Tesla CEO Elon Musk kicks off surprise trip to Beijing, sources say
A private jet linked to Tesla CEO Elon Musk landed in Beijing on Sunday, a flight tracking app showed, as two people with knowledge of the matter said the billionaire was kicking off a surprise visit to the automaker's second-biggest market.
Musk 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.
Tesla 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.
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 urging it to do so.
Musk said this month Tesla may make FSD available to customers in China "very soon," in response to a query on social media platform X.
Rival Chinese automakers such as Xpeng have been seeking to gain an advantage over Tesla by rolling out similar software.
Musk's visit to China was not flagged publicly and the people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with media. Tesla did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
The trip came just over a week after he scrapped a planned visit to India to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, citing "very heavy Tesla obligations."
Landed in Beijing
A Gulfstream private jet with tail number N272BG, which is registered to Falcon Landing, a company connected to SpaceX and Tesla, landed at Beijing Capital Airport on Sunday at 6:03am GMT, according to Chinese flight tracking app Flight Manager.
The other jet registered under Falcon Landing is N628TS, which is Musk's main jet that he used to travel to China on his last trip nearly a year ago, when he met with Chinese government officials in Beijing and visited Tesla's Shanghai factory.
Tesla has sold more than 1.7 million cars in China since it entered the market a decade ago and the Shanghai factory is its largest globally.
Musk's visit coincides with the Beijing autoshow, which opened last week and ends on May 4. Tesla does not have a booth at China's largest autoshow and last attended in 2021.
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