Photographer: Jasper Juinen / Bloomberg
Photographer: Jasper Juinen / Bloomberg
Sign up to receive our Hyperdrive newsletter and follow our coverage of the future of transportation on Twitter
Tesla Inc. cars have been banned from Chinese military complexes and housing complexes due to concerns about confidential data being collected by cameras embedded in the vehicles.
The order, issued by the military, advises Tesla owners to park their cars outside military property, according to people familiar with the guideline who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The ban, passed on to residents of military residences this week, was triggered by concerns that the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles is collecting confidential data through the car’s built-in cameras in a way that the Chinese government cannot see or control from people. said.
Images of what would be a warning about the ban also circulated on Chinese social media. Multi-Driving cameras and ultrasonic sensors in Tesla cars can “expose locations” and vehicles are being prevented from entering military residences to ensure the security of confidential military information, the warning said.
A Tesla representative in China declined to comment on the military movement. China’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a fax sent after business hours.
Tesla, like many other car manufacturers, including General Motors Co. uses several small cameras, located mainly on the outside of the vehicle, to help guide the parking, autopilot and autonomous steering functions. Most Tesla models also have an internal camera mounted above the rear view mirror that can be used to detect whether a driver is looking at the road, looking at the lap, wearing sunglasses or looking at something entirely different.
Internal camera
The California-based company – which produces Model 3s and Model Y SUV crossovers at a Gigafactory near Shanghai – has not shied away from that fact, with CEO Elon Musk tweeting at April 2019 that the internal camera is there “for when we start competing with Uber / Lyft and people allow their cars to earn money for them as part of Tesla’s fleet of shared autonomy”.
“If someone messes up your car, you can check out the video,” explained Musk.
Since then, Tesla has started using in-car cameras to monitor what it calls FSD beta testers (full self driving), or Tesla owners who have volunteered to test the company’s driver assistance capabilities.
Earlier this month, Musk tweeted that the company’s FSD beta test had been expanded to about 2,000 owners, but Tesla also “revoked beta where drivers didn’t pay enough attention to the road. Musk said that the next significant release of the FSD beta will be in April.
Concern about this program contributed to the ban by the military, one person said.
None of the Teslas car cameras sold in China are turned on or are part of the FSD beta test, said the Tesla representative. Tesla’s privacy policies are in compliance with China’s national laws and local regulations, the person said.
Chinese excuses
China, the world’s largest EV market, is the key to Musk’s global growth ambitions. The automaker received significant support from the state to build the factory near Shanghai, the first outside the US, and Musk’s strategy has been one of deference to the government, in contrast to his more combative approach in the U.S.
Read more: Elon Musk loves China and China loves him back – for now
Recently, however, the tone seems to have changed. Tesla has been called in by Chinese regulators on quality and safety issues with its cars, including battery fires and abnormal acceleration. The automaker was also forced to issue a public apology to China’s state grid in early February, after a video allegedly showed a team blaming a national grid overload for damage to a customer’s vehicle.
Tesla expands media team in China after stumbling into an important market
This is not the first time that Tesla has been at the center of the controversy over the use of cameras. Last week, a group of hackers said they violated a treasure trove of security camera data collected by Silicon Valley startup Verkada Inc., gaining access to many different types of footage, including some from inside a Tesla warehouse in Shanghai.
The hackers said they gained access to 222 cameras at Tesla’s factories and warehouses and that the data breach was carried out to show the spread of video surveillance and the ease with which systems can be hacked. Tesla China told Bloomberg that it was one of its suppliers that was hacked and that Chinese Gigafactory data is stored on secure local servers.
– With the help of John Liu, Chunying Zhang and Jing Li