Tesla has not enjoyed the smoothest of starts in their quest to repopulate China with a roadful of high tech autonomous driving units. The 2014 sales fell far short of Musk’s heady predictions of China accounting for 35 percent of their total sales, 2015, while better, once again failed to reach expectations.

Despite the setback, or perhaps because of it, Tesla has made plans to set up a fully functioning Tesla factory by mid-2016, with Musk expressing his desire to find “a local partnher and a location for the plant” by the middle of 2016.

While Tesla is known for leaping over boundaries, the timeframe might be a bit too tight, even for them. Forbes contributor, Beterl Schmidt noted that obtaining approvals from a multitude of Chinese government entities “can, and usually does, take years.”