Tesla, Mobileye, Alibaba, and Didi have denied speculation that they have been involved in conducting illegal map-making activities after China’s top security agency said it found an incident of spying in which a foreign enterprise used a local company to collect sensitive map data.
The unidentified international firm illegally conducted geographic mapping activities in the name of implementing autonomous driving research projects, China’s state security ministry said on Wednesday in a post on the popular social media platform WeChat. It was assisted through outsourcing the activities to a Chinese company that has a government license for geographic surveying and mapping, according to the post. It added that the Chinese government had pursued legal action against the entities over the incident.
Tesla responded to the post by Beijing with Grace Tao, vice president in charge of external relations in China, reposting the article on the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, with the comment: ”Compliance is the bottom line for business operations” (our translation).
Mobileye, which has partnered with Chinese automakers including Geely-owned Zeekr and state-owned FAW Group, followed suit immediately. “We have continuously invested in data compliance and regulatory adherence, including in China, where we operate under the supervision of licensed entities in full accordance with legal requirements,” Intel’s self-driving car unit said in a statement published Thursday on Weibo.
On the same day, China’s Alibaba Cloud and Didi also said they had nothing to do with the incident. Alibaba’s cloud arm terminated its mapping permit three days ahead of the release of the case, according to a statement by the Department of Natural Resources of Zhejiang Province, while Didi has been testing autonomous vehicles in a number of major Chinese cities. The two companies were also among the targets of Beijing’s regulatory crackdown against the country’s tech sector during 2020 and 2022.
China has for years required automakers and self-driving car developers to secure licenses or use authorized companies for mapping data used in vehicles. Some electric vehicle makers and tech companies, such as Xpeng Motors and Huawei, have pivoted to make assisted driving technologies without the assistance of high-definition maps for cost-saving reasons and because of regulatory issues.