According to techcrunch, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Friday that Tesla will not set up a manufacturing plant in India after an Indian state said that the electric vehicle manufacturer plans to open a plant in the southern region of the country for more than a year, unless it is first allowed to sell and serve cars in this South Asian country**
Musk responded on Twitter to a person who asked for the latest information about Tesla's manufacturing plant in India. He replied: "Tesla will not set up a manufacturing plant in any place that does not allow us to sell and service cars first."
Tesla has been in contact with the Indian government for more than two years to assess the way the electric vehicle manufacturer enters the world's second most populous country.
The Indian government insists that Tesla open a manufacturing plant in the country so that it can assemble cars locally in the country. If it wants to sell its vehicles, it must pay high import duties.
On the other hand, the US company is seeking to reduce India's tax rate in order to test the market by selling cheaper imported electric vehicles before promising to establish a production base.
Early last year, Tesla set up a subsidiary in India and registered an office in Bangalore, Karnataka. The southern Indian state of Karnataka later said that Tesla "will open an electric vehicle manufacturing plant in Karnataka".
But the two are now at an impasse. "If Elon Musk is going to make Tesla in India, there will be no problem," said Nitin gadkari, Minister of road transport and roads of India, at an event last month. But making cars in China and selling them in India is not a "good proposal", he added.
In recent years, several global brands including Mercedes Benz, BMW, Toyota and Hyundai have expanded their business in India. Musk said in a tweet earlier this year that Tesla "is still working with the government to solve many challenges". Audi expressed similar concerns.
Earlier this month, the economic times reported that several Tesla executives in India had recently been transferred to focus on Indonesia and other Asian countries.
In another tweet, musk disclosed to another user that SpaceX is waiting for the approval of the Indian government to launch Starlink in India.
Last year, the company hired Sanjay Bhargava, a former PayPal executive, to lead Starlink's operations in India. He said that the company has briefly started to accept pre orders in India and plans to deploy more than 200000 active terminals in more than 160000 regions in India by the end of December 2022.
A few weeks after New Delhi ordered the SpaceX department to stop accepting equipment orders, Bhargava resigned because it did not have a license to operate in the South Asian market.