Elon Musk is visiting Beijing to discuss enabling autonomous driving mode on Tesla cars in China, according to media reports.

Mr Musk wants to enable Full Self Driving (FSD) in China and transfer data collected in the country abroad to train its algorithms.

FSD is available in countries including the US but not in China.

The news came after a US report tied Tesla’s autonomous driving modes to at least 13 crashes, involving one death.

China is Tesla’s second-biggest market. Other carmakers such as Xpeng – headquartered in Guangzhou – have been attempting to compete with Tesla by rolling out similar self-driving functions in their cars.

The electric carmaker has taken previously taken steps to reassure Chinese authorities about the rollout of FSD in the country, including establishing a data centre in Shanghai to process data about Chinese consumers in accordance with local laws.

The trip comes days after the US’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it was investigating whether a recall successfully addressed safety concerns relating to Tesla’s driver assistance system.