Elon Musk,Tesla CEO of Elon Musk & Co., is currently in China, marking his return to the world’s second-largest economy after more than three years.
He arrived in Beijing on Tuesday and is expected to also visit Tesla’s enormous Shanghai manufacturing facility.
Within hours of arriving in China, the multibillionaire met Qin Gang, the country’s foreign minister.
Mr Musk has not yet openly remarked on the excursion, which comes in the midst of pressures between the US and China.
When reporters asked him about his travel plans on Wednesday as he left a Beijing hotel, he also declined to comment.
Later on Wednesday, Mr Musk met China’s industry serve Jin Zhuanglong and examined the improvement of electric vehicles.
China’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Musk was willing to expand Tesla’s business in the country, which is Tesla’s second-largest market after the United States.
The ministry added that Mr. Musk had referred to the economies of China and the United States as “conjoined twins” during the meeting.
A request for comment from the BBC did not receive an immediate response from Tesla.
Mr Musk has additionally been strangely calm on Twitter, which he claims and where he has in excess of 141 million adherents.
He has a reputation for tweeting frequently, but as of midday on Wednesday, he had not posted anything since arriving in the nation on Tuesday afternoon.
Although the social media platform is not allowed in China, virtual private networks (VPNs) can be used to access it.
Mr Musk is the most recent high-profile US chief to make an excursion to China. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, is also in China this week, and Apple CEO Tim Cook was there in March.
Nonetheless, as pressures ascend among Washington and Beijing Tesla winds up in a troublesome position, Dan Ives from venture company Wedbush Protections said.
Mr. Ives continued, “Wall Street is laser focused on playing nice in the sandbox in Beijing, to make sure there are no disruptions to Tesla’s expansion within China for the coming years.”
The so-called gigafactory that Tesla opened in Shanghai in January 2019 marked the company’s first manufacturing facility outside of the United States.
It delivered its first cars made in China later that year, a significant milestone for the American company.
Be that as it may, Coronavirus lockdowns the nation over, remembering for the monetary, assembling and transportation center of Shanghai, made it progressively hard for producers to work.
Tesla reportedly halted the majority of its production at its gigafactory for several weeks as a result of the coronavirus lockdown in Shanghai last year, as Mr. Musk described it as “very, very difficult.”
Mr. Musk claims that operations have since resumed at the plant, which produced its millionth automobile in August. A third of Tesla’s global production came from this.
The company announced last month that it would construct a new factory in China to produce its massive “Megapack” batteries.
According to JATO, a market research company, China has also emerged as the largest market for Tesla’s mass-market electric vehicle, the Model Y.
According to JATO data, China sold more than 94,000 Model Y vehicles in the first three months of this year, placing it ahead of the United States and Europe.
Increased competition from car-making giants like Ford and General Motors, as well as newer entrants into the market like China’s BYD and Nio, has challenged Tesla’s lead in the market for electric vehicles in recent years.
Earlier this month, Mr. Musk appointed Linda Yaccarino, the former head of advertising at NBCUniversal, as the platform’s new chief executive. Mr. Musk, who purchased Twitter last year for $44 billion (£35.5 billion), has been under pressure to find someone else to lead the company and refocus on his other businesses, including Tesla and rocket company SpaceX.
Ms. Yaccarino will have to manage a business that has had trouble making a profit and will be under a lot of scrutiny for how it deals with hate speech and misinformation.
Fidelity Investments, a financial services company that helped Mr. Musk finance his takeover of Twitter, claims that Twitter is now worth about a third of what he paid for it.
