SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A private jet linked to Tesla CEO Elon Musk landed in Beijing on Sunday, a flight tracking app showed. Two people with knowledge of the matter said the billionaire began a surprise visit to the automaker's second-largest market. . Musk is seeking to meet senior Chinese officials in Beijing to discuss the rollout of Full-Self Driving (FSD) software in China and seek approval to transfer data collected in the country abroad to train algorithms for its autonomous driving technologies , one of the people said.
Tesla has stored all data collected by its Chinese fleet in Shanghai since 2021, as required by Chinese regulators, and has not sent any data back to the United States.
The US electric vehicle 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 pushing for it to do so.
Musk said this month that Tesla may make FSD available to customers in China “very soon,” in response to a question on social media platform X.
Rival Chinese automakers such as Xpeng are trying to gain an advantage over Tesla by rolling out similar software.
Musk's visit to China was not publicly announced and the people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The trip came just over a week after he scrapped a planned visit to India to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, citing “very heavy Tesla commitments.”
The company said this month it would lay off 10% of its global workforce as it struggles with falling sales and a growing price war for electric vehicles led by Chinese brands.
LANDED IN BEIJING
A Gulfstream private jet with tail number N272BG registered to Falcon Landing, a company linked to SpaceX and Tesla, landed at Beijing Capital Airport at 6:03 a.m. GMT on Sunday, according to Chinese flight tracking app Flight Manager.
The other aircraft registered under Falcon Landing is the N628TS, Musk's main plane on which he traveled to China almost a year ago on his last trip, when he met Chinese government officials in Beijing and visited Tesla's factory in Shanghai.
Tesla has sold more than 1.7 million cars in China since it launched a decade ago and its Shanghai factory is the largest worldwide.
Musk's visit coincides with the Beijing auto show, which opened last week and ends on May 4. Tesla does not have a booth at China's largest auto show and was last visited in 2021.
GM CEO Mary Barra made an unannounced visit to the world's largest auto market on Friday, according to two people with knowledge of her schedule. GM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also on Friday, Grace Tao, Tesla's vice president in charge of external relations in China, published a commentary on the social media account of state media outlet People's Daily, arguing that autonomous driving technologies would be the new growth engine for the EV industry.
Tao said in the article that Tesla led research and development in autonomous driving with its “end-to-end neural network” technology and collected data from millions of cars on the road.
China's complicated traffic conditions, with more pedestrians and cyclists than in many other markets, offer more scenarios that are crucial for training autonomous driving algorithms faster, according to industry experts.
Musk said last week that Tesla would introduce new, cheaper models using its current EV platforms and production lines and offer a new “robotaxi” with self-driving technology. He said in a post on X this month that he would unveil the robotaxi on August 8.
Shares of Tesla have fallen nearly a third since the start of the year as concerns about the EV maker's growth trajectory have grown. Last week, Tesla reported its first decline in quarterly sales since 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic slowed production and deliveries.
(Reporting by Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh; Editing by Jamie Freed)
