The statements in this article are based on reliable sources and are repeated at the end of this article
The front foot has just sent off US Secretary of State Blinken, and the back foot Musk's private jet is about to arrive on the mainland. On April 28, Musk's private jet landed at Beijing Capital Airport in mainland China. [I don't look at it]
It's only been almost a year since Musk's last visit to China, and not only that, the original destination of Musk's visit to China was India. And on the visit to India to discuss the establishment of a factory in India, Modi was Aite on Twitter.
But just a week ago, Musk announced that he had postponed his plan to visit India due to the fact that "Tesla is busy with business and can't get out".
But on April 28, Musk, who "couldn't get out", suddenly flashed in Beijing. Musk was invited to attend the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and met with Ren Hongbin, the president of the Mainland Council for the Promotion of International Trade, on the afternoon of April 28.
Not only that, but he later met with mainland Premier Li Qiang at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse to discuss trade cooperation with him.
Premier Li Qiang said at the meeting that in international trade cooperation, equal cooperation and mutual benefit and win-win results are the best ways to cooperate. Tesla's rapid development in China also shows that the mainland's cooperation with international foreign-funded enterprises is correct.
The mainland will also continue to strengthen the service guarantee for enterprises, provide a better business environment for foreign enterprises, and let Chinese enterprises invest in the Chinese market with more peace of mind and peace of mind, so as to achieve a win-win situation in terms of interests.
Musk also said that Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory is the best performing among Tesla's factories in the world. This is all thanks to the hard work of Tesla's China team, and Tesla is also willing to carry out further cooperation with Continental, so that Mainland and Tesla can achieve a win-win situation!
And on the evening of April 28, Tesla said that it would continue to develop artificial intelligence and electric vehicles in China, and accelerate the implementation of Tesla's new cars and autonomous driving technology. At the same time, on the 28th, many Tesla models have passed the national automotive data security requirements, which means that Tesla can also drive in areas and units that were not allowed in the future.
It is not difficult to see the connection between these two things, the purpose of Musk's flash-like visit to China is probably to accelerate the rapid implementation of Tesla's self-driving technology in China, and at the same time, it also shows Musk's importance to the Chinese market.
Musk's arrival also injected a shot in the arm for Tesla's China team, which had just undergone major layoffs, making Tesla China believe that it had not been given up by Musk. After all, in Musk's heart, if you can't keep up with him, he chooses to kick you out of the team, and from this point of view, Musk still values Tesla's China team very much.
From Musk's visit to China, the mainland's attitude towards it can be seen that the mainland still regards Tesla as a "catfish", and hopes that Tesla can be used as a "catfish" to stimulate the mainland's intelligent automobile industry, so that the mainland's automotive industry can maintain rapid and rapid development.
Tesla's self-driving program in the U.S. could not be tried and implemented in the mainland during the period when the mainland imposed restrictions on Tesla. The research and development of autonomous driving technology have been taken over by local brands such as Huawei, Xpeng, and Li in the mainland, which has made the local brands in the mainland have a big distance from Tesla in the business of autonomous driving. However, in recent years, the autonomous driving technology of local car companies has tended to be homogeneous and stagnant.
The purpose of the meeting between Tesla and Musk is probably to discuss the ownership of Tesla's driving data, so that Tesla's self-driving technology can be implemented in the mainland, thereby stimulating the research of local car companies in the mainland on autonomous driving.
As the saying goes, if you have an opponent, you will have power, and Tesla's fate will make local car companies only speed up the research and experiment of technology, because Tesla's self-driving technology is cheaper, and if it is successfully realized in the mainland, it will be a huge impact on local car companies.
The last time Tesla played the role of "Catfish" was 4 years ago, and the electric cars in that period were basically the same as the old man Le, and the driving experience and driving distance were 108,000 miles different from now.
Then it was "eliminated" by the state Most of the "cheating" car companies, at that time Tesla can be described as a mature electric vehicle. Under the agitation of such a powerful "catfish", the mainland's electric vehicles ushered in a technological explosion and achieved cross-generational progress.
As we all know, Tesla's self-driving technology is different from the research direction of most car companies in the mainland. Most of the mainland car companies such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Ideal, and Xpeng rely on the direction of the combination of on-board lidar and artificial intelligence for autonomous driving.
LiDAR is characterized by the ability to quickly measure the environment around the car, thereby improving the accuracy of artificial intelligence operations in actual driving. However, LiDAR is not only expensive but also unable to be further updated, that is, it cannot update the system like a mobile phone, so that the old car has new features for the new car.
Moreover, lidar cannot perceive the meaning of objects and text symbols, and these things still need artificial intelligence to judge, so the main role of lidar is to assist the artificial intelligence of domestic car companies to drive.
Tesla chooses pure visual autonomous driving, Musk believes that people can drive by vision, so artificial intelligence can also do it.
Through the road sections and road environments that a large number of Tesla owners drive every day, the artificial intelligence is constantly simulated and learned, so as to remember what situations are encountered and the road needs to be operated accordingly. A large amount of learning allows artificial intelligence to quickly reach the same level as old drivers, not only that, it is less expensive, and it can be continuously updated in the future.
It is not so much that Musk lowered the price of cars because of the cost reduction, but rather to sell more cars, so as to obtain more data to train Tesla's artificial intelligence and achieve the goal of full self-driving as soon as possible. Except for Tesla, most of the enterprise data resources are seriously insufficient, so they have to adopt converged autonomous driving technology.
Compared with Tesla, it will always be at a disadvantage in terms of cost. But if Tesla completes the visual perception self-driving technology first, then the entire market will now be overthrown. This makes it necessary to use lower-cost, more mature technologies for cost reasons.
But on the other hand, if the mainland and lidar and artificial intelligence are combined with the direction of breakthrough first, then the cost of lidar will slowly decrease, and Tesla will also adopt the plan of local enterprises in the mainland. However, in terms of data, Tesla still has a greater resource advantage than other companies.
Therefore, Musk's visit to China this time is really not a loss, and it has completed what Musk wants to do most in recent years. I hope that Tesla, the "catfish", will make our self-driving technology in the fierce competition. Once again, we will achieve a technological leap and technological explosion, so that we can use the real intelligent driving technology faster.
Resources
[1] National Business Daily - April 28, 2024 [On the first day of Musk's visit to China, Tesla passed China's automotive data security compliance requirements!Musk: Now "autonomous driving" is the first priority]
[2] National Business Daily - April 29, 2024 [Musk visits China again! Tesla's domestic car "no parking and no driving" restrictions are lifted, and FSD enters the countdown to China?]