Elon Musk Makes Surprise Beijing Visit As Tesla Seeks Full Self-Driver Rollout

Elon Musk arrived in Beijing on Sunday and met with Premier Li Qiang, 1 week after postponing a journey to India. A origin household with the visit old Reuters that Musk was expected to discuss the rollout of Full Self-Driver software and position to transfer data acrossseats with top Chinese officials.

X user Yan Chan Captured the minute Musk’s Gulfstream G550 landed at Beijing Capital Airport on Sunday at 0603 GMT.

Exclusive: Elon Musk’s private plan with registration number N272BG has landed at Beijing Capital global Airport.

It flick over me, and I capture this video for the first time. pic.twitter.com/CLLHIp1KiT

— Yan Chang (@cyfoxcat) April 28, 2024

Exclusive: Landing photograph of Elon Musk’s private plan.

This is simply a Gulfstream G550 owned by Musk and registered under SpaceX, with the registration code N272BG.

Hopeful, this visit will bring good news about the introduction of Full Self-Drive (FSD) to China. pic.twitter.com/l3hOAGSR7t

— Yan Chang (@cyfoxcat) April 28, 2024

Hours after Musk landed, China Central tv reported Musk met with Qiang. He said China is always open for business and noted Tesla as a prime example of successful China-US trade cooperation.

Premier Li Qiang met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Beijing pic.twitter.com/acrJj45MzD

— Dima Zeniuk (@DimaZeniuk) April 28, 2024

CCTV said Musk spoke to Qiang about Tesla’s plans to deepen its partnership with China. The billionaire besides met Ren Hongbin, the head of the China Council for the Promotion of global Trade. He’s besides expected to meet with officials to discuss the rollout of Tesla’s FSD.

Elon Musk in Beijing today. pic.twitter.com/rc86NSX8nP

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) April 28, 2024

FSD was first rolled out as a limited beta version in summertime 2020 and has since become available to all Tesla owners in the US. However, FSD is inactive not available in China, the world’s largest electrical vehicle market.

A individual household with the journey told Reuters that Musk is seeing a licence to transfer data collected in the country outside to train FSD's algorithms.

Since 2021, all data collected by Tesla’s China unit has not been transferred back to the US but stored locally.

Musk’s journey comes 1 week after he postponed a journey to India with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He cited “very dense Tesla bonds” for the hold and expressed optimum for a later visit.

For Tesla, the EV price war with legacy US automakers and Chinese brands, in addition to a high-interest rate environment crushing consumer EV demand, has led Musk to trim the fat at Tesla, laying off 10% of its global workforce.

In markets, Tesla shares are down 32% year-to-date. Shares have caught a bid since last week, up about 16%.

On an arrivals call last week, Musk said, “We plan on, with the adoption of the regulators, releasing it as a supervised autonomy strategy in any marketplace that — where we can get regulators approval for that, which we think includes China.”