Musk's plane landed in Beijing possibly for the entry of FSD into China (Source: Tech Giant Insights)
On April 28th, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a sudden visit to China. At 2 p.m., his private plane landed at the capital's international airport.
Subsequently, CCTV reported that at the invitation of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, Musk arrived in Beijing today. Ren Hongbin, the chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, met with Musk to discuss future cooperation and other topics. Musk said, "I am pleased to see the progress of electric vehicles in China, and in the future, all cars will be electric."
According to two sources, Musk plans to meet with senior Chinese officials in Beijing to discuss launching Full Self-Driving (FSD) software in China and seek approval to transfer data collected in China overseas to train its autonomous driving technology algorithms.
Since 2021, Tesla has been storing all data collected from its Chinese fleet in Shanghai as required by Chinese regulators and has not sent any data back to the United States. Despite strong demand from Chinese customers, Tesla has yet to offer its FSD service in the Chinese market since its launch four years ago.
Musk recently stated on the social media platform X that Tesla may "soon" offer FSD to Chinese customers.
Local Chinese brands are seeking a competitive edge against Tesla by introducing similar software. Facing an increasingly fierce price war in the electric vehicle market dominated by Chinese brands, Tesla announced a global 10% workforce reduction this month to cope with declining sales.
In the past decade since entering the Chinese market, Tesla has sold over 1.7 million vehicles in China, with its Shanghai factory being the company's largest production facility globally.
Musk's visit coincides with the Beijing Auto Show, which opened last week and will run until May 4. Notably, Tesla did not have a booth at the show, with its last participation being at the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, where the infamous "female owner on car roof protest" incident occurred.
Tesla's Vice President Tao Lin commented on the People's Daily social media account last Friday, stating that "autonomous driving is a key driving force for the new quality productivity of new energy vehicles." Tao Lin mentioned in the article that "Tesla's 'end-to-end neural network' technology, through deep learning of data from over a million vehicles, uses artificial intelligence to influence vehicle control, offering higher performance limits, more human-like driving styles, and faster model convergence speeds."
Industry experts point out that China's complex traffic environment, with more pedestrians and (electric) bicycles, provides rich scenarios that help accelerate the training of autonomous driving algorithms.
Last week, Musk announced that Tesla will introduce new affordable models using existing electric vehicle platforms and production lines, and plans to launch a new type of autonomous "robotaxi," expected to be officially unveiled on August 8.
Due to concerns about Tesla's growth prospects, its stock price has fallen by nearly a third since the beginning of the year. Tesla reported last week that its quarterly revenue declined for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
