Tesla will double import of auto parts from India: Goyal

NEW DELHI: Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has visited the manufacturing facility of US-based electric vehicle major Tesla at Fremont, California and said that the company would be doubling its auto components imports from India.

The minister is in the US on a four-day visit. The world’s largest electric car producer Tesla Inc’s chief Elon Musk met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June in New York and after the meeting Musk had said that he planned to visit India in 2024.

“Visited @Tesla’s state of the art manufacturing facility at Fremont, California. Extremely delighted to see talented Indian engineers and finance professionals working at Senior positions and contributing to Tesla’s remarkable journey to transform mobility.

“Also proud to see the growing importance of auto component suppliers from India in the Tesla EV supply chain. It is on its way to double its components imports from India. Missed Mr @ElonMusk’s magnetic presence and I wish him a speedy recovery,” Goyal said on social networking platform X.

The platform is also owned by Musk.

The visit comes amid reports that India is looking at giving customs duty concessions to Tesla for setting up a plant in the country. In September, Goyal said the company is looking to source components worth around $1.9 billion from India this year against $1 billion in 2022.

Going forward, demand for electric vehicles will increase and it will help in pushing the growth of the sector. Earlier, the government had stated that it is not looking to frame a separate policy for providing incentives to Tesla, and the company can apply to avail support measures under existing schemes like PLI for auto and advanced chemistry cells.

Replying to the minister on the platform, Musk said :”It was an honor to have you visit Tesla! My apologies for not being able to travel to California today, but I look forward to meeting at a future date”.

The government has rolled out production-linked incentives (PLI) schemes (PLI) for advanced chemistry cell (ACC) battery storage with an outlay of Rs 18,100 crore and Rs 26,058 crore PLI scheme for auto, auto-components and drone industries.

In August 2021, Musk had said Tesla might set up a manufacturing unit in India if it first succeeded with imported vehicles in the country. He had said Tesla wanted to launch its vehicles in India “but import duties are the highest in the world by far of any large country!”.

Currently, India imposes 100 per cent import duty on fully imported cars with CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight) value over $40,000 and 70 per cent on those costing less than the amount.