Shanghai:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk left for China on Sunday for a surprise visit to the country, which is also the electric car giant's second-largest market, Reuters news agency reported, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.
Musk's visit to China comes a week after his visit to India was postponed due to 'Tesla commitments'. He is expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and announce plans to enter the Indian market.
Meanwhile, Musk is now seeking to meet senior Chinese officials in Beijing to discuss the rollout of Full-Self Driving (FSD) software in China and gain approval to transfer data collected in the country abroad to train algorithms for autonomous driving. technologies, Reuters said, citing one of the two people.
In response to a question on social media platform X, Musk stated that Tesla could make FSD available to customers in China “very soon.” It is striking that Musk's visit to China was not made prominently visible in the public eye.
According to Reuters, 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 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 pushing for it to do so.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)