Tesla Inc. (TSLA) wants a bigger green light in China. On the company's third-quarter 2026 earnings call Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja said Tesla is working to secure broader approval for its Full Self-Driving technology there, while CEO Elon Musk said separately that Tesla is pushing hard for FSD approval in additional markets.

Securing Approval in China Is 'Hard,' Says Tesla CFO

Asked by analysts about FSD's progress in China, Taneja was candid: Tesla's earlier "leapfrog" advantage over Chinese OEMs in terms of technology was not present today.

"We're working very diligently to try and get broader FSD approval in China," Taneja said, while Musk added that the company is pushing "very hard" to secure FSD approval in additional markets.

Taneja said Tesla has been able to put FSD technology in certain cars in China, and that people have been impressed by "how much better it is as compared to any of the competition." Some Chinese CEOs had experienced FSD in the U.S. and "have been blown away" by its capabilities, he added.

His argument for regulators: Tesla's safety reports and data on unsupervised FSD could help secure approval, because "it would be very hard" for any regulator to "refute" that data once they've examined it.

Full Self-Driving in China

Tesla launched its FSD Supervised service in China in May, shortly after Musk accompanied President Donald Trump on a business delegation to Beijing for his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The company also denied it was pulling back its FSD efforts in China after reports emerged that it had shut down a data center in Shanghai that revolved around self-driving efforts.

Tesla offers Supervised FSD as "Tesla Assisted Driving" for RMB 64,000 in China, which is somewhere around $9,500. According to a report from the South China Morning Post in August, Chinese regulators formulated new rules that would kick into effect on July 1st next year.

Those rules would hold automakers responsible for any accidents that take place when the car is in autonomous driving mode and mandate systems to leave a 10-second window before a potential accident for drivers to take control.

Chinese authorities also bar the export of data collected in the Chinese mainland to overseas centers, which remains a key hurdle for Tesla, according to analysts cited in the report.

Gene Munster Sees 'Inflection Point'

Following Tesla's earnings call, investor Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management said the FSD technology was at an "inflection point" and that it would be hard for Tesla's traditional automaker rivals to catch up to the company's technology.

Meanwhile, Musk said during the call that a vast majority of Tesla's Cybercab units would be owned by the automaker and offered via a "transport-as-a-service" model instead.

Price Action: TSLA shares were down 4.72% to $368.22 during pre-market trading on Thursday.