(Yicai) July 24 -- Tesla may release its supervised full self-driving in China by December, founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk said after the US electric carmaker released disappointing second-quarter earnings.

“Pretty soon, we will ask for regulatory approval of the Tesla supervised FSD in Europe, China and other countries,” Musk said on the Austin-based firm’s earnings conference call yesterday. “We’re likely to receive that before the end of the year, which will be a helpful demand driver in those regions.”

The owner of X has repeatedly said this year that he is pushing for FSD in China, the world's biggest auto market. In April, he paid an unexpected visit to the country and met with Chinese officials such as Prime Minister Li Qiang.

Musk also said on the call that Tesla would delay the global introduction of robotaxi services to October from August, citing overoptimistic expectations. “This is because I wanted to make some important changes that I think would improve the vehicle, and we’re also going to show up a couple of other things,” he said.

Asked when the first robotaxi rides could be expected, Musk said he would be “shocked if we cannot do it next year.”

An industry professional told Yicai that despite Tesla's efforts, one of its key challenges in China is that the national traffic authority has not yet weighed in on the new problems autonomous driving may bring to traffic order enforcement.

Tesla also has a data storage problem that it could solve in two ways, the person said: “Either the Chinese government allows Tesla to transfer locally collected data offshore or the US government allows Tesla to deploy large-scale artificial intelligence computing power in China, but both options are challenging.”

With competition growing in the global electric vehicle market, Tesla reported a 45 percent drop in net profit to USD1.5 billion for the second quarter on a 2 percent increase in revenue to USD25.5 billion. The company delivered almost 443,960 cars, down 5 percent, per its trading report.

In pre-market trading in New York, Tesla’s [NASDAQ: TSLA] were down 8.8 percent at USD224.70 as of 8.42 a.m. local time, after retreating 2 percent yesterday. 

Editors: Dou Shicong, Emmi Laine