It is official. Elon Musk’s Tesla, which has found it super tough to get into the Indian market for several years now, is officially launching its India presence. The formal launch is happening on July 15, revealed via an invite sent across to media yesterday night. Tesla is opening its first India experience centre in the upmarket Bandra Kurla Complex commercial area.
Tesla’s India entry has been anticipated for a while now, with serious build up happening from the start of this year. Whether it is signing of lease for the Mumbai centre earlier this year, or early shipments of its Model Y cars to India, Tesla’s entry only gained serious momentum this year. To top it all, Elon Musk’s meeting with Indian PM Narendra Modi during latter’s US visit seemed like the point where final issues were ironed out.
India also updated its Electric Vehicles policy, which had earlier provided protection and quite a jump start to homegrown EV products, such as those from Tata Motors. The policy update, which came about in February of 2024, was the first big push that resulted in Tesla’s India entry plans gaining serious momentum. Import taxes on EVs have been significantly reduced, specially for those committing a minimum of $500Mn investment in producing cars locally. Tesla at its end, has already been sourcing components from India, with the value expected to reach nearly $2.5Bn for the calendar year 2025. The company however, is not looking to start any full scale India manufacturing, anytime soon.
Globally, Tesla is grappling with significant downturn in sales, which has resulted in excess manufacturing capacity at its other factories. That has led to the company cancelling its India manufacturing plans and instead import full built units (FBUs) to India. The company will incur about 70% import duty and other levies, which would make cars extremely expensive for Indian market. Commercially available custom records from January to June showed Tesla imported vehicles, chargers and accessories into India worth close to $1 million, mainly from China and the United States.
