Elon Musk’s quick visit to China paid immediate dividends, with Tesla Inc. receiving in-principle approval from government officials to deploy its driver-assistance system in the world’s biggest auto market.

Tesla shares surged more than 12% in early trading Monday after CEO Elon Musk secured approval to roll out “Full Self Driving” technology in China after a whirlwind weekend trip to the country.

Top Chinese officials gave Tesla tentative permission to launch the software following a meeting with Musk during his surprise trip to Beijing. Tesla will rely on Chinese tech giant Baidu’s mapping license for navigation on public roads, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.

The California Senate passed a bill Monday that bans driverless autonomous trucks from operating on public roads, TechCrunch reported.

If signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the bill would require a trained human safety operator be present any time an autonomous truck is on the road. AB 316 passed the Senate floor with 36 votes in favor and two against it.

However, Newsom “has a reputation for being friendly to the tech industry and is expected to veto AB 316,” Tech Crunch noted.

A former Apple software engineer was charged with allegedly stealing Apple’s autonomous technology for a Chinese self-driving car company, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

Weibao Wang worked as a software engineer at Apple from 2016 to 2018, a DOJ indictment said. Wang worked on Apple’s Annotation Team, and was granted “broad access” to databases which the Justice Department said could only be accessed by 2,700 of Apple’s 135,000 employees.

Wang is the third former Apple employee to be accused of stealing autonomous trade secrets for China.

California legislators and their union allies are pushing a bill that would preemptively ban the use of autonomous trucks on California's roads that don't have a human safety operator.

Working its way through the Legislature is A.B. 316, which would require that vehicles weighing 10,001 pounds or more have a human in the cab.

Sponsored by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D–Winters), the bill has the enthusiastic support of unionized truck drivers whoare explicit about their desire to protect jobs as well as public safety.

Electric carmaker Tesla is facing its latest investigation from U.S. auto safety regulators over two claims of complete steering wheel detachment in its 2023 Model Y SUV. The "preliminary evaluation" will cover more than 120,000 vehicles, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Both incidents involved the Model Y that was delivered to customers despite missing an integral bolt that holds the steering wheel to its column, the NHTSA said.

Automakers reported nearly 400 crashes of vehicles with partially automated driver-assist systems, including 273 involving Teslas, according to statistics released Wednesday by U.S. safety regulators.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cautioned against using the numbers to compare automakers, saying it didn’t weight them by the number of vehicles from each manufacturer that use the systems, or how many miles those vehicles traveled.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says the first AVs could be deployed on the ride-hailing network within three to five years, but other companies will bear the cost of owning and maintaining those self-driving cars.

Why it matters: Driverless technology is a key to profitability for Uber, which has warned investors to expect losses of almost $3 billion this year. But if all it does is replace the cost of a human driver with the overhead from managing its own fleet of self-driving cars, it won't be any closer to achieving a profit.