SHANGHAI – Tesla Inc.
TSLA 0.26%
the US government would never provide data collected by its vehicles in China or other countries, Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, told a high-level conference in China.
Mr. Musk’s assurance that Chinese customer data is fully protected followed the Chinese government’s decision to restrict the use of Tesla cars by military personnel or employees of major state-owned companies, as first reported by the Journal on Friday . Beijing had acted out of concern that sensitive data, such as footage captured by the cars’ cameras, could be sent to the US, according to people familiar with the case.
Speaking via video link to the government-sponsored China Development Forum in Beijing on Saturday, Mr. Musk said that no US or Chinese company would risk collecting sensitive or private data and then sharing it with their own government.
“Be it Chinese or American, the negative effects if a commercial company were to spy – the negative effects on that business would be extremely bad,” Musk said. If Tesla were to use its cars to spy in any country, he said, it would be shut down everywhere, which he called “a very strong incentive for us to be very confidential.”
Concerns about commercial espionage have become exaggerated, said Mr. Musk, citing the case of the video platform TikTok – owned by the Chinese technology company Bytedance Ltd. – which faced a US ban last year before being reprieved.
“Even if spied on, what would the other country learn and would it really matter? If it doesn’t matter, it’s not worth thinking so much about it, ”said Mr. Musk. US concerns about Chinese espionage through TikTok are irrational, he said: the platform’s videos usually show people “just doing crazy dances”.
Tesla is seen in China as a model foreign company. It received a lot of support from the Shanghai authorities to establish itself in the city, and in 2018 it became the first foreign car manufacturer in China to receive approval for a wholly owned factory, that is, without a local joint venture- partner. Chinese state banks funded the project.
China has also become a core market for Tesla, accounting for about a quarter of global sales of approximately 500,000 vehicles last year.
As Tesla continued to expand its Shanghai plant and ramp up local production of the Model 3 sedan and Model Y compact crossover vehicle, Tesla had its first serious meeting with the Chinese authorities last month. The state administration for market regulation, the country’s main market regulator, publicly chided the company over quality issues.
Tesla responded with a statement saying it “sincerely accepted government agency guidelines” and would make improvements by “thinking deeply about [its] shortcomings. ‘
—Bingyan Wang in Beijing contributed to this article.
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