Worried Tesla Cars May Snoop, China Bans Them for 2 Months around Site of CCP Meeting

Due to worries about eavesdropping during a summit of Chinese Communist Party leaders, Elon Musk’s Tesla cars have been prohibited from entering the Chinese town Beidaihe for the next two months.

The northeastern Chinese city of Beidaihe has long been the setting for a covert gathering of China’s top officials every summer.

As reported, the restriction will go into force on July 1 and in terms of the reason behind this decision, local police stated that the Tesla car ban was due to “national affairs”.

Just a few weeks ago, it was decided not to allow Tesla cars on some Chengdu highways, and now it has been decided to do the same in Beidaihe. The prohibition was implemented at the same time that Chinese President Xi Jinping was in the city’s centre.

However, the Chengdu ban was not initially publicised; instead, it was only made known after footage on social media showed authorities directing Tesla cars away from specific locations. In response Musk said that the company doesn’t use these cameras “to spy on China”.

But the response didn’t stop government entities to restrict employees from parking their Tesla cars on government property.

Following such events, Tesla said that it will store all data acquired in China locally. The company established a new data centre in the country a few months later to do precisely that, but it didn’t seem to allay worries.

Even last year, The People’s Liberation Army issued an order, prohibiting Tesla owners from parking their vehicles on bases and in housing complexes.

It is believed that the worries appeared to be about Tesla’s usage of cameras everywhere around its vehicles and where the data is going.

Tesla and the Chinese government have been in a good relationship as they reached an agreement that made the US auto giant the first foreign manufacturer to wholly own a car manufacturing in China without the need for a joint venture with a state-owned enterprise.

China is now one of the automaker’s main markets and production locations.

Tesla’s Shanghai plant produced around 936,000 vehicles which were delivered globally by the American automaker in 2021. But the stringent Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai has slowed output in recent months.

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