Elon Musk said on Saturday that if Tesla vehicles were spied on in China, the company would be shut down, Reuters report. Musk made the remark while speaking via a video link to the China Development Forum, pointing to reports that China has banned its military and government personnel from using Tesla vehicles due to safety issues.
“There is a very strong incentive for us to be very confidential with any information,” Musk told the forum. “If Tesla uses cars to spy on China or anywhere else, we will be shut down.”
The Wall Street Journal Friday reported that people working for China’s military, government agencies and ‘state-owned enterprises in sensitive industries’ have been banned from driving Teslas. China is concerned that Tesla’s exterior cameras, which are constantly recording, could be used to collect images sent back to the US, according to the Magazine.
China is a big market for Tesla and for electric vehicles; According to Reuters the carmaker sold 147,445 vehicles in the country last year, making up 30 percent of its global total.
As Bloomberg notes, Tesla and its leader adopted a different tone with Chinese authorities than with their American counterparts. For example, last month Tesla apologized for one of its staff accusing China’s electrical network of damaging a customer’s vehicle: ‘We are very sorry for the misunderstanding and would like to apologize to the Nanchang Power Grid for the inconvenience,’ said Tesla in a video.
Musk and Tesla were more aggressive in their responses to U.S. authorities; the chief executive once had a conversation with the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, and last year he struck a chord with the authorities in Alameda County, California, where Tesla’s Fremont plant is located, due to coronavirus restrictions.