Tesla CEO Elon Musk has admitted that he would love to enter the Indian market but his company is facing challenges to make the move. The electric car maker has been looking to make inroads into one of the biggest markets in the world, but various issues have hampered its progress time and again.
Musk clarified the current situation in tweet on Thursday, citing challenges with the current import duty costs for electric vehicles, which has been put at 100 percent. This he believes will make the Tesla electric vehicles unaffordable for the Indian buyers.
The Tesla co-founder responded after one user from India reached out on Thursday via this tweet, where he asked, ‘when will the Tesla cars enter the Indian market’.
Replying to this, Musk highlighted that high import duties aren’t suitable for Teslas to launch in the country.
All these import duty constraints could be out of the equation, if Tesla decides to setup a small vehicle assembly plant in the country, which, honestly won’t be easy to pull off for the next four to five years, if not more.
But this isn’t the first time when Elon Musk has pointed out the challenges Tesla faces to launch in India. After initially claiming that Tesla will come to India this summer, in February 2017, not much has developed in this regard since then.
Musk had even cited the stringent local sourcing norms of the Indian government as the reason Tesla had to back out from considering India as a viable market for its vehicles.
This revelation was later clarified by the Make in India department of the government, giving him a crash course on how things work. The Make in India Twitter handle said Musk was wrongly informed about the regulations that are in place for automotive companies.
In a recent interaction with the students from IIT Madras, the Tesla CEO said the car may run on the bumpy Indian roads in 2020.
The Avishkar Hyperloop team from IIT Madras participated in the finals of "SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition 2019", a global competition organized by the American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company, on 21 July. The team asked Musk when he is planning to bring his company Tesla to India.
"To which, Musk said it is probably going to happen in a year's time," IIT Madras said in a statement last week.
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