Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center on June 16, 2023 in Paris, France.
Gonzalo Fuentes Reuters
BEIJING – Local Chinese authorities have lifted restrictions on Tesla cars after the company's China-made vehicles passed the country's data protection requirements, the automaker said Sunday.
The breakthrough came amid the city's first major auto show in four years, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing for a surprise meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.
New data protection requirements for “connected vehicles” were published in November and cover cars released in 2022 and 2023, which automakers voluntarily submit to scrutiny, the center said.
The rules test whether cars anonymize facial recognition data outside the vehicle, default to not collecting cockpit data, process that data inside the car, and essentially notify users of personal information processing. Tesla was among the first batch of automakers to meet data compliance requirements.
In its press release, Tesla said it localized data storage in its Shanghai data center in 2021 and passed the ISO 27001 international standard for information security after a review by third-party auditors.
Musk's visit to China on Sunday also raised expectations that Tesla's driver-assistance software Full Self-Driving will soon be available in the country.
However, JL Warren Capital CEO and head of research Junheng Li said in X The release of a “supervised” version of the FSD in China is “highly unlikely.”
He pointed out the challenges for Tesla as a foreign company in China to support the local operation of the software. Li said there is “no strategic value” for Beijing to support a domestic rollout of FSD when there are many high-quality local alternatives, such as Xpeng's driver-assistance software.
Premier Li visited Xpeng and other companies at the Beijing Auto Show on Sunday, calling for innovation and demand to boost production. According to state media.
Tesla did not exhibit at this year's auto show, as a protester stood over one of its cars during the 2021 Shanghai auto show. The event alternates between Beijing and Shanghai annually, and has never been held. 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
