Elon Musk Says Tesla Won’t Share Data From Its Cars With China Or U.S.
Beijing has restricted use of Tesla cars by military personnel or employees of some state-owned companies.
Beijing has restricted use of Tesla cars by military personnel or employees of some state-owned companies.
SHANGHAI—Tesla Inc. would never provide the U.S. government with data collected by 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 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 companies, as first reported by the Journal on Friday. Beijing had acted out of concern that sensitive data such as images taken by the cars’ cameras could be sent to the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter.
Speaking via video link Saturday to the government-backed China Development Forum in Beijing, Mr. Musk said that no U.S. or Chinese company would risk gathering sensitive or private data and then sharing it with their home government.
“Whether it’s Chinese or U.S., the negative effects if a commercial company did engage in spying—the negative effects for that company would be extremely bad,” Mr. Musk said. If Tesla used its cars to spy in any country, he said, it would be shut down everywhere, which he called “a very strong incentive for us to be very confidential.”
Concerns about commercial espionage have become overblown, Mr. Musk said, citing the case of the video platform TikTok—owned by Chinese tech company Bytedance Ltd.—which faced a U.S. ban last year before being reprieved.
“Even if there was spying, what would the other country learn and would it actually matter? If it doesn’t matter, it’s not worth thinking about that much,” Mr Musk said. U.S. concerns about Chinese spying via TikTok are irrational, he argued: The platform’s videos mostly show people “just doing silly dances.”
Tesla has been seen as a model foreign company in China. It won strong support from Shanghai authorities to set up in the city, and in 2018 became the first foreign auto maker in China to gain approval for a wholly owned factory—that is, without a local joint-venture partner. Chinese state banks financed the project.
China has also become a core market for Tesla, last year accounting for about a quarter of its global sales of roughly 500,000 vehicles.
While continuing to expand the Shanghai plant and ramp up local production of the Model 3 sedan and the Model Y compact crossover vehicle, Tesla had its first serious run-in with the Chinese authorities last month. The State Administration for Market Regulation, the country’s top market regulator, publicly rebuked the company over quality issues.
Tesla responded with a statement saying it “sincerely accepted the guidance of government departments” and would make improvements having “deeply reflected on [its] shortcomings.’
Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal, Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: March 20, 2021.
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Continued stagflation and cost of living pressures are causing couples to think twice about starting a family, new data has revealed, with long term impacts expected
Australia is in the midst of a ‘baby recession’ with preliminary estimates showing the number of births in 2023 fell by more than four percent to the lowest level since 2006, according to KPMG. The consultancy firm says this reflects the impact of cost-of-living pressures on the feasibility of younger Australians starting a family.
KPMG estimates that 289,100 babies were born in 2023. This compares to 300,684 babies in 2022 and 309,996 in 2021, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley said weak economic growth often leads to a reduced number of births. In 2023, ABS data shows gross domestic product (GDP) fell to 1.5 percent. Despite the population growing by 2.5 percent in 2023, GDP on a per capita basis went into negative territory, down one percent over the 12 months.
“Birth rates provide insight into long-term population growth as well as the current confidence of Australian families,” said Mr Rawnsley. “We haven’t seen such a sharp drop in births in Australia since the period of economic stagflation in the 1970s, which coincided with the initial widespread adoption of the contraceptive pill.”
Mr Rawnsley said many Australian couples delayed starting a family while the pandemic played out in 2020. The number of births fell from 305,832 in 2019 to 294,369 in 2020. Then in 2021, strong employment and vast amounts of stimulus money, along with high household savings due to lockdowns, gave couples better financial means to have a baby. This led to a rebound in births.
However, the re-opening of the global economy in 2022 led to soaring inflation. By the start of 2023, the Australian consumer price index (CPI) had risen to its highest level since 1990 at 7.8 percent per annum. By that stage, the Reserve Bank had already commenced an aggressive rate-hiking strategy to fight inflation and had raised the cash rate every month between May and December 2022.
Five more rate hikes during 2023 put further pressure on couples with mortgages and put the brakes on family formation. “This combination of the pandemic and rapid economic changes explains the spike and subsequent sharp decline in birth rates we have observed over the past four years,” Mr Rawnsley said.
The impact of high costs of living on couples’ decision to have a baby is highlighted in births data for the capital cities. KPMG estimates there were 60,860 births in Sydney in 2023, down 8.6 percent from 2019. There were 56,270 births in Melbourne, down 7.3 percent. In Perth, there were 25,020 births, down 6 percent, while in Brisbane there were 30,250 births, down 4.3 percent. Canberra was the only capital city where there was no fall in the number of births in 2023 compared to 2019.
“CPI growth in Canberra has been slightly subdued compared to that in other major cities, and the economic outlook has remained strong,” Mr Rawnsley said. “This means families have not been hurting as much as those in other capital cities, and in turn, we’ve seen a stabilisation of births in the ACT.”
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