Elon Musk Tweets: Would Love To Be In India, Some Challenging Government Regulations, Unfortunately

Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a tweet response said that he would love to roll out Tesla cars in India but the “challenging government regulations, unfortunately” have forced the electric vehicles behemoth to deter its India plans till date. He was replying to a tweet by @yoyovinzi who’d tweeted, “No Tesla in India” in Musk’s Twitter post: “Global map of Tesla Superchargers, including those coming soon”.

Musk was seen actively replying to the Twitter posts by twitteratis who had expressed similar questions of Tesla’s plan in their respective countries. “We tried, but Singapore govt is not supportive of electric vehicles,” Musk said in the same tweet thread.

Musk says that Tesla should be in India when Deepak Ahuja, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Tesla, believes it should. Born and brought up in India, Deepak Ahuja joined Tesla as a CFO in April 2010. Prior to that, he was working as finance executive at Ford Motor Company. He completed his bachelors from Banaras Hindu University and further achieved an overseas education..He along with his family is currently stationed in the Silicon Valley, US.

However, this is not the first time Elon Musk has shown his EV interest in India. In one of his tweets, he refers India as “already the largest market for solar power”. India’s solar power industry in January 2018 had over 4,000 megawatts (MW) of projects to execute across the country.

Further, Musk’s tweet on June 15, 2017 revealed that Tesla was in talks with the Indian Government for ‘temporary relief on import penalties or restrictions until a local factory is built’. The tweet implied that Tesla was looking to set up a local plant in the country.

In his earlier tweets last year, Musk had mentioned that the launch of the Tesla Model 3 Sedan in India was delayed owing to strict local sourcing guidelines and supply issues. However, the Government of India via the #MakeInIndia handle, released a note on Twitter, refuting the earlier reasons given by Elon Musk to delay the launch, the next day.

The Twitter note stated that the FDI policy of India does not mandate any such minimum sourcing of components by manufacturers. Also, after manufacturing in India, a foreign investor is permitted for sale in any manner: wholesale, retail and ecommerce.

“Maybe I’m misinformed, but I was told that 30% of parts must be locally sourced and the supply doesn’t yet exist in India to support that,” he tweeted later.

In the latest development, Elon Musk has revealed his plans to install 10K supercharger stations for his company’s electric vehicles around the world by 2019 end. Currently, Tesla has 1,229 supercharger stations across the world with 9,623 superchargers installed which can charge an electric vehicle in just 30 minutes.