SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) -Tesla CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing on Sunday on an unannounced visit, where he was expected to discuss the rollout of Full Self-Driving (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas.

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, its second-largest market globally, despite customer demand.

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.

Musk is looking to obtain approval to transfer data collected in the country abroad to train algorithms for its autonomous driving technologies.

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.