Tesla's in-car system in China has recently officially received a major update, with the full launch of ByteDance's Doubao large model. In fact, Tesla China has been rolling out the 2026.14.13 version of the car's software update in batches since July 31st, covering all models including Model 3, Model Y, Model S, and Model X. New vehicles delivered will be prioritized for installation. After completing the OTA upgrade, owners can easily activate the new AI voice assistant by long-pressing the voice button on the steering wheel, saying the wake-up word "Hey, Tesla," or operating the steering wheel scroll wheel.

In terms of technical architecture, the new AI voice assistant is based on Doubao's end-to-end speech interaction framework, successfully skipping the multiple intermediate steps of traditional voice assistants such as "speech to text, text understanding, and text to speech." This "speech to speech" direct connection not only significantly reduces interaction latency but also provides an extremely low-latency, more natural, and proactive conversation experience, as if there is a professional friend sitting in the passenger seat who can always catch the jokes.

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Regarding functional division and specific applications, this update achieves refined collaboration of intelligent modules. The Doubao large model mainly handles core functions of voice commands, supporting high-frequency vehicle control operations such as navigation setting, media playback control, and air conditioning temperature adjustment, as well as querying the owner's manual. For casual conversation and information queries, the system integrates the DeepSeek model to provide support. To ensure absolute driving safety, Doubao does not access deep-level vehicle control permissions; all vehicle control commands still follow the existing reliable pathways.

This move by Tesla to introduce a local large model solution has sparked heated discussions in the industry. Although Elon Musk, Tesla's founder, has always been proud of his self-developed Grok large model, Doubao has demonstrated strong localization advantages and comprehensive efficiency that are difficult to replace in a short time, especially in handling complex Chinese context, emotional understanding, dialect recognition, and concurrent processing of multiple instructions. This marks Tesla's infotainment system officially entering a new stage of intelligentization driven by large models.