Elon Musk Tweets, Tesla to ‘Definitely’ Coming to India in 2020

One of the world’s most famous startup known for their electric cars, Tesla could after all make their India entry in 2019, or 2020 at the latest. So says the CEO of the company, Elon Musk. This development comes after a lot of events on the Tesla front, in 2015 the Prime Minister of India had visited the Tesla factory in California. Later Tesla’s CIO had also visited New Delhi regarding the company’s future plans for India. However, nothing much came of these two endeavors. There were also reports that Tesla would make its India entry in 2018, but government regulations came in the way and nothing materialized. Similarly, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk had also made a statement about entering Indian market nearly 10 months ago. However, this recent development has once again renewed the expectations that one of pioneers of electric cars may finally be arriving in India. Fresh after the launch of their Model Y in the market, the Tesla CEO confirmed on Twitter that the US electric car company will be arriving to the Indian shores, the next year, if not this year. The confirmation came from Mr. Musk in the form of a reply to a tweet from an Indian user enquiring about the entry of company in India.

The hype around Tesla’s entry into Indian market is refusing to die, we have already discussed the times Tesla almost came to India. Not to mention that we have seen a few units of Tesla Model X coming to India through private imports as well.

Tesla coming to India would provide a major impetus to the electric car industry in the country which so far has gotten off to a rather sluggish start. While the other brands are trying to bring their electric models to India, and are in the process of testing their models, Tesla already has electric cars in the market. Also, Tesla is solely an electric car company and has no divided attention as far as car sales are concerned. Perhaps the most sensible thing for Tesla would be to being their Model 3 to India. In the US market, the Model 3 is priced at $35,000 (the standard model), and this price is before the incentives. The incentives offered by the government also brings down the price of the car by about $8,000. Converting the US prices to Indian currency, the price before incentives comes out to be around Rs. 24 lakhs, whereas the price of a Tesla Model 3 in India after incentives would be around Rs. 19 lakhs. This would be extremely good value for money price for India as Tesla already enjoys a luxury status in India.

However a major hurdle for Tesla would be import duties imposed by the Indian government, this could drastically increase the prices of Tesla cars, if the company imports its cars to India. In order to keep their cars more affordable, the company will have to build their cars locally, perhaps this is the reason why the company is also looking into options to setup manufacturing facilities in India.