Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France France, June 16, 2023.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
BEIJING — Local Chinese authorities have lifted restrictions on You’re here cars after the company’s Chinese-made vehicles met the country’s data security requirements, the automaker said on Sunday.
The breakthrough came as Tesla CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing for an unexpected meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, in the middle of the city’s first major auto show in four years.
Although Tesla’s electric cars are among the most popular vehicles in China, they have reportedly been banned from some government-linked properties due to concerns about the data the U.S. automaker can collect.
Tesla’s press release does not specify which local authorities have lifted restrictions on cars. The Biden administration announced an investigation earlier this year into whether cars imported from China posed national security risks because of their ability to potentially collect data about the United States and send it back to China.
Tesla’s vehicles weren’t the only ones to comply with data security regulations.
In addition to Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y, several new energy vehicles from BYD, LotusNezha, Li Auto And Nio has met China’s data security requirements, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers and the Technical Emergency Response Team of the National Computer Network/China Coordination Center said on Sunday.
The new data security requirements for “connected vehicles” were released in November and cover cars released in 2022 and 2023 that automakers voluntarily submit for inspection, the center said.
The rules check whether cars anonymize facial recognition data outside the vehicle, do not collect cockpit data by default, process this data inside the car, and clearly inform users about the processing of personal information. Tesla was included in the first group of automakers meeting data compliance requirements.
Tesla said in its press release that it has located data storage in 2021 at its Shanghai data center and has met the international ISO 27001 standard for information security after a review by third-party auditors.
Musk’s visit to China on Sunday also raised hopes that Tesla’s driver assistance software, Full Self Driving, would soon be available in the country.
However, JL Warren Capital CEO and Head of Research Junheng Li said on that the deployment of a “supervised” version of the FSD in China is “extremely unlikely”.
She highlighted the difficulties Tesla faced in supporting local operation of the software as a foreign entity in China. Li said there was “no strategic value” for Beijing to support the national rollout of FSD when there are many high-quality local alternatives, such as XpengDriving assistance software.
Premier Li visited Xpeng and other companies at the Beijing auto show on Sunday and called for innovation and demand to boost production, according to state media.
Tesla is not exhibiting at this year’s auto show, as has been the case since a protester stood on one of its cars during the 2021 Shanghai auto show. show alternates between Beijing and Shanghai on an annual basis and has not taken place. in 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
cnbc
