Tesla China car system officially integrates Doubao large model, first third-party LLM on Tesla
On August 19, Volcano Engine announced that Doubao LLM is now live on Tesla China car systems, with phased rollout to all Model 3/Y/S/X since July 31.
On August 19, ByteDance-owned Volcano Engine officially announced that Doubao LLM is now live on Tesla China car systems, with features being pushed to owners in phases since July 31. This marks the first time Tesla has integrated a third-party LLM into its China car system, while the US market continues to use xAI's in-house Grok.
The rollout covers Model 3, Model Y, Model S, and Model X, with newer Model 3 and Model Y units equipped with AMD processors receiving priority adaptation. Owners can launch the "Doubao" interface via the app launcher, or press and hold the right scroll wheel on the steering wheel to wake up voice interaction. Features include real-time information queries, natural continuous conversation, chitchat, storytelling, English practice, with preset roles and voices including Weiwei and Yunzhou.
Technically, Tesla adopted a dual-model scheme of Doubao plus DeepSeek Chat, both accessed through Volcano Engine. Doubao handles control-oriented voice commands including navigation settings, media playback, air conditioning, and voice queries of the owner's manual. DeepSeek Chat focuses on chitchat and information services. The partnership took nearly a year from the August 2025 technical agreement.
Volcano Engine president Tan Dai previously disclosed that Doubao LLM is deployed in over 7 million smart vehicles, covering more than 50 car brands and 145 models, with over 30 million daily cockpit interactions.