Elon Musk landed in Beijing on Sunday in an unannounced visit in which he plans to meet with senior officials to talk about rolling out full self-driving software and sending data overseas.
China’s premier Li Qiang met with the Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) boss and told him that the EV company’s development in the Asian nation could be seen as a good example of trading between China and the US.
Full self-driving (FSD), which is Tesla’s most advanced autonomous driving technology, was added around four years ago but it is yet to have had a Chinese release despite it being the EVs group’s second-largest market.
Musk promised Chinese customers that FSD would be coming to the nation “very soon”, according to a post made on X earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Chinese rivals, many of which have been gaining global market share in the last year, have attempted to implement similar autonomous driving technology into their vehicles.
Part of Musk’s visit is believed to be focused on allowing the transfer of Tesla data from China back to the US to allow the company to train its autonomous driving algorithms.
Over the last three years, Tesla has been required by Chinese regulators to keep all of its data collected in the country in Shanghai and not transfer it to the US.