13th January 2022 – Elon Musk may have sent his Tesla to space, but can’t get it into India as of yet.
The leading electric car maker, has been trying to sell Tesla cars in India from 2019. But the talks with the Indian government has taken him nowhere closer.
Musk replying to a twitter user on an update about Tesla’s launch in India, wrote that he was still working through a lot of challenges with the government.
It is said that disagreements over the country’s import duties of 100%, and local factory has lead to an impasse between the government and Musk.
The Indian government reportedly has asked Tesla, not to import China made cars in the country, instead urged them to manufacture and sell the vehicles from a local factory in India. It is also said that the government has asked the automaker to increase its local procurement, and provide detailed plans for manufacturing the vehicles in India
However, Musk has stated that, “a local factory is quite likely,” but he wants to test success of the Electric vehicles in Indian market with the the imported vehicles.
The Indian Government says that, with these tweets, the EV maker is trying to pressurize the government to reduce the import duties, and that this was not the first time of him doing so.
The government sources, however have stated that, Tesla can bring the cars in a Completely Knocked Down (CKD) form without any import duty, and then assemble them in a local factory to sell them.
As the impasse between the Indian government and Tesla continues, luxury automaker, Mercedes Benz will be starting to assemble the electric version of its flagship S class Sedan, later this year.
Stay tuned with Zollical for more updates
