Tesla TSLA.O CEO Elon Musk was on a flight heading to Beijing on Sunday to kick off a surprise trip in the electric vehicle maker\u2019s second-biggest market, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
\nMusk is seeking to meet senior Chinese officials in Beijing to discuss the rollout of Full-Self Driving (FSD) software in China and to obtain approval to transfer data collected in the country abroad to train algorithms for its autonomous driving technologies, one of the people said.
\nTesla has since 2021 stored all data collected by its Chinese fleet in Shanghai as required by Chinese regulators and has not transferred any back to the United States.
\nThe U.S. EV maker rolled out FSD, the most autonomous version of its Autopilot software, four years ago but has yet to make it available in China despite customers urging it to do so.
\nMusk said this month Tesla may make FSD available to customers in China \u201cvery soon\u201d, in response to a query on social media platform X.
\nRival Chinese automakers such as Xpeng 9868.HK have been seeking to gain an advantage over Tesla by rolling out similar software.
\nMusk\u2019s visit to China was not flagged publicly and the people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak with media. Tesla did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
\n(Reuters)autonomous driving software. electric vehicle market, Full-Self Driving software, autonomous driving technologies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, made a surprise trip to Beijing to discuss the rollout of Full-Self Driving software in China and seek approval to transfer data collected in the country abroad for autonomous driving technologies. Tesla has been storing data collected by its Chinese fleet in Shanghai since 2021 as required by Chinese regulators. Musk mentioned that FSD may be available to customers in China “very soon” in response to customer requests. Other Chinese automakers, like Xpeng, are also rolling out similar software to compete with Tesla. Musk’s visit was not publicly announced, and sources spoke anonymously as they were not authorized to speak to the media. Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":9969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4791,3212,8189,1659,186,486,279,3471,2369,2403,8187,1969,1315,8188,2952,8186,6841,5062,2871,817,6842,4987,805,544,3438,4100],"class_list":["post-9968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","tag-approval","tag-autonomous-driving","tag-autonomous-driving-technologies","tag-autopilot","tag-business","tag-china","tag-comment","tag-customers","tag-data","tag-driving","tag-electric-vehicle-market","tag-elon-musk","tag-flight","tag-full-self-driving-software","tag-media","tag-musk","tag-platform-x","tag-regulators","tag-request","tag-social-media","tag-social-media-platform","tag-software","tag-tesla","tag-united-states","tag-vehicle","tag-visit"],"acf":{"keyphrase":"","keywords":"","sourceimg":"","country-category":""},"yoast_head":"\n