Featured image: Brooke Crothers
India hopes to increasingly move toward sustainable energy and transport. The country is already making headway in building-out an electric vehicle charging infrastructure. As the Indian government's policy on electric vehicles is quickly warming up, Tesla is preparing to enter the market very soon.
Today, CEO Elon Musk, answering a question from Tesla Club India, confirmed the company's intentions and said that, probably in January, Tesla will release an order configurator for India.
Will release order configurator probably in Jan
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
Tesla has visited the question of entering the Indian market on multiple occasions. Musk has in the past pointed to the Indian government's policies and criticized FDI regulations that delay the company's debut in the country. “Would love to be in India. Some challenging government regulations, unfortunately,” Musk had tweeted.
On September 21, it became known that Tesla is in talks with the industry department of the Karnataka state government to set up a research and development (R&D) center in Bangalore to harness the potential of India's tech capital.
“The first proposal is for an R&D center and we have already had at least two rounds of discussions," said one official from the department, requesting not to be named. He also said that Tesla's head of India and Karnataka State Commissioner for Industry meet again later this month.
Gaurav Gupta, principal secretary of Karnataka's commerce and industries department, offered government support for the establishment of Tesla's R&D center as well as a manufacturing unit, although he did not elaborate on what that might mean.
"We have offered them (Tesla) all support to set up a research and development center as well as the manufacturing unit."
Tesla has not yet confirmed its plans to create an R&D center in India. However, now that the configurator should be launched around January, the company's products will likely enter the country's market in the coming months.
© 2020, Eva Fox. All rights reserved.
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Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter
About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
