Elon Musk addressed recent concerns about Tesla’s use of cameras in its vehicles following a ban by the Chinese military.
Last week, we reported on the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military, issuing a warning prohibiting Tesla owners from parking their vehicles on bases and housing complexes.
The concerns appeared to be related to Tesla’s use of cameras around its vehicles, which could be a safety concern, depending on how the automaker collects their data.
In a recent conversation with Chinese quantum physicist Xue Qikun, Tesla CEO Elon Musk addressed the issue and, unsurprisingly, stated that Tesla is being careful with the data:
There is a strong incentive for us to be very confidential with any information. If Tesla used cars to spy on China or anywhere, we will be closed.
As we reported last week, the situation was reminiscent of the U.S. ban on Huawei products from China.
The CEO called for more cooperation between the U.S. and China, not to mention Tesla specifically:
Even if there was espionage, what would the other country learn and would it really matter?
As for Tesla, the automaker is mainly using data from its camera to improve its driver assistance capabilities, which it intends to eventually lead to a fully autonomous system.
Tesla gives owners the option to accept video data sharing as part of their Autopilot and Full Self-Driving program.
The automaker needs to collect as much video from each market to feed its neural networks and train its self-directed system for each specific market, all with different traffic signs, markings, etc.
For this reason, in China, Tesla does not have the same driver assistance features in its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving packagers available for this reason.
FTC: We use affiliate links for automobiles that generate revenue. Most.
Subscribe to Electrek on YouTube for exclusive videos and subscribe to the podcast.