: Tesla CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing on Sunday for a surprise visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of Full Self-Driving software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Rival Chinese automakers such as Xpeng have been seeking to gain an advantage over Tesla by rolling out similar software. Musk's itinerary on Sunday afternoon includes a meeting with Ren Hongbin, a government official who heads the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, the organiser of the Beijing auto show currently underway, state media reported.
The company said this month it would lay off 10% of its global workforce as it grapples with falling sales and an intensifying price war for EVs led by Chinese brands. 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.
Tao said in the article that Tesla was leading autonomous driving research and development with its “end-to-end neural network” technology and data collected from millions of cars on the road.