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Tesla likely to establish its manufacturing hub in India soon

With India adopting a more digitalized way of living, it might also soon be a centre for the production of the top cars in the world. The global contester for the making of technology and cars, Tesla, has dropped hints of launching in India many times previously but Aditya Thackeray’s tweet has revealed some serious plans of the same happening very soon.

The Maharashtra Chief Minister’s son disclosed in his tweet that he had a video meeting with Tesla, offering it to invest and raise profits. The meeting also included the virtual presence of Subhash Desai, the Minister of Industry for the state.

Thackeray’s posted on Twitter saying, “This evening I had the opportunity to participate in a video call by Industries Minister @Subhash_DesaiJi with @Tesla team to invite them to Maharashtra. I was present not because of just the investment but my firm belief in electric mobility & sustainability @elonmusk.”

“We are firmly committed to policy building and changes for sustainable development and I personally believe that electric mobility, supported by renewable energy is the way ahead. Let’s hope we can help this thought become mainstream soon,” he added.

Interestingly, Tesla had shown interest in investing in Bengaluru for an R&D centre. Elon Musk reportedly wanted to use the immense talent present in the state, Karnataka, in terms of IT as it also houses big IT firms like Microsoft, Infosys, IBM, Xiaomi, Google and Amazon. This makes Maharashtra, not the lone state in contesting for the establishment. Similarly, Gujarat to is in the run for making the state the home for Tesla in India.

On this, senior director of international program India Team, Natural Resources Defence Council, Anjali Jaiswal said, “Several of the state EV policies have strong incentives for setting up manufacturing and gigaplants, including Telangana and Gujarat.”

In the event of the recent earnings report of Tesla, Mr Musk did not speak about his plans to open a hub in India but mentioned the company’s aims of producing 20 million vehicles by the end of 2030. The high target cannot be achieved if India, the second largest populated country and fourth-largest automotive market holder’s doesn’t contribute.

According to a CNBC report, Tesla might be gearing up for an investment in India soon.

Craig Irwin, representative of Roth Capital told CNBC, “We have channel checks from a couple of months back that indicates the entry into the Indian market is a very high probability for 2021, with a probable announcement in late 2020. Tesla is in the process of selecting a site for a manufacturing facility in India.” This could be kickstarted as soon as the end of 2020.

NitiAayog has proposed providing incentives of around $4.6 billion to business houses that are establishing advanced manufacturing setups in the country. While the proposal is still under review, this could prove beneficial for Tesla.

With the price scale of Tesla cars being much more than the average most-selling cars of India, the company can also look at the country as a manufacturing hub where it can get the labour for far lesser than it is paying elsewhere.

Predicting that Indians will hold 10% of the total demand of the cars in the next 5 years, Dave Ives of Wedbush said, “The demand picture has changed and now with Giga 3 build-out in China, Berlin and Austin, India is next.”

He also highlighted that India and China’s growing differences might affect the transportation of vehicles from China into India making import a major problem.

Irwin said that even if the company sets up a centre in 2021, it will still have to transport cars from China only. As such, it would be extremely important for Tesla to make a manufacturing hub in India. He predicted that India can be the home for two of the factories till 2023 while the first can be expected by 2021.