Elon Musk Dashes Hopes Of Tesla Fans In India – Entry Plan Put On Hold
Tesla enthusiasts in India will be disappointed to learn that Elon Musk’s electric car company has put its intentions to enter the nation on hold. The firm has been unable to reach an agreement on lower tariffs.
According to Reuters, Tesla has put its plans to sell electric cars in India on hold.
According to reports, the corporation has halted its hunt for showrooms in the country and reassigned its domestic workforce.
Elon Musk stated earlier this year on Twitter that the business is “having a lot of issues with the government” to answer a question about its Indian entry.
Tesla has started an interest in expanding into India. In India, the business gained approval for four models in August 2021 and three in December 2021.
Elon Musk’s company has been in talks with the Indian government for quite some time. The company had requested the government to lower import fees on electric vehicles, allowing it to bring its vehicles into the country.
Electric vehicles costing less than $40,000 are subject to a 60% import tax, while vehicles costing more than $40,000 are subject to a 100% tax. Given that Tesla cars start at $44,690 (about Rs 36.61 lakh) in the United States, a 100 per cent import duty would have effectively doubled the price for Indian purchasers.
According to the article, Tesla had hoped for concessions from the government in the Union Budget. The corporation apparently put its ambitions to sell cars in the country on hold after the government failed to make any concessions.
According to the latest reports, Tesla has decided to make Indonesia its manufacturing base since the Indian government refused to lower import taxes.
Elon Musk announced earlier today that the $44 billion Twitter takeover had been placed on hold.
About Tesla
Tesla is clean energy and automotive business established in Austin, Texas. Tesla creates electric vehicles (cars and trucks), residential and grid-scale battery energy storage, solar panels and solar roof tiles, and related products and services. With a market valuation of over US $900 billion, Tesla is one of the most valuable companies in the world and remains the most valuable automaker.
In 2020, the firm sold the most battery electric vehicles and plug-in electric vehicles globally, accounting for 23% of the battery-electric (purely electric) market and 16% of the plug-in market (including plug-in hybrids). The company produces and instals solar systems in the United States through its subsidiary Tesla Energy. With 3.99 gigawatt-hours installed in 2021, Tesla Energy is also one of the largest global battery energy storage systems suppliers.
Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors in July 2003. Nikola Tesla, an inventor and electrical engineer, inspired the company’s name. Elon Musk became the company’s largest stakeholder in February 2004 after investing $6.5 million. Since 2008, he has been the CEO. Tesla’s mission, according to Musk, is to assist in accelerating the transition to sustainable transportation and energy via electric vehicles and solar power.
In 2009, Tesla launched its first automotive model, the Roadster sports car. The Model S sedan was introduced in 2012, followed by the Model X SUV in 2015, the Model 3 sedan in 2017, and the Model Y crossover in 2020. The Model 3 is the world’s best-selling plug-in electric car, and it was the first electric vehicle to sell one million units globally in June 2021. Tesla sold 936,222 automobiles worldwide in 2021, up 87 per cent from the previous year, and cumulative sales reached 2.3 million cars at the end of the year.
Tesla became the sixth firm in US history to achieve $1 trillion in market valuation in October 2021.
Tesla has faced numerous lawsuits and disputes due to CEO Elon Musk’s remarks and actions, as well as charges of creative accounting, whistleblower retaliation, worker rights abuses, and unresolved and dangerous technical issues with their cars. Following the agency’s investigations into traffic deaths involving the usage of Autopilot, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ordered Tesla to submit data on all sold US vehicles equipped with Autopilot in September 2021.
Business strategy
Electric automobiles were prohibitively expensive when Tesla was founded in 2003. According to Elon Musk, Tesla’s plan was to produce high-priced, low-volume vehicles initially, such as sports cars, for which customers are less price sensitive. This would allow them to gradually reduce the cost of batteries, providing lower-priced, higher-volume vehicles. The Roadster, Tesla’s first automobile, was produced in small numbers (fewer than 2,500) and cost more than $100,000.
The Model S and Model X, which follow, are more inexpensive premium vehicles. The most latest models, the Model 3 and Model Y, are even more affordable and aimed at a larger market, with over 100,000 vehicles sold per quarter. Unlike practically every other automobile manufacturer, Tesla changes the hardware of its cars regularly rather than waiting for a new model year.
Tesla, unlike other automakers, does not sell its automobiles through franchised dealerships. Instead, it sells cars directly through its website and a network of company-owned dealerships. The company is the first in the United States to sell cars to people directly. In some locations, particularly in the United States, automobile manufacturers are barred from selling vehicles directly to consumers.
According to Tesla, these locations have galleries that “educate and enlighten customers about our goods, but such facilities do not actively engage in the selling of vehicles.” Tesla has approximately 400 stores and galleries spread across more than 35 countries. Instead of being near other auto dealerships, these locations are usually found in retail shopping districts, inside shopping malls, or other high-traffic places. Tesla does not pay for direct advertising as of January 2022.
In 2016, Tesla’s vertical integration was projected to be at 80 per cent. The company manufactures automotive components as well as customised charging stations for customers’ vehicles. In the automotive sector, vertical integration is uncommon because businesses often outsource 80 per cent of components to suppliers and concentrate on engine manufacturing and final assembly. Tesla adopted a low-cost plan as a business strategy to develop its firm into a larger market by selling common technological items.
Tesla enables its competitors to licence its technology in general, claiming that it wants to help expedite the world’s adoption of renewable energy. The recipient of a licence agreement must promise not to sue Tesla for patent infringement or to replicate its designs directly. To avoid direct imitation of its technology, Tesla preserves control of its other intellectual property, such as trademarks and trade secrets.
About Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk is a philanthropist, investor, and business entrepreneur. He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer of SpaceX, as well as an angel investor, Tesla’s CEO, and Product Architect, The Boring Company’s founder, and a co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list, Musk has a net worth of US$265 billion as of May 2022.
Musk is the offspring of a White South African father and a Canadian mother. He was born in the South African city of Pretoria. Elon attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at the age of 17. He started his studies at Queen’s University before going to the University of Pennsylvania to finish his bachelor’s degree in Economics and Physics two years later.
In 1995, he came to California to attend Stanford University, but instead chose to pursue a business career, co-founding Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. In 1999, Compaq paid $307 million for the company. Musk co-founded X.com, an online bank, in the same year, which merged with Confinity to establish PayPal in 2000. eBay bought the company for $1.5 billion in 2002.
Musk is the CEO and Chief Engineer of SpaceX, which he started in 2002. He joined Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and product architect in 2004 and rose through the ranks and became CEO in 2008. He was a co-founder of SolarCity, a solar energy start-up that Tesla later purchased and rebranded as Tesla Energy. He co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research organisation dedicated to friendly AI, in 2015.
In 2016, Elon Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that develops brain-computer interfaces, as well as The Boring Company, a tunnel construction firm. He also agreed to pay $44 billion in 2022 for Twitter, the most popular American social media platform. Musk has also proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transit system. The Musk Foundation, which supports scientific research and education, is his creation, and he is its president.
Musk has been under fire for making provocative and unscientific claims, such as distributing false information on the COVID-19 epidemic. The US Securities and Exchange Commission sued him in 2018 for fraudulently tweeting that he had secured funds for a private buyout of Tesla; he settled with the SEC but did not admit wrongdoing and stood down from his Tesla chairmanship temporarily. In 2019, he won a slander suit launched against him by a British cave rescuer who had advised him during the Tham Luang cave rescue.
Early life
Childhood and family
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother, Maye Musk (née Haldeman), is a Canadian model and nutritionist who was raised in South Africa. His father, Errol Musk, is a White South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and real estate developer who once owned half of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika. Kimbal, Musk’s younger brother, and Tosca, Musk’s younger sister, were both born in 1972. (born 1974).
Joshua Haldeman, Musk’s maternal grandfather, was an adventurous American-born Canadian who led his family on record-breaking travels to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca aeroplanes; Musk is of British and Pennsylvania Dutch origin.
Musk had his adenoids removed as a child because doctors assumed he was deaf. Still, his mother later decided he was thinking “on another planet.” Elon Musk’s father, Errol Musk, reportedly quipped, “We had so much money at times that we couldn’t even close our safe.” Elon Musk’s father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a member of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party.
The Musk children are said to share their father’s anti-apartheid sentiments. Because of the government’s apartheid regime, Musk decided not to join South Africa’s mandatory military service. Musk’s decision to leave South This may have affected Africa just after graduating from high school.
When Elon’s parents divorced in 1980, he spent most of his time in Pretoria and elsewhere with his father, something he later regretted. Musk has become estranged from his father, whom he regards as “a terrible human being who has done nearly every evil thing you can imagine.” He has a half-sister and a half-brother on his father’s side. Elon attended an Anglican Sunday school as a child.
Musk grew interested in computers and video games when he was ten years old, and he bought a Commodore VIC-20. He learned computer programming from a book and sold the code for Blastar, a BASIC-based video game he created, for $500 to PC and Office Technology magazine when he was 12 years old. Musk, a shy and introverted child, was tormented throughout his childhood and was once hospitalised after a bunch of boys threw him down a flight of stairs. Before graduating from Pretoria Boys High School, he attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School.
Education
Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian mother, believing that it would be easier for him to enter the United States from there. While waiting for the papers, he spent five months at the University of Pretoria, avoiding South Africa’s necessary military duty. He arrived in Canada in June 1989 and spent a year in Saskatchewan with a second cousin performing various jobs at a farm and a lumber plant.
In 1990, he began his studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Elon transferred to the University of Pennsylvania 2 years later, earning a Bachelor of Arts in physics and a Bachelor of Science in economics in 1997 from the Wharton School.
Musk worked for two Silicon Valley firms during the summer of 1994: Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and Rocket Science Games, which was based in Palo Alto. In 1995, he was admitted into Stanford University’s materials science Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme. Musk applied for a job at Netscape but received no answer and dropped out after two days at Stanford and opted to join the Internet boom and start his own company.
Elon Musk says Tesla faces numerous challenges in entering the Indian market.
“When will Tesla debut its automobiles in India?” is a question that is regularly asked of Elon Musk. A fan from India posed the same question, and Elon Musk responded with an update.
“Yo @elonmusk, any further information on when Tesla’s will launch in India?” tweeted Pranay Pathole. They’re pretty incredible and deserve to be in every country!” “Still working through many difficulties with the government,” Musk said in response.
In August 2021, Tesla obtained approval in India for four models and three more in December 2021. The Model 3 and Model Y has been spotted in the country. However, the models have yet to be disclosed.
Import taxes are one of the challenges that the Elon Musk-led corporation is dealing with. Tesla had lobbied India’s government to lower electric vehicle import duties and even requested a meeting between Musk and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Electric vehicles costing less than $40,000 are subject to a 60% import tax, while those costing more than $40,000 are subject to a 100% tax. On the other hand, Tesla automobiles start at $44,690 (approx. $33,41,780) in the United States, implying that Tesla cars will be subject to a 100 per cent import tax in India, limiting the company’s sales.
While Tesla has been asking for a reduction in import charges for some time, Indian companies such as Tata Motors have resisted such a move since it would encourage imports and contradict the country’s efforts to increase local electric vehicle manufacture.
Tesla requests a meeting between Elon Musk and Prime Minister Modi, urging the Indian government to reduce import taxes.
Due to high import duties on electric vehicles, Tesla’s plans to enter the Indian market this year have been put on hold. According to Reuters, Tesla has pushed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office to lower import levies on electric vehicles to make its India debut.
Electric vehicles costing less than $40,000 are subject to a 60% import tax, while those costing more than $40,000 are subject to a 100% tax. For instance, Tesla automobiles in the United States start at $44,690 (about $33,41,780). Sending cars to India with these import tariffs will result in outrageous rates for consumers and ultimately stifle the company’s sales.
According to the article, Tesla executives, including Manuj Khurana, the company’s head of policy in India, met with government officials in a closed-door meeting last month to discuss the high import duties and suggest that they be decreased. According to the article, the business has also requested a meeting between Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, and Prime Minister Modi.
Indian officials are said to be split on the decision to lower Tesla’s import duties. This isn’t the first time Tesla has made this request; the business did so in July of this year, but it was met with opposition from Indian companies such as Tata Motors, who said that the move would undermine India’s attempts to increase local EV manufacturing.
Before contemplating lowering import duties, officials are said to want Tesla to commit to local manufacturing. One of the insiders told Reuters that if Tesla were the only electric vehicle manufacturer, import charges might have been reduced. However, the electric vehicle manufacturer wants to start with imported vehicles, and Musk has stated that if this is a success, “a factory in India is extremely likely.”
According to Bloomberg, the Indian government may consider lowering import taxes if Tesla expands local manufacturing and shares its precise manufacturing plans. Tesla had requested that the government decrease import tariffs to 40% and eliminate a 10% social assistance levy.
Why states can’t help solve Tesla’s ‘challenges’ in India
After the world’s richest man announced his electric car manufacturing company was “still working through many obstacles with the government” to launch a production unit in India, numerous politicians have offered Elon Musk to set up shop in their respective states.
Ministers from Telangana, Punjab, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra requested Elon Musk to create a local manufacturing facility to assist Tesla in overcoming these “challenges.”
However, these legislators appear to have misunderstood Elon Musk’s statement, as Tesla has no plans to develop local manufacturing plants in India, at least for the time being.
TESLA’S CHALLENGES MISINTERPRETED
The Indian government has previously invited Tesla to establish local manufacturing facilities to put things in context. According to top government officials, Tesla will only be eligible for benefits under the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme if it manufactures domestically.
As a result, local manufacturing is not one of Tesla’s “government difficulties.” On the other hand, Tesla is hesitant to commit to building a local manufacturing factory in India due to the high cost of its vehicles and current trends in the world’s fourth-largest auto market.
For years, Elon Musk and top Tesla executives have been in discussions with the government about the issue of high import tariffs. This is because Tesla intends to sell fully built units (CBU) of its electric vehicles in India before deciding whether or not to produce them locally. Tesla plans to import vehicles into India and sell them there.
Tesla has pushed the government to decrease customs duty on its imported automobiles, which are already significantly more expensive than the typical vehicle sold in India, to zero per cent.
However, the Centre has stated that if Tesla does not establish a local manufacturing, there will be no decrease in import duties or other incentives. The arguments have resulted in a stalemate, and Tesla has yet to begin selling electric vehicles in India three years after announcing its intention.
THE OTHER CHALLENGE
The fact that the country’s market share for electric vehicles is still around 1% is another challenge for Tesla in India. Cheap petrol and diesel automobiles from Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai Motor Company, and Tata Motors continue to dominate Indian roadways.
Despite recent government attempts to encourage more local enterprises to produce electric automobiles, demand for such vehicles remains low. Low demand can be attributed to a lack of supporting infrastructure for electric vehicles as well as high pricing.
Given the circumstances, such as EV market share and vehicle prices, the concept of constructing a local manufacturing plant in India could be part of Tesla’s “challenges with the government” rather than a solution.
Tesla’s hurdles in India as it prepares to market electric vehicles are explained.
Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric car business, is soon slated to begin selling its cheapest model in India. Musk’s company takes the first steps into India’s electric vehicle (EV) sector before growing further.
While the news of Tesla’s entry into India has left many of its fans in the country jubilated, capturing the market can become the company’s most complex challenge so far. The company has just applied to create an office in Bengaluru. According to a Bloomberg story, Elon Musk is in discussions with several Indian states about opening showrooms and possibly manufacturing.
According to Bloomberg, electric vehicles account for less than 1% of all automobiles sold in India. As a result, Tesla’s main task will be to carve out a position in India’s fuel-dominated auto market.
Challenges for Tesla in India
India has been announcing initiatives to stimulate electric vehicle sales, but they may not be enough to boost Tesla’s pricey EVs sales.
According to the International Energy Agency, India announced the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles (FAME) programme in 2015 with a Rs 900 crore subsidy commitment, spanning everything from electric tricycles to buses. Another FAME programme, worth Rs 10,000 crore, was launched in 2019 to encourage citizens to acquire electric vehicles and to establish charging infrastructure.
In August 2019, the government reduced the goods and services tax (GST) on electric vehicles from 12% to 5%. The rate of EV adoption in India remains abysmally low, even though it is substantially lower than the 28 per cent imposed on other motor vehicles.
According to a Bloomberg report, India’s efforts to stimulate electric vehicle demand fall short of China’s, substantially subsidising EV purchases and investing billions in charging stations.
Pricing challenge & customer base
Another issue that Tesla will encounter in India is pricing. Tesla’s pricey offers will not qualify for EV subsidies in India because the top ceiling for an EV to be eligible for subsidies is Rs 15 lakh, according to BNEF analyst Allen Tom Abraham.
An entry-level Tesla Model 3 produced in China starts at 2,65,740 yuan (about $41,000). A Model Y sport-utility vehicle crossover priced in Shanghai starts at 339,900 yuan.
Aside from the pricing, the cost of export and taxes on Tesla cars, once they arrive in India, will put them out of reach for most users. According to a Bloomberg survey, 75% of all Indian car sales are in the $10,000 range or less.
It is around half the average price in China and only 25% of the average vehicle price in the United States. According to Abraham, this means that Tesla’s most cheap car in India would only appeal to roughly 1% of the market. As a result, Tesla’s sales volume in India will be minimal.
While Tesla faces hurdles along the road, the Indian electric vehicle market is currently developing, with a potential worth of $206 billion in the next decade, according to a CEEW Centre for Energy Finance report.
edited and proofread by nikita sharma
