(Recasts with plane landing, adds GM CEO visit to Beijing

autoshow in paragraph 13)

       SHANGHAI, April 28 (Reuters) - A private jet linked to

Tesla TSLA.O CEO Elon Musk landed in Beijing on Sunday, a

flight tracking app showed, as two people with knowledge of the

matter said the billionaire was kicking off a surprise visit to

the automaker's second-biggest market.

    Musk is seeking to meet senior Chinese officials in Beijing

to discuss the rollout of Full-Self Driving (FSD) software in

China and to obtain approval to transfer data collected in the

country abroad to train algorithms for its autonomous driving

technologies, one of the people said.

    Tesla has since 2021 stored all data collected by its

Chinese fleet in Shanghai as required by Chinese regulators and

has not transferred any back to the United States.  

    The U.S. electric vehicle maker rolled out FSD, the most

autonomous version of its Autopilot software, four years ago but

has yet to make it available in China despite customers urging

it to do so.

    Musk said this month Tesla may make FSD available to

customers in China "very soon", in response to a query on social

media platform X.

    Rival Chinese automakers such as Xpeng 9868.HK have been

seeking to gain an advantage over Tesla by rolling out similar

software.

    Musk's visit to China was not flagged publicly and the

people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not

authorised to speak with media. Tesla did not respond

immediately to a request for comment.

    The trip came just over a week after he scrapped a planned

visit to India to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, citing

"very heavy Tesla obligations."

    The company said this month it would lay off 10% of its

global workforce as it grapples with falling sales and an

intensifying price war for EVs led by Chinese brands.

        LANDED IN BEIJING

    A Gulfstream private jet with tail number N272BG, which is

registered to Falcon Landing, a company connected to SpaceX and

Tesla, landed at Beijing Capital Airport on Sunday at 0603 GMT,

according to Chinese flight tracking app Flight Manager.

    The other jet registered under Falcon Landing is N628TS,

which is Musk's main jet that he used to travel to China on his

last trip nearly a year ago, when he met with Chinese government

officials in Beijing and visited Tesla's Shanghai factory.

    Tesla has sold more than 1.7 million cars in China since it

entered the market a decade ago and the Shanghai factory is its

largest globally.

    Musk's visit coincides with the Beijing autoshow, which

opened last week and ends on May 4. Tesla does not have a booth

at China's largest autoshow and last attended in 2021.

    GM GM.N CEO Mary Barra made an unannounced visit to the

show in the world's biggest auto market on Friday, according to

two people with knowledge of her schedule. GM did not

immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Also on Friday, Grace Tao, Tesla's vice president in charge

of external relations in China, published a commentary on the

social media account of state media outlet People's Daily,

arguing that autonomous driving technologies would be the new

growth engine for EV industry.

    Tao said in the article that Tesla was leading autonomous

driving research and development with its "end-to-end neural

network" technology and data collected from millions of cars on

the road.

    China's complicated traffic conditions with more pedestrians

and cyclists than in many other markets provide more scenarios

that are key for training autonomous driving algorithms at a

faster pace, according to industry experts.

    Musk said last week Tesla would introduce new, cheaper

models using its current EV platforms and production lines and

would offer a new "robotaxi" with self-driving technology. He

said in a post on X this month that he would unveil the robotaxi

on Aug. 8.

    Tesla shares are down almost a third since the start of the

year as concerns have grown about the EV maker's growth

trajectory. Last week, Tesla reported its first decline in

quarterly revenue since 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic slowed

production and deliveries.

(Reporting by Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh; Editing by Jamie Freed)

((Zoey.Zhang@thomsonreuters.com;))