Tesla reaches deals in China on self-driving cars
BEIJING — Tesla has concluded a series of arrangements with regulators and a Chinese artificial intelligence company during a quick trip to Beijing on Sunday and Monday by Elon Musk, the carmaker’s CEO, potentially clearing the way for the company to offer its most advanced self-driving software on cars in China.
Tesla had faced a couple hurdles to offering the latest level of autonomous driving, which it calls supervised “Full Self-Driving.” It has needed approval from Chinese regulators, who questioned whether the company took adequate precautions to protect data. And it has needed access to extremely high-resolution maps across the country.
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The timing of Musk’s trip was significant. He arrived in China days after he identified self-driving technology and AI as critical to Tesla’s future. Tesla is not just a car company, Musk told investors last week, saying, “we should be thought of as an AI robotics company.”
Approval of the technology in China would give Musk a much-needed win after regulators in the United States issued a harsh assessment of the system’s safety and performance in a report released Friday.
Musk flew on his private jet to Beijing on Sunday morning and met almost immediately with Premier Li Qiang, China’s No. 2 official after Xi Jinping. Li is a longtime ally of Musk who, when he served as Communist Party secretary in Shanghai, helped clear the way for Tesla’s construction there of what is now the company’s largest car assembly plant.
The government-linked China Association of Automobile Manufacturers later announced that Tesla and five Chinese automakers had obtained approval from authorities and the association for their data security precautions on dozens of car models. The rules bar automakers in China from using software that would identify the faces of anyone outside their vehicles and include many other restrictions. Self-driving systems use cameras to guide vehicles.
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