SHANGHAI— Tesla Inc.
TSLA 0.26%
Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, said at a high-level conference in China that he would never provide the U.S. government with information his vehicles collected in China or other countries.
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 key state-owned enterprises, as first reported in the Journal Friday. According to people familiar with the matter, Beijing has acted out of concern that sensitive data such as the photos taken by the cars could be sent to the US.
Musk said on Saturday via a video link to the China Development Forum of China in Beijing that no US or Chinese company would be in danger of collecting sensitive or private data and then sharing it with their home government.
“Whether it’s Chinese or American, the negative consequences if a commercial company does espionage – the negative consequences for the company will be extremely bad,” Musk said. If Tesla uses his cars to spy on any country, he will exclude everywhere, which he “is a very strong incentive for us to be very confidential.” ‘
Concerns about commercial espionage have become redundant, Mr. Musk said, referring to the case of the video platform TikTok, which is owned by Chinese technology company Bytedance Ltd., which faced a US ban last year before being postponed.
‘Even if there was espionage, what would the other country learn and would it actually matter? If it does not matter, it is not worth thinking about it so much, ‘said Mr. Musk said. U.S. concern over Chinese espionage via TikTok is irrational, he argued: the platform’s videos show people mostly “just doing silly dances.”
Tesla is seen as a foreign model in China. It received strong support from the Shanghai authorities to settle in the city, and in 2018 became the first foreign car manufacturer in China to obtain approval for a complete factory – that is, without a local partner for joint ventures. Chinese state banks funded the project.
China also became a core market for Tesla and last year accounted for about a quarter of its global sales of about 500,000 vehicles.
While continuing to expand the factory in Shanghai and the local production of the Model 3 sedan and Model Y compact crossover vehicle, Tesla had its first serious run-up with the Chinese authorities last month. The state administration for market regulation, the country’s leading market regulator, has publicly reprimanded the company over quality issues.
Tesla responded with a statement that it “sincerely accepts the leadership of government departments” and that it will make improvements, ” [its] shortcomings. ‘
—Bingyan Wang in Beijing contributed to this article.
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