Technology AI, Science and New Things
Elon Musk wants China to let Teslas there use the company's "full" self-driving system (FSD) available to drivers in the US. Why? Tesla has a lot of customers in China and their data would be useful to fine-tune the AI models FSD runs on. (“Full” doesn’t mean full; it still requires drivers to pay attention.) But China doesn't want Tesla hoovering up information on secret government sites. So Musk flew to Beijing at the weekend for meetings with premier Li Qiang among others. Li said Tesla was a good example of economic cooperation between China and the US, which China is keen to promote as multinationals pursue "China +1" strategies in case Xi Jinping makes life too oppressive and they need to go elsewhere for low-cost manufacturing. Musk meanwhile needs to show markets Tesla's a tech company, not just a car company, and FSD is a big part of that. It will be interesting to see who needs whom more.