On July 1 and October 21, 2021, two satellites of Tesla's head Elon Musk Space Exploration Technology Company approached our space station by actively reducing the orbital altitude, so that the "Tianhe" core module had to carry out "emergency avoidance" to become the focus of attention of all parties in China.
Anyway, when the two satellites touched our space station: on July 1, 2021, 3 astronauts on Shenzhou XII were still on the space station; on October 21, 2021, Shenzhou 133 astronauts had just entered the station. Once the half-point difference pool appears, the life safety of our astronauts in space will be greatly threatened.
Tesla satellite touch porcelain incident restoration
The two satellites belong to Musk and SpaceX's "Starlink", of which the first is the Starlink-1095 satellite and the second is the Starlink-2305 satellite. The "Starlink" program is a low-altitude satellite program created by Musk, hoping to provide Internet services by launching 12,000 satellites, providing communication technology support for the Internet of Vehicles and autonomous driving.
The Starlink program is nominally led by Space Exploration Technology and Musk, but the actual controller behind the satellite system and the entire Space Exploration Technology company is the U.S. military.
Starlink can provide services for Tesla models, as well as for the US military. According to relevant information, Musk's satellite has a strong maneuverability, so the threat to the space station can be imagined.
Walking camera, is the problem solved?
In addition to satellite touching porcelain, Tesla was also involved in collecting various road scene data in China and sending these scene data directly to its overseas servers for learning and iterative optimization of Tesla's AutoPilot autopilot system.
Nowadays, many government agencies have refused to allow Tesla models to enter, but also worried that Tesla will pass on a lot of confidential information to the United States.
During the censorship led by the Cyberspace Administration of China, Tesla was forced to announce that it would build a data center in China and store all kinds of data collected in China.
However, at present, Tesla may not have a relatively complete localization research and development team for autonomous driving in China, which means that the learning of many actual road scenarios still depends on Tesla's overseas engineers.
Tesla needs the Chinese market even more
At present, Tesla is enjoying a smooth ride in the domestic electric vehicle market.
At the same time, Tesla's factory in Shanghai is also used as an important production base for its radiation to overseas markets. Especially at present, its factories in Berlin, Germany, and Texas, USA, are still not put into operation, and the importance of the Shanghai plant is self-evident.
But for China, Tesla needs to make it clear why Musk's Starlink satellites threaten China's space station, and it also needs to ensure that this does not happen again in the future.
There are also many people who worry that once China punishes Tesla, Tesla will shift its production to other factories, reducing the export volume of the Shanghai factory, which will affect the interests of domestic employees and suppliers.
In fact, we have to figure out one thing, compared to the need for Tesla, Tesla actually needs the Chinese market more.
First, even in Shanghai, where labor costs are highest in China, according to Tesla's calculations, its manufacturing costs are still significantly lower than those of its U.S. factories.
Second, China's electric vehicle market itself has great potential, and there are many products of the same type in the entire market. Even if Tesla completely withdraws from the Chinese market, there is no need to worry about no other brands filling up. Whether it is the "Wei Xiaoli" that is also a new force, or the pure electric vehicle models of Geely, Great Wall, Changan, SAIC and BYD, they are not at all inferior to Tesla in core technologies such as quality, three electrics and intelligent network connection.
Therefore, it is the domestic opening up of the electric vehicle market, giving Tesla a lot of opportunities to make money. Especially considering that when Tesla built a factory in Shanghai at that time, we not only relaxed the domestic restriction on foreign capital to set up factories with no more than 50% of the shares.
At the same time, the Shanghai municipal government has given the green light in terms of land and loans. Tesla almost in the "empty sack back rice" situation, the domestic market to expand, but also indirectly support its higher market value in the U.S. market.
Therefore, even if Tesla withdraws from China, it will not only not affect the progress of China's electric vehicle market, but also will not affect the livelihood of enterprises in its supply chain in China, because Tesla's market gap will not disappear out of thin air. As for the output value exported to overseas markets, now Weilai and Xiaopeng have sold their cars to Europe, and SAIC MG, Geely Geometry brand, etc. have begun to gradually operate the global market.
Foreign capital investment in China is actually a win-win process. They have indeed injected capital into the country, created a lot of jobs and considerable GDP, but China has also given a huge return on foreign capital invested in China with a huge potential market, and has even become one of the important pillars supporting the performance of many multinational enterprises.
We also acknowledge that foreign investment has promoted China's exports and earned considerable foreign exchange for China, but foreign capital cannot deny that China has the most complete industrial chain in the world.
Musk owes China an explanation, and even more an apology.