Telsa in India questions the reliability in entering the Indian Market after being a huge success in China
The world’s richest man on 13 January 2021 tweeted ” as promised” in response to a Tesla blog report focused on Elon Musk planning to set up an office, showrooms, a research, and development cente,r and possibly a factory. However, the company is in discussions with state officials but is yet to decide on an Indian base.
According to Bloomberg NEF; EVs account for about 5% of China’s annual car sales, compared to less than 1% in India. India is Asia’s third-biggest economy which hasn’t yet completely welcomed EVs, unlike China, where Tesla set up its first factory outside of the US and currently dominates electric-car sales.
BNEF analyst Allen Tom Abraham suspects that the cost is likely to be a significant stumbling block in India as Modi govt’s FAME programs won’t do much to help lower the price for potential Tesla customers since the upper limit for an EV to qualify for subsidies is about Rs 15 lakh. Teslas will cost more than that and therefore won’t be eligible or rather affordable for even those potential customers.
While the GOI is reportedly trying to bring in big-name manufacturers; Telsa being the ultimate catch similar to china. However, it remains uncertain how serious Musk is about the prospect of one-day making cars in India.
In a country as large as India, a product with a small market share such as Telsa could turn out to be worthwhile for Tesla has a given benefit of being a strong brand that has been environmentally friendly giving the youth of India the benefit of the doubt.
