March 16, 2016

The Editor

South China Morning Post

Dear Editor,

I refer to the article titled “HK does a U-turn on self-steering cars” published in SCMP today.  I would like to emphasise that there was no U-turn in our policy.  The Transport Department (TD) has to go through a process to assess and approve Tesla’s driver assistance features to make sure that the features do not pose road safety problems.

In Hong Kong, a new vehicle model needs to be examined and approved by the TD to ensure its roadworthiness before vehicles of the model are registered.  This is what is commonly known as type approval.  Any subsequent alterations to major functions related to the safety of the vehicle such as brakes and steering should be submitted to the department for assessment, as the altered function had not been assessed and examined at the type approval stage, and the altered vehicles cannot be considered as having been type approved. 

For this reason, the manufacturer of Tesla was asked to stop releasing the functions to its customers in Hong Kong in October 2015 until the TD has approved its application for certain driver assistance features.

The TD has earlier approved the auto parking, side collision warning and brake holding features.  Since then, we have carefully assessed the performance of auto steer and auto lane change features under the road and traffic conditions in Hong Kong and sought clarifications from Tesla. Based on the information provided by Tesla and TD’s assessment of the information received and the impact on road traffic and road safety, the TD has recently approved these two features to be used on roads with central divider and speed limit of 70km/h or higher, with proper warning message be displayed to remind drivers to maintain control at all times. We also require Tesla to educate drivers so that they are aware of the functions and limitations of the features.

Yours faithfully,

Chan Ying-kit

Assistant Commissioner for Transport /Administration and Licensing