[RahulNagaraj]

According to media reports, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a surprise visit to Beijing, China, on Sunday.

Elon Musk is said to be in China to meet with senior officials regarding the rollout of its Full Self-Driving software and permission to transfer data overseas. The Tesla CEO took to social media platform X to announce that its customers in China will receive FSD tech "very soon".



The surprise trip to China though, comes a week after Musk cancelled his planned visit to India. Musk cited "very heavy Tesla obligations" as the reason for scrapping his plans to come to India & meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Musk's visit to China also coincides with the ongoing Beijing Motor Show, which goes on until May 4. Tesla has been on sale in China for over a decade now, with the Shanghai factory said to be its largest globally.

Source: Economic Times

Link to Team-BHP news

[omranga98]

Elon Musk leading India on to no where since 2019

[volkman10]

Baidu, Tesla agree on mapping deal for FSD in China.

Elon Musk:

I have to say that. I also have a lot of fans in China. Well, the feelings are reciprocated,

I hope China and the US can work together for regional prosperity

China's major internet search company reached an agreement with Tesla, opens new tab to grant the car company access to its mapping license for data collection on China's public roads.

The deal clears a final regulatory hurdle for Tesla's driver assistance system, which Tesla calls Full Self Driving (FSD), to be offered in China.

As part of the deal, Baidu would also provide its lane-level navigation system to Tesla.

The deal was struck recently and comes as Tesla CEO Elon Musk's visit to China and met with Premier Li Qiang. Musk is seeking approvals for the FSD software rollout in China and the permissions to transfer data overseas during his meetings with Chinese officials.
In China, all intelligent driving systems are required to obtain a mapping qualification before they can operate on public roads. Foreign firms need to partner with domestic companies that have obtained the license. Baidu is among a dozen companies that have secured one.

With the mapping service license, Tesla will be permitted to legally operate its FSD software on Chinese roads and its fleets can gather data about the vehicle's surroundings, such as road layouts, traffic signs, and nearby buildings.

It is not immediately clear whether the collected data will belong to Tesla or Baidu.


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[Quicksilver85]

To me personally, these may not be related but some business as usual decisions based on priorities.
China used to be big contributor to Tesla's global sales till BYD aced it with competent products and stellar pricing.
A high profile visit by None-other-than Mr.Musk is sure to pump up the energy of the local team plus he might want to reassess the strategy moving forward.

While, Tesla India story is still in the pipeline, it can wait, while established market such as China with huge potential (atleast in his mind) needs do better. This visit may also help him with the optics on how shareholders will see this.

[PreludeSH]

Will be interesting to see where the data will be stored. Tesla using Baidu's license to map but keep the data out of China ? highly unlikely

Has Tesla sold the FSD in China like in other markets ? Its still pricey for 8K dollars. Could be one more item that could favour Chinese EV makers.

[poloman]

I think Elon has messed up Indian plans royally with the cancellation of Indian visit and subsequent visit to China. Current Indian dispensation is not going to take any slighting, however minor it is lightly. There are numerous examples for this.

The announcement and cancellation of visit in the midst of election and later a visit to China can be seen extremely detrimental by the government. If current party returns to power, Elon will have a lot of diplomatic balancing act to do.

While, Tesla India story is still in the pipeline, it can wait, while established market such as China with huge potential (atleast in his mind) needs do better. This visit may also help him with the optics on how shareholders will see this.

Tesla is getting beaten up everywhere. So opening up large emerging market like India is key for their way ahead. Ask Apple. India is their shining beacon in a gloomy smartphone market.

[GTO]

Just weeks after India made special exceptions & rolled out a "Tesla" EV import policy, no less! But as Quicksilver85 said, it's all about priorities. Tesla sold 80,000 cars in China last month. What will its India sales be? At best, in the 3 digits at the start.

[itwasntme]

Originally Posted by GTO

What will its India sales be? At best, in the 3 digits at the start.

Correct! India can wait for a few months more.

Elon has to first and foremost manage investor sentiment. He is getting rammed from all sides:

Production and model line-up:
Cybertruck: Figure out speeding up production which faces ramping up issues
Model 2: Suddenly revealed to be not on a revolutionary new platform but on an evolutionary one using existing platforms
Model refresh: Sorely needed for the older S.

China:
Insane competition by domestic players in every segment Tesla operates in.
Rapidly improving products too!
Huge lobbying by competitors highlighting 'national security' concerns with Tesla cars
Already being discussed - FSD tech was disallowed throughout China + issues with connected car data storage and mining. Possibly resolved now but there is many a slip between the cup and the lip.

Europe:
Again, huge dumping of Chinese EVs have started with BYD being a prime example

Political:
Elon's political views, verbal diarrhoea and X fingerbanging have led to hardening of activist sentiment against Teslas, culminating in an arson attack on the Germany Gigafactory
Similarly, surveys are showing customers might be shunning Teslas due to Elon!

Hence, India has been deprioritized as of now. As it is, Vinfast is not having an easy time as there seems to be some 'misunderstanding' about the new EV policy.

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com...le68090539.ece

[man_and_machine]

China controls 98% of the cobalt supply chain, directly on indirectly. The market there is turning 'made in china' like a vocal for local in china with the all the three top EV sellers grabbing market share. The summit he is attending too, is to make his and Tesla's presence felt where his time and presence is more needed. That market is live for Musk, India needs to get started. A month on even a year more is not very significant for Tesla and for Musk. He is a businessman and his business comes first over optics with the government. All the supposedly bad press will go away the day he announces dates for his next visit. All the day's work for a CEO with a relevant product roadmap.

[GS-R]

Elon made the trip to China to get FSD approved. Seems like this paid off and the market likes it by rewarding TSLA shares - They are up 16% today. Elon is effusive in praise for China as well

Tesla may make a lot more by selling FSD in China than selling cars in India. So it Is a matter of prioritizing the market with tremendous scale and sales. EV market there is 8Milion cars in 2023 vs 80k in India for the same year, also Chinese government ensured electric charging infra was ubiquitous there with charging standard many years ago and now they have 1.2Million public charing stations and 50% of fast chargers compared to about 9k public charging stations.

For Tesla to come to India and ensuring a charging network is appropriately setup for their cars is a steep expense and takes time and would be surprising if they can sell 10k cars in the first year. He might as well focus on expanding market share in China instead.

[dust-n-bones]

Finally, our forum seems to have moved on from the amusing anti China rhetoric when the central government rejected the billion dollar investment proposal from BYD.

Here's what remains of our muscular discussion (India may block BYD's US$ 1 billion EV plan).

The underlying theme then was that we are cultivating a 'more powerful' ally, BYD be damned. Things have moved on from those heady days a bit.

The personification of that ally, Mr Musk, has sold 1.7 million vehicles to China in the last decade, and looking at an addressable market of $600 billion by the turn of the decade. Ally with India? He'll rather sing the right note to the Chinese every day of the week.

It is BYD which is now positioning itself to lead our miniscule EV market, as it is doing everywhere else, minus the investment, and minus the opportunity for Indians to learn the nuts and bolts of this industry.

Who can say if this is not a quid pro quo arrangement.

And isn't it also curious that when the mass media was egging us on, BYD was suspected of the worst, accused of providing the Chinese govt a backdoor to snoop on us with, and the knives were dutifully out.
Now as the bandwagen has moved on to more pressing topics, the patriotic cola has fizzled out. BYD seems to be kosher in today's light.

Such are the ways of this world.

[OrangeCar]

Clearly Elon Musk got his priorities sorted, at least this time.

He had to make a visit to China to ensure stagnating growth in Tesla's car sale numbers, which has started to affect Tesla stock price too.

With this agreement, Tesla share price has immediately jumped 15%. That's a big thumbs up from the market.


Now, there was no news of his imminent travel to China (at least not that I read anywhere in popular media). There obviously was some work happening in the background to formalize an agreement. Such agreements would not happen in a day. US has concerns about China and data sharing, etc. There are trust issues between US and China. Even with all of this:
1. Tesla and China were able to seal a deal that would help both parties.
2. China, even with much larger GDP, and with strong domestic electric car makers understands that more the merry. And does enable an agreement to be signed between a Chinese company and an American company (haven't seen any reaction from American government).
3. Overall, a win for China. A win for Tesla. A win for an American company. A win for Chinese consumer (he gets more to choose, and competition helps consumer).
4. BYD and other local Chinese car makers will continue to work to match and exceed Tesla and other foreign players in tech space.

Look at what we have done.
1. Make talks with and demands of Tesla public. Why? I do not know.
2. Took our own time to make decisions (remember, the first time Modi visited Tesla factory was in 2015. It's 2024 now).
3. We finally tweak our policy. And this visit of Elon to China clearly demonstrates that it was not enough for Elon to make good on a committed visit.
4. Adding to this, BYD said we will invest $1 billion. We happily say, 'no thanks'. This when we need more existing domestic, existing and new foreign, and domestic and new upstarts to all be present to help evolve the market. But nope, we wont take $1 Billion investment, even when our GDP is 20-25% of that of China.
5. We will have quid-pro-quo agreements with domestic players, who will lobby to ensure no tax sops even for hybrids. Because they lack that tech. Consumer be damned.

Imagine BYD made the investment. Started taking market share. Korean's would have responded to increase investment and try to fight. Indian makers would have had to pull up their socks to make better products (including increasing spends on R&D for battery tech, fight for supply chains, etc.). All would have helped in long term.

Clear demonstration of our inability to make decisions, our entangled interests between politicians-babus-industry, and least consideration for consumers or employment/investment factors.

We still are not at a stage economically, that Indian market becomes automatically attractive for players to come. Till then, whoever shows interests, we have to woo them.

[yd_gli]

How many cars will Tesla sell in India for the foreseeable future? 3 figures a month? The affluent and enthusiasts will get one and that will be it. The average Joe ain't going to plonk his hard earned money on self driving tech. We don't have the infrastructure or the eco system to utilize the technology. Finding labor to service and maintain these will be another story. One drive on Indian roads and Elon knows his cars are useless here.

[It's Magic]

Originally Posted by RahulNagaraj

AThe surprise trip to China though, comes a week after Musk cancelled his planned visit to India. Musk cited "very heavy Tesla obligations" as the reason for scrapping his plans to come to India & meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

We have our elections ongoing until June, so it's no wonder that Elon Musk has postponed his visit.

Once the elections are over, the new Prime Minister will start his term for the next five years (it might be current one again). It makes sense to discuss future plans with him at that time, rather than having a discussion with current Prime Minister and potentially having to discuss the same thing again if a new Prime Minister comes to power.

[volkman10]

As Elon Musk tries hard to turn Tesla from a carmaker into an AI company as its Full Self-Driving software makes stride, senior executives leave and entire teams are wiped out.

Tesla lost more senior executives this month than it probably did in its entire history before. After Drew Baglino and Rohan Patel, Martin Viecha announced his departure during the first quarter earnings call. It appears that Rebecca Tinucci, the chief of Tesla Charging Infrastructure, has also been dismissed along with the entire Supercharger team of 500 people reporting to her. Daniel Ho, the chief of new product introduction, has also been laid off after more than 10 years at Tesla.

After Musk paid an unannounced visit to China to clear the way for FSD deployment in the country, Tesla's share prices rose by 15%. This was the first time software had pushed Tesla's valuation, validating Musk's view that Tesla is, indeed, an AI company.
The move could be behind Musk's latest decisions that point to Tesla abandoning Supercharger expansion and new vehicle development.


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