Exclusive: Tesla abandons the plan to enter the Indian market, for now, New Delhi.
On May 13, New Delhi, Tesla American automotive company officially put India’s entry plan on hold after a deadlock in traffic.
Tesla($TSLA) has abandoned its plan to enter the Indian market, abandoned a search for showroom space, and even started to reassign its employees, the Indian government is not ready to reduce high import traffic for the foreign electric vehicles.
India has the largest auto market, As per the investindia gov report India’s annual production in FY 2021 was 22.7 Mn vehicles and 13 million vehicles from April to October 2021, including Maruti Suzuki, which holds 49.98% of the market share in India’s car and has a record to sold 1.6Lakh units in the year 2017-18, this is the reason why all company wants to enter in the Indian market, Tesla is one of them.
The conversion takes more than a year of deadlock talk with the Indian government, Tesla said to government representative to first test demand by selling electric vehicles then they set up a plant and also request to import from production Hub in u.s and china at lower traffic.
The government has maintained high import duty on the electric vehicles, pushing Tesla to commit to manufacturing locally before it will lower traffic which can run as high as 100% on import vehicles. The main reason for the government is to prevent all automakers to import EVs produced outside the country.
Recently, Tesla electric vehicle has been seen testing on Indian roads and seven Tesla electric vehicle Models are selected to launch in India.
It has been spotted that most automakers are waiting for the Indian govt. to reduce high import duty but, after tesla strong effort it wouldn’t be done.
“Tesla Inc. has put on hold plans to sell electric cars in India, abandoned a search for showroom space, and reassigned some of its domestic team after failing to secure lower import taxes, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.“
Tesla assigned responsibilities for other markets to some of its small teams in India. Its India policy executive Manuj Khurana has taken on an additional “product” role in San Francisco since March, his LinkedIn profile shows. as per the Reuters report