After Tesla’s vehicles were briefly barred from certain areas of Chengdu, China during President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to the central city, another area of the country is also set to ban Tesla’s cars starting on July 1.
Tesla’s cars are being prohibited from entering China’s coastal district, Beidaihe, for at least two months while a secretive annual summer party leadership event is held, according to a local traffic police officer who shared the info with Reuters on Monday.
The officer, who declined to be identified, came from the Beidaihe Traffic Police Brigade and said the move regarded “national affairs,” though they also declined to provide further details.
Additionally, the officer said an official announcement would be made soon.
Tesla vehicles come equipped with a built-in dashcam, leveraging front, side and rear cameras that record automatically while driving and when parked. Anyone driving a Tesla in the area could essentially record the surroundings of the meet, including senior leaders attending. Videos are recorded and stored locally on USB sticks within Tesla vehicles.
This is not the first time we’ve heard of Tesla cars being banned from attending government locations or meets in China. Back in May of last year, Tesla cars were banned from parking at some government offices. The nation also banned Tesla vehicles from driving on military premises as well.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated in March of last year Tesla would get shut down if its cars spied in China.
“There’s a very strong incentive for us to be very confidential with any information”, said Musk during a virtual discussion at the China Development Forum last spring. “If Tesla used cars to spy in China or anywhere, we will get shut down”.
Tesla Opens First Store in Inner Mongolia in Northern China Push https://t.co/eK1UQeavJB
— TeslaNorth.com (@RealTeslaNorth) June 8, 2022
Beidaihe is a beach resort area to the east of Beijing which traditionally hosts a summer conclave made up of senior leaders of the Chinese government.
The meeting usually has to do with personnel moves and other policy ideas, though the country doesn’t typically share when the conclave takes place.
The news comes after the Chinese military prohibited the use of Teslas for personnel last year, due to concerns with the cameras and where the information from them was being stored.
Tesla later confirmed it would store all Chinese data on Chinese servers, before going on to establish a dedicated data storage site in the country.
