Musk says there would be no Tesla facility in India until it is allowed to sell and service imported cars

Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, hinted on Friday that the company would not create a manufacturing plant in India until it was first granted permission to sell and service imported cars in the South Asian country.

“Tesla will not develop a factory in a location where we are not permitted to sell and service cars initially,” Musk said in response to a question on Twitter about Tesla’s plans to build a factory in India.

These remarks indicate that the standoff between India and Telsa over establishing a manufacturing factory in the nation is still ongoing.

Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said that Elon Musk is welcome to manufacture electric vehicles in India. Still, building in China and selling in India is not a “good offer.”

At a private event in Delhi, Gadkari made the remark in response to a question on Tesla’s concerns about “high duties” in India.

“It’s a straightforward choice; if Elon Musk is willing to build a Tesla in India, it won’t be a problem. We have all of the required expertise, and the vendors are willing to work with us. We have access to a variety of technology that allows him to save money, “Gadkari elaborated.

The Union Minister pushed Tesla to begin manufacturing in India, citing the country’s enormous market and export-friendly infrastructure, such as ports.

“He’ll be welcomed in India. We have no problems, but it can’t be a fair deal for India if he wants to manufacture in China and sell in India. Our suggestion to him is that he comes to India and manufacture, ” Gadkari elaborated on the situation.

Gadkari went on to explain that India’s e-vehicle market has exploded in recent years. “Elon Musk, in my opinion, will find a good market in India, which is massive. For all parties concerned, it’s a win-win situation.”

He remarked that India has the same high-quality suppliers and auto components as China and that India has the same high-quality vendors and auto parts as China. “He might find it easier to manufacture and sell in India. He’ll make a lot of money, and the business model is good. I’m going to invite him to come to India and start a business.”

Minister of State for Heavy Industries Krishan Pal Gurjar made similar remarks during Question Hour in the Lok Sabha, adding that there cannot be a situation where the market is in India, but jobs are produced in China.

Musk has claimed that he intends to begin manufacturing Tesla electric vehicles in India in 2020. A Tesla subsidiary, India Motors And Energy Private Limited was created in Bengaluru, India. Musk claimed that he is willing to build a Tesla factory in India if the cost of importing electric automobiles is reduced.

Elon Musk, Tesla’s founder and an American entrepreneur, said the electric vehicle industry is still having “a lot of difficulties” with the Indian government in terms of setting up auto production in India.

A Twitter user had previously asked Musk whether there was any fresh information about Tesla’s manufacturing debut in India, noting that the vehicles “deserve to be in every corner of the planet.”

“Still working through many challenges and difficulties with the government, ” Musk answered on Twitter.

About Tesla

Tesla is an Austin, Texas-based clean energy and automotive company. Tesla manufactures electric vehicles (cars and trucks), as well as home and grid-scale battery energy storage and other related products and services. It is one of the most valuable companies globally and remains the most valuable automaker.

The company will sell the most battery electric vehicles and plug-in electric vehicles in 2020, accounting for 23 per cent of the battery-electric (purely electric) market and 16% of the plug-in market globally (including plug-in hybrids). Tesla Energy, the company’s subsidiary in the United States, manufactures and instals solar systems. One of the largest global battery energy storage system suppliers is Tesla Energy, with 3.99 gigawatt-hours installed in 2021.

Tesla Motors was formed in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. After investing $6.5 million in February 2004, Elon Musk became the company’s largest shareholder. He has been the CEO since 2008. According to Musk, Tesla aims to help accelerate the transition to sustainable transportation and energy through electric vehicles and solar electricity.

Tesla debuted its first automobile model, the Roadster sports car, in 2009. The Model S sedan debuted in 2012, with the Model X SUV following in 2015, the Model 3 sedan following in 2017, and the Model Y crossover following in 2020. The Model 3 is the best-selling plug-in electric car in the world, and in June 2021, it became the first electric vehicle to sell one million units worldwide. Tesla sold 936,222 cars globally in 2021, an increase of 87% over the previous year, bringing total sales to 2.3 million cars.

In October 2021, Tesla became the sixth company in US history to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion.

Tesla has been hit with a slew of litigation and conflicts due to CEO Elon Musk’s comments and actions, including allegations of creative accounting, whistleblower retribution, worker rights violations, and unsolved and dangerous technical faults with their vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration demanded the company to report data on all sold.

US vehicles will be equipped with Autopilot in September 2021, following the agency’s investigations into traffic deaths involving the use of Autopilot.

Business strategy

When Tesla was formed in 2003, electric cars were prohibitively expensive. Tesla’s initial strategy, according to Elon Musk, was to develop high-priced, low-volume automobiles like sports cars, for which customers are less price sensitive. This would allow them to gradually drop battery costs, resulting in lower-cost, higher-volume vehicles. Tesla’s first car, the Roadster, was made in limited quantities (fewer than 2,500) and cost more than $100,000.

Following that come the Model S and Model X, which are more affordable premium vehicles. The most recent models, the Model 3 and Model Y, are even cheaper and aimed at a broader market, with more than 100,000 vehicles sold per quarter. Unlike almost every other automaker, Tesla updates the hardware of its vehicles regularly rather than waiting for a new model year.

Tesla, unlike other automakers, does not use franchised dealerships to sell its vehicles. Instead, it sells cars online and through a network of company-owned dealerships. The firm is the first in the United States to sell cars directly to consumers. Automobile manufacturers are prohibited from selling vehicles directly to consumers in various areas, particularly in the United States.

These venues, according to Tesla, contain galleries that “inform and enlighten customers about our goods” but “do not actively engage in the sale of vehicles.” Tesla operates more than 400 stores and galleries in more than 35 countries. These locations are frequently placed in retail shopping districts, inside shopping malls, or other high-traffic areas rather than near other auto dealerships. As of January 2022, Tesla does not pay for direct advertising.

Tesla’s vertical integration was estimated to be above 80% in 2016. The company creates personalized charging stations for customers’ vehicles as well as automotive components. Vertical integration is uncommon in the automotive industry since companies often outsource 80 per cent of component manufacturing to suppliers and focus on engine manufacturing and final assembly. Tesla used a low-cost strategy to expand its business into a bigger market by selling everyday technology items.

Tesla claims it wants to help accelerate the world’s adoption of renewable energy by allowing competitors to licence its technology in general. A licence agreement’s recipient must agree not to sue Tesla for patent infringement or directly copy its designs. Tesla protects its other intellectual property, like trademarks and trade secrets, to discourage direct replication of its technologies.

About Elon Musk

Elon Reeve Musk is a businessman, philanthropist, investor, and he is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer of SpaceX. He has a net worth of US$265 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list as of May 2022.

Musk was born in Canada to a White South African father and a White South African mother. He was born in the city of Pretoria, South Africa. Elon studied at the University of Pretoria before emigrating to Canada when he was 17 years old. Musk began his studies at Queen’s University before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania two years later to complete his bachelor’s degree in Economics and Physics.

He arrived in California in 1995 with the idea of attending Stanford University but instead co-founded Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. Compaq bought the company for $307 million in 1999. In the same year, Musk co-founded X.com, an online bank, which merged with Confinity to form PayPal in 2000. In 2002, eBay paid $1.5 billion for the company.

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and is the CEO and Chief Engineer. He started as chairman and product architect at Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) in 2004 and ascended through the ranks to become CEO in 2008. He co-founded SolarCity, a solar energy start-up that Tesla later bought and rebranded as Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI; a non-profit research the organization focused on friendly AI.

Elon also co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that creates brain-computer interfaces, and The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company, in 2016. He also agreed to pay $44 billion for Twitter, the most popular social media network in the United States, in 2022. Musk has also proposed the Hyperloop, which is a high-speed vactrain system. Musk founded and serves as president of the Musk Foundation, which supports scientific research and education.

Musk has been chastised for making inflammatory and unscientific comments, such as spreading misleading information about the COVID-19 outbreak. In 2018, the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued him for falsely tweeting that he had secured financing for a Tesla private buyout; he settled with the SEC but did not acknowledge wrongdoing and temporarily stepped down as Tesla chairman. 

Early life

Childhood and family

Elon was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971. Maye Musk, his mother, is a South African-born Canadian model and nutritionist. His father, Errol Musk, is a South African white electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and real estate entrepreneur who once owned half of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika. Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal, and younger sister, Tosca, were both born in 1972. 

Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was a daring American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking trips to Africa and Australia in single-engine Bellanca planes; Musk is of British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.

His adenoids were removed when he was a child because physicians thought he was deaf. Nonetheless, his mother concluded that he was thinking “on another planet.” Elon Musk’s father, a member of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party, was elected to the Pretoria City Council.

The Musk children are thought to hold similar anti-apartheid views to their father. Musk declined to serve in the South African military because of the government’s apartheid rule. Musk’s decision to depart from South Africa. This could have had an impact on Africa just after high school graduation.

When Elon’s parents split in 1980, he spent most of his time with his father in Pretoria and elsewhere, something he later regretted. Musk’s father, whom he says is “a terrible human being who has done nearly every evil thing you can imagine,” has a tense relationship with him. 

He grew up going to an Anglican Sunday school.

When Musk was 10 years old, he became interested in computers and video games, and he purchased a Commodore VIC-20. He learned computer programming from a book when he was 12 years old and sold the code for Blastar, a BASIC-based video game he created, to a PC and Office Technology magazine for $500. Elon attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School before graduating from Pretoria Boys High School.

Education

Musk filed for a Canadian passport through his Canadian mother, assuming that doing so would make it easier for him to enter the United States. He also spent five months at the University of Pretoria while waiting for the documents, avoiding South Africa’s mandatory military service. He moved to Canada in June 1989 and spent a year in Saskatchewan working at a farm and lumber business with a second cousin.

He started his studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1990. Elon went to the University of Pennsylvania two years later and graduated from the Wharton School with a Bachelors in physics and a Bachelor of Science in economics in 1997.

In 1994, Musk worked for two Silicon Valley companies: Pinnacle Research Institute, which studied electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and Rocket Science Games, situated in Palo Alto. In 1995, he was accepted into Stanford University’s Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme in materials science. Musk applied for a position at Netscape but received no response, so he dropped out after two days at Stanford and decided to take advantage of the Internet explosion by starting his own business.

Elon Musk says Tesla faces many challenges in entering the Indian market.

“When will Tesla debut its cars in India?” is a topic that Elon Musk is frequently asked. Elon Musk answered with an update after a fan from India asked the same question.

Pranay Pathole tweeted, “Yo @elonmusk, any further information on when Tesla’s will launch in India?” They’re fantastic, and they belong in every country!” Musk responded, “Still working through many challenges with the government.”

Tesla received certification in India for four models in August 2021 and three more in December 2021. In the country, the Model 3 and Model Y have been observed. The models, on the other hand, are yet to be revealed.

One of the issues that the Elon Musk-led company faces is import taxes. Tesla has urged India’s government to cut electric vehicle import tariffs, and Musk had even requested a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Electric vehicles that cost less than $40,000 face a 60 per cent import tax, while those that cost more than $40,000 face a 100 per cent charge. On the other hand, Tesla sedans start at $44,690 (about $33,41,780) in the United States, meaning that Tesla cars in India will be subject to a 100% import tax, limiting the company’s sales.

While Tesla has been requesting a reduction in import fees for some time, Indian companies like Tata Motors have fought such a shift because it would boost imports and contradict the country’s efforts to increase domestic electric vehicle production.

Tesla isn’t in India yet due to ‘challenges with govt’, says Elon Musk

“Still working through many problems with the government,” Mr Musk replied in response to a tweet on the company’s plans to market its goods in India.

Tesla demanded a reduction in import taxes on electric cars (EVs) in India last year.

Before any tax breaks can be considered, the Heavy Industries Ministry has ordered the electric car maker to start manufacturing its renowned electric vehicles in India.

According to government sources, such concessions are not given to any automaker. Offering Tesla duty incentives will not send a positive message to other companies that have invested billions of dollars in India.

Last year, the American company wrote to the road ministry, claiming that the effective import tariff of 110 per cent on vehicles with a customs value of more than $40,000 is “prohibitive” for zero-emission vehicles.

The electric car manufacturer had asked the government to lower the tariff on electric cars to 40%, regardless of the customs value, and eliminate the 10% social welfare fee on such vehicles.

These initiatives, it continued, would aid the growth of the Indian electric vehicle ecosystem, and the company would invest extensively in sales, service, and charging infrastructure, as well as significantly increase procurement from India for its global operations.

Tesla registered its Indian branch in January 2021, indicating that the corporation plans to enter the Indian vehicle market.

According to a regulatory filing, Tesla India Motors and Energy Pvt. Ltd. was registered with the Registrar of Companies in Bangalore.

The firm has been registered as an unlisted private organization with a paid-up capital of one lakh.

The Modi government makes it clear why Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla, would not be granted any relaxation in India

Union Minister Krishan Pal Gurjar said on Tuesday that relaxations would not be granted to Tesla, a US-based electric vehicle manufacturer unless it participates in manufacturing activities in India. He went on to say that a situation where the market is in India but jobs are created in China could not exist.

The minister of state for heavy industries also noted during Question Hour in the Lok Sabha that the company had yet to apply for government-sponsored initiatives.

Last year, Elon Musk’s company requested a reduction in import charges on electric vehicles (EVs) in India. Still, the Ministry of Heavy Industries demanded that the company began manufacturing its renowned EVs in India before any tax breaks could be considered.

According to Gurjar, the government offers Production Linked Incentives for automobiles and auto components and Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) battery manufacture. Both initiatives are open to both domestic and international businesses.

The minister responded to a question regarding Tesla by saying: “Workers from China and India are being sought by the corporation. Under the Modi administration, this is unthinkable… According to our government’s stance, if the Indian market is to be used, Indians must be given job opportunities.”

The minister responded to a question from Congressman K Suresh on whether the government would allow Tesla cars to enter the Indian market and what steps were being made to promote mass production of electric vehicles in the country.

“Do you want to ask the member if they want the money from India to go to China? That company did not apply in accordance with our policy. For that (business), India’s doors are open; they can apply according to policy, establish a company, employ our people, and raise government revenue, “According to the minister.

“Under the Modi government, jobs cannot be in China while the market is in India… The government’s policy is that if the market is India, then people in India should get jobs,” Gurjar said.

He responded to a question from another member regarding the government’s position on Tesla’s request for exemptions and some states’ interest in having the company’s production operations.

Elon Musk, the creator and CEO of Tesla, said last month that the business is working through several issues with the government to launch its products in India.

There are programmes in place to promote electric vehicles, with the benefits being that advanced technology will be brought to India, and parts will be created here as well. According to the minister, people will be hired, and consumers will be able to purchase vehicles at a lower cost.

According to the minister, a round table meeting was recently held with representatives from a number of companies and groups, including SIAM. He continued; all agreed that the government had done everything it could and that it was now up to the industries to step ahead.