Elon Musk has promised that his long-awaited driverless cars will make their debut on the streets of China as he made a surprise visit to Beijing on Sunday.
The Tesla boss sat down with Chinese premier Li Qiang just a week after canceling a meeting with India's PM Narendra Modi, citing 'very heavy Tesla obligations'.
The company has lost nearly a third of its value since the start of the year with investors growing tired of repeated delays to its roll-out of cars with full self-driving software (FSD).
But Li praised Tesla as a successful example of US China economic cooperation as analysts hailed 'a major moment for Tesla'.
'While the long term valuation story at Tesla hinges on FSD and autonomous, a key missing piece in that puzzle is Tesla making FSD available in China which now appears on the doorstep,' said equity firm Wedbush.
Elon Musk said he was 'honored' to meet Chinese premier Li Qiang on his surprise visit
The Tesla boss jetted in just a week after canceling a meeting with India's PM Narendra Modi
Tesla's Shanghai plant is its biggest and has helped deliver 1.7m vehicles to the Chinese market
Musk opened his first Chinese gigafactory in Shanghai six years ago and it is now Tesla's biggest in the world.
Earlier this month Musk tweeted that a Chinese roll-out of his FSD would happen 'very soon', with Li seemingly relaxed about using his country's crowded streets as the testbed for the pioneering technology.
But Musk was also keen to win his permission to take home data collected in the China to train algorithms for Tesla's autonomous driving technologies in the US, sources told Reuters.
Tesla has since 2021 stored all data collected by its Chinese fleet in Shanghai as required by Chinese regulators and has not transferred any back to the United States.
'Honored to meet with Premier Li Qiang. We have known each other now for many years, since early Shanghai days,' Musk posted on his social media platform X, as he appeared in a picture with the premier.
Musk's visit to China was not flagged publicly and Tesla did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV in its report about Musk's meeting with Li did not say whether the two had discussed FSD or data.
But state radio said Qiang had visited the ongoing Beijing auto show and had commented about how China's smart new energy vehicle sector had gained a leading position in the market and that the country had to work hard and maintain its advantages.
'It is good to see electric vehicles making progress in China. All cars will be electric in the future,' Musk said in a video.
The company has lost nearly a third of its value since the start of the year
Tesla has sold more than 1.7 million cars in China since it entered the market a decade ago, but earlier this month warned it would lay off 10 percent of its global workforce as it grapples with falling sales and an intensifying price war for EVs led by Chinese brands.
Musk said last week that Tesla would introduce new cheaper models using its current EV platforms and production lines and would offer a new 'robotaxi' with self-driving technology by August 8.
Late on Sunday, a top Chinese auto association published a list of 76 car models it said it had tested and found to be compliant with China's data security requirements, among them being Tesla's Model Y and 3 cars.
But it came just two days after US regulators announced an investigation into whether Tesla's recall of more than 2 million vehicles in the United States announced in December to install new Autopilot safeguards was adequate following a series of crashes.
