Top Tesla team ‘arriving’ in India to seek EV entry

NEW DELHI: As outgoing Twitter CEO Elon Musk found butter chicken and naan ‘insanely good,’ a team of senior Tesla executives is reportedly planning to visit India this week to explore entering the niche EV market and expand its footprint beyond China.

As per a media report, citing sources, the Tesla executives are expected to meet officials from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office.

“The discussions will revolve around the possibility of local sourcing of components for Tesla’s car models,” the report noted.

Whether Musk will accompany the team was not clear yet, as he gears up to hand over the Twitter baton to Linda Yaccarino, former chairman of Global Advertising and Partnerships at NBC Universal, and “devote more time to Tesla” and bring it back on course.

The visit by Tesla executives comes at a time when the country is betting big on EV adoption.

With the friendly government policies and new entrants arriving on the scene with cheaper EVs, the country is set to witness a plethora of options in the next 2-3 years. Industry experts expect that passenger car EV penetration will cross 21 per cent by 2027 from 1.3 per cent in 2022.

However, Musk has time and again said he faced challenges from the government for releasing its products in India. “Tesla isn’t in India yet due to “Challenges with the government,” he had posted.

The team he hired in India in 2021 was diverted to focus on the Middle-East and the larger Asia-Pacific markets last year. Currently, India levies a 100 per cent tax on imported cars of price of more than $40,000 (Rs 30 lakh), inclusive of insurance and shipping expenses, and cars less than $40,000 are subject to 60 per cent import tax.

With such a price tag, Tesla Model 3 may remain as an affordable model in the US but with import duties, it would become unaffordable in the Indian market with an expected price tag of around Rs 60 lakh. Musk has said he wants to launch cars in India but the country’s import duties on EVs are “highest in the world by far”.

Musk loses appeal, must consult lawyers to post certain Tesla-related tweets

Meanwhile, Elon Musk has lost another bid to end a 2018 settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding his controversial “funding secured” tweets after a federal appeals court rejected his effort to modify his settlement with the SEC.

The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected Musk’s argument that the consent decree reached in 2018 is a “prior restraint” on his speech. “Each tweet plausibly violated the terms of the consent decree,” the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City wrote in its ruling, it was reported.

Musk must continue to have certain Tesla-related tweets pre-approved by a lawyer. The court said in its ruling that the SEC investigated three of his tweets: the infamous 2018 “funding secured” tweet that subsequently resulted in the consent decree, a $40 million fine and Musk losing the chairmanship of Tesla.