The North American electric car firm continues to look for new regions to establish its gigafactories to build electric cars. Now, as Reuters has published, the next target could be India, where Tesla has already suffered some ups and downs with its government. Now it seems that they are beginning to understand each other.
Tesla has gone through several setbacks with the Indian government in recent years. The last one was last 2022 when the brand requested the elimination of the car import tax to be able to market them at an even lower price. At that time, the leaders were strongly opposed. The solution they offered was clear: if Tesla wanted to eliminate that tax, it had to build its vehicles within its borders.
Faced with this proposal, Tesla initially argued that, before setting up a production plant in Indian territory, it had to prove how well the local market worked with imports and, for this, it needed the elimination of the aforementioned tax.
Negotiations between both parties did not finish concluding and, finally, reached a deadlock. Now, it appears that talks have resumed. According to Reuters, Tesla has begun procedures to establish an electric car manufacturing plant within the country. However, the source mentioned by the agency has not specified what the exact location would be or its dedicated investment.
All this has come to light after some of Tesla’s managers went to India on May 16 to meet with the Government and negotiate on the supply of locally produced parts and spare parts. And a day later (May 17) they held a new meeting with senior officials from the Office of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to face the first negotiations on the new gigafactory.
It is more than likely that this issue will culminate positively for Tesla since the Indian Executive and, especially, its Prime Minister is very focused on attracting large companies to the country so that they can manufacture their products within India. Modi, in fact, recently promoted this goal in his campaign which he called “Made in India”.
This comes in handy for many automakers seeking to break away from China’s reliance on manufacturing and supplying domestically-made products by diversifying their major component and device production.
It is possible that in the coming weeks, new news will arrive in this regard, taking advantage of the visit to the United States that Modi already has scheduled on his agenda. On the other hand, Tesla continues with the procedures to begin construction of its new Gigafactory in Mexico.
