making U-turns, according to a notification on Tesla’s application. It added that the in-car camera will monitor driver attention and send alarm to help driver focus on the road when driving.

FSD is a suite of driving-assistance technologies developed with generative artificial intelligence (AI) to handle more complicated traffic conditions whereas Autopilot handles more routine conditions. Reuters reported that the upgrade in China left owners disappointed for they found the URAA feature fell short of Musk’s promises of self-driving.

The latest over-the-air (OTA) update of driving assistant software costs Tesla car owners RMB64,000, and Tesla China officially change the name of FSD feature from “full self-driving” to “intelligent driving assistance”, the customer service told Chinese news media outlet YiCai. The customer service staff made it clear that the update is different from the FSD that is available in the United States, and the car with the updated software can not drive itself without human intervention in some cases.

The new feature is less advanced than those hit in U.S. market due to insufficient data training on Chinese roads and traffic rules, Reuters cited a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Tesla AI Team said in last September it will release FSD in China and Europe in the first quarter of 2025, pending for regulatory approval.

On an earnings call earlier this month, Musk said Tesla is going to launch “unsupervised full self-driving as a paid service” in Austin, Texa, in June. That means Tesla plans to start its paid robotaxi service powered by FSD (Supervised) software in Texas in mid-2025. Musk didn’t update the FSD rollout timetable in China, though listed challenges Tesla is facing including data collection for AI to train the FSD software.

Musk described Tesla’s situation as a quandary for the Chinese government doesn't allow Tesla to transfer training video outside of China, and the US government won’t let it do training in China. Tesla’s way to overcome it is to create a simulation. Musk told analysts the company searched videos of streets in China that are available on the internet to understand, then fed that into its video training and put it into a very accurate simulator. It also had to made the simulator replicate complex traffic rules like what time of the day bus lanes are available for automotive transportation as well as very complicated road conditions of the lanes.