Tesla To Enter India Next Year

Tesla Inc. co-founder and chief executive Elon Musk stated that the California-based electric vehicle (EV) and clean energy company will enter the Indian market in 2021.

"Next year for sure," Musk said while replying to a query on Tesla's India plans on Twitter. However, he did not elaborate.

Musk had earlier criticised India's restrictive taxes on vehicle imports.

"I am told duties are extremely high in India (up to 100%) even for electric cars. This would make our cars unaffordable," Musk tweeted last year. This followed Musk's tweet in 2017 wherein he said, "In discussions with the government of India requesting temporary relief on import penalties/restrictions until a local factory is built."

Furthermore, principal analyst, powertrain forecast, IHS Markit, Suraj Ghosh, said, "Tesla could be looking at India for setting up a captive R&D centre where it could reap benefits of local competencies around software development and coding related work on global programmes, CAE and CAD simulations, modules for autonomous driving among others".

Meanwhile, Tesla is in talks with the Karnataka government to build an R&D centre in Bengaluru.