Sounds pretty exciting. It is significant, isn't it?
Well, it is Haas, India and Tesla have been flirting for several years now.
Tesla even incorporated a company in Bengaluru in the state of Karnataka.
But that relationship hasn't progressed anywhere.
And the impact is mostly around high import duties in India.
Now, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, has said that Tesla won't manufacture
anywhere, that it cannot sell and service its cars and import duties in
India. Make Tesla cars too pricey to sell here.
Now, the Indian government wants Tesla to manufacture locally.
And that is something where conversations have been focused on more
than half of the one point three. One million electric vehicles that Tesla
manufactured last year and delivered globally were made in China.
And India is hoping to move a small portion of that to India.
Now, can this visit move things forward? Like you pointed out, we have the person
who broke that story, Bloomberg's son called Fatah and joins us.
Our son, CAC. This is a significant visit, as has
Linda pointed out. What are we expecting from those talks?
I'm in Gaza. So these executives from Tesla here this
week and they're hoping to meet government officials, including from the
prime minister's office. And the idea is to lobby India hard for
a reduction in import taxes for their vehicles, as well as do more sourcing
from India, because it's important for them to use this as a bargaining chip if
they want to get the import duties reduced.
Doing this will help them win favor with the government.
If this source of. Do we know who they were talking to for
sourcing components, Sankofa? How important is that as part of their
supply chain shift away from China? If at all, because they have been
considering other countries. I think this also points to the rising
cloud of India in supply chains, electronics, supply chains, an equal
supply chains. India already has a very thriving
automobile sector. It's one of the biggest in the world.
And so once these guys are here, once Tesla executives are here, they meet
ministers and officials from different ministries.
I think the idea is to go as far as they can in India to get local confidence
from a factory for building an entire Tesla car is still far away.
And what about selling Tesla cars in India now?
It's a complex market. Easy or at least passenger vehicles in
the Eevee market are barely two percent of total car sales in India.
If I'm looking at last year's data, right.
It's a market dominated by two wheelers and three wheelers.
And with those kinds of import duties, it would be really tough for Tesla to
sell him. Yes, these cars are pricey, but
nobody, including Tesla, would want to miss a piece of this market.
I mean, their rivals like Mercedes are already launching or
rivals in this market. The auto show earlier this year, almost
all of the launches in the auto show were electric cars.
So this is a very important market where the government is also pushing on green
vehicles. So Tesla suddenly doesn't want to miss a
piece of this action. OK, final short question.
Tesla also had expressed interest in bringing Starling to India and gulp and
there was talk of maybe even solar rooftops.
Are those business interests not Tesla? Elon Musk, I should point out, are those
business interests that Musk will be following here in India?
Things that would be taken up separately and I don't have time for today.
This was a should entirely be about Tesla.
But again, Starlink could be an important business from Musk in India.
We already have local rivals championing, you know, in satellite
Internet and broadband. I would think from conversations that
we've had with people that sooner or later, Musk would try to get Starlink
and his other business separate from.