Elon Musk Makes Surprise Beijing Visit As Tesla Seeks Full Self-Driving Rollout 

Elon Musk arrived in Beijing on Sunday and met with Premier Li Qiang, one week after postponing a trip to India. A source familiar with the visit told Reuters that Musk was expected to discuss the rollout of Full Self-Driving software and permission to transfer data overseas with top Chinese officials. 

X user Yan Chan captured the moment Musk’s Gulfstream G550 landed at Beijing Capital Airport on Sunday at 0603 GMT.

Exclusive: Elon Musk’s private plane with registration number N272BG has landed at Beijing Capital International Airport.

It flew over me, and I captured this video for the first time. pic.twitter.com/CLLHIp1KiT

— Yan Chang (@cyfoxcat) April 28, 2024

Exclusive: Landing photo of Elon Musk’s private plane.

This is a Gulfstream G550 owned by Musk and registered under SpaceX, with the registration code N272BG.

Hopefully, this visit will bring good news about the introduction of Full Self-Driving (FSD) to China. pic.twitter.com/l3hOAGSR7t

— Yan Chang (@cyfoxcat) April 28, 2024

Hours after Musk landed, China Central Television reported Musk met with Qiang. He said China is always open for business and noted Tesla as a prime example of successful China-US trade cooperation. 

Premier Li Qiang met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Beijing 🇨🇳pic.twitter.com/acrJj45MzD

— Dima Zeniuk (@DimaZeniuk) April 28, 2024

CCTV said Musk spoke to Qiang about Tesla’s plans to deepen its partnership with China. The billionaire also met Ren Hongbin, the head of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. He’s also expected to meet with officials to discuss the rollout of Tesla’s FSD. 

Elon Musk in Beijing today. 🇨🇳 pic.twitter.com/rc86NSX8nP

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) April 28, 2024

FSD was first rolled out as a limited beta version in late 2020 and has since become available to all Tesla owners in the US. However, FSD is still not available in China, the world’s largest electric vehicle market. 

A person familiar with the trip told Reuters that Musk is seeking a license to transfer data collected in the country abroad to train FSD’s algorithms. 

Since 2021, all data collected by Tesla’s China unit has not been transferred back to the US but stored locally. 

Musk’s trip comes one week after he postponed a trip to India with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He cited “very heavy Tesla obligations” for the delay and expressed optimism for a later visit. 

For Tesla, the EV price war with legacy US automakers and Chinese brands, in addition to a high-interest rate environment crushing consumer EV demand, has led Musk to trim the fat at Tesla, laying off 10% of its global workforce. 

In markets, Tesla shares are down 32% year-to-date. Shares have caught a bid since earnings last week, up about 16%. 

On an earnings call last week, Musk said, “We plan on, with the approval of the regulators, releasing it as a supervised autonomy system in any market that — where we can get regulatory approval for that, which we think includes China.”