The Elon Musk owned American electric car company Tesla is all set to set up its very first Indian manufacturing unit in Karnataka.
Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa made the announcement in a statement which appreciated the benefits the state got from the Union Budget. The industrial corridor will be set up in the Tumkur district which neighbours Bengaluru and will cost a whopping ₹7,725 crores.
Musk’s premium electric car company entered India in the month of January and registered as a company in Bengaluru as Tesla has set up a research and development unit in the city.
Incorporated on January 8th, the regulatory filing of Tesla Motors India Private Limited shows that the Indian counterpart of Tesla has three directors which include David Feinstein who, according to LinkedIn, currently serves as a Senior Executive at Tesla.
Before the much-anticipated arrival of the car company in India, in recent years, Elon Musk took to Twitter several times to talk about his plans to launch in the country. In October 2019, he replied by saying ‘next year for sure’ to a post which showed a t-shirt with the message – India wants Tesla.
Now, Tesla being a car manufacturer in the premium category, it is going to focus on the opulent side of the population in the country. The company is aiming to sell cars to a relatively smaller and wealthier segment of the population.
Tesla wields an extremely powerful brand awareness among the affluent and environmentally conscious Indian citizens, and thus Musk’s electric vehicles are being pegged to undoubtedly win the Indian market.
According to media reports, the first Tesla product to be sold in India is the Model 3 Sedan. And later, depending on the demand for further vehicles and different models, the company will launch the rest of their fleet in the market.
Note here that India will get the Tesla vehicles as CBUs aka Completely Build Units and are expected to retail from Rs 60 lakhs (for the base model) and upwards. Thus, it now remains to be seen how much longer it will take for Tesla cars to be revving up on Indian streets.
In 2019, the company set up a Gigafactory in neighbouring country China which is a massive facility which hosts the assembly for the Model 3.
In the future, Tesla plans to manufacture Model Y in the China-based Gigafactory as well. Currently, Tesla has made plans to produce close to 3,000 units of cars every week but later on will increase the production rate by 2.5 lakh units per year.
Now, how many Tesla cars will the Indian manufacturing unit be capable of producing? Only the future can tell. We will keep you updated on all future developments. Until then, stay tuned.
