Tesla Korea said on the 12th that it will soon launch a supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) service. This is the first time Tesla has officially released plans to launch the FSD service in Korea.
On the same day, Tesla Korea posted on its official X (formerly Twitter) account, saying, "FSD supervised next destination: Korea, coming soon." It also released a video of actual driving in a Korean downtown area using FSD. In the video, the driver keeps a light hand on the wheel so they can take control at any time. The vehicle followed the navigation through a complex city center and arrived safely at the destination.
Tesla's FSD is divided into supervised and unsupervised depending on whether the driver must "watch over it." In the supervised version, the vehicle independently performs most driving decisions such as acceleration, braking, and handling, but the driver must always keep eyes forward and be ready to take the wheel in an emergency. The unsupervised version is fully autonomous driving that requires no intervention, allowing the driver to watch a movie or sleep. Tesla is piloting a "robotaxi" service in parts of the United States through unsupervised FSD, while rolling out supervised FSD to general consumers starting in the United States.
Even though the timeline for launching FSD in Korea is still unclear, Tesla is driving the domestic imported car market, thanks to the facelifted Model Y (Juniper) released in Apr. Tesla sold 47,962 vehicles from January through Oct. this year, a 92.8% surge from a year earlier. Its market share is also in third place at 19.23%, following BMW (25.67%) and Mercedes-Benz (21.70%).
Tesla's signal that it will introduce FSD in Korea appears to align with the government's recent move to ease Autonomous Driving regulations. However, given safety controversies, some say it will take time before full deployment. There is also an outlook that the feature will be installed first on some U.S.-made vehicles rather than Chinese-made ones. Under the Korea-U.S. FTA, U.S.-made cars that pass U.S. safety standards are considered to have met Korean safety standards. Less than 20% of Tesla vehicles sold domestically this year were made in the United States, with most made in China.