Tesla is reportedly in the early stages of planning to build a data center to train its self-driving AI in China.l
According to a new report from Reuters, Tesla is looking to build a data center for self-driving in China:
As part of that effort, Tesla has been developing plans for a data center in China to train the algorithm needed for more fully autonomous vehicles, according to two people, who asked not to be named because the work remains private.
Following Elon Musk’s recent visit to China, Tesla seems to have made progress toward bringing its ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ to the country.
The automaker has reportedly secured conditional approval to deploy the system in the market.
Part of why it reportedly gained this approval is a supposed deal to handle self-driving data in China.
Tesla has had issues with data management in China for a few years. The company’s vehicles were even banned by Chinese authorities at times in certain locations due to fear of spying related to the use of cameras on Tesla’s vehicles and its data management.
When it was reported that Tesla had secured the conditional approval, it was reported that Tesla had satisfied the government’s request regarding data management.
Electrek’s Take
It would make sense if Tesla had appeased the government with its data management; there would be a major local data center in the works.
Tesla is going to need to train its neural nets with a lot of videos from its cars in China in order to adapt its Full Self-Driving neural nets to Chinese roads. It sounded like the government had concerns about these videos making it outside the country.
Therefore, I wouldn’t be surprise if this report turns out to be true.
Electrek previously reported that Tesla plans to build its own ‘first of its kind’ data centers.