SHANGHAI— Tesla Inc.
TSLA 0.26%
will never provide the US government with data collected from its vehicles in China or other countries, Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive, told a high-level conference in China.
Mr Musk’s assurance that Chinese customers’ 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 companies, as first reported on Friday. Beijing has acted out of concern that sensitive data, such as images taken by car cameras, could be sent to the United States, according to people familiar with the matter.
Speaking on Saturday via a video link to the government-backed China Development Forum in Beijing, Mr Musk said no US or Chinese company would risk collecting sensitive or private data and then sharing it with their home government.
“Whether it’s Chinese or the United States, the negative effects if a commercial company engages in espionage – the negative effects for that company would be extremely bad,” Mr. Musk said. If Tesla used its cars to spy on any country, he said, it would be closed everywhere, which he called “a very strong incentive to be very confidential.”
Concerns about commercial espionage have become exaggerated, Mr Musk said, citing the case of video platform TikTok – owned by Chinese technology company Bytedance Ltd. – which faced an American ban last year before it was recovered.
“Even if there was espionage, what would the other country learn and actually matter? If it doesn’t matter, it’s not worth thinking about, “said Musk. The US concerns about Chinese espionage through TikTok are irrational, he argued: the platform’s videos mostly show people “just doing stupid dances.”
Tesla was seen as a foreign model company in China. It gained strong support from the Shanghai authorities for the establishment in the city and, in 2018, became the first foreign carmaker in China to obtain approval for a wholly owned factory – that is, without a local joint venture partner. Chinese state-owned banks financed the project.
China has also become a core market for Tesla, accounting for about a quarter of its global sales of about 500,000 vehicles last year.
While continuing to expand its plant in Shanghai and boost local production of the Model 3 sedan and compact Model Y crossover vehicle, Tesla had its first serious meeting with Chinese authorities last month. The state administration for market regulation, the main market regulator in the country, has publicly reprimanded the company for quality issues.
Tesla responded with a statement saying that it “sincerely accepted the guidance of government departments” and will make improvements with “profound reflection on [its] shortcomings. ‘
—Bingyan Wang from Beijing contributed to this article.
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