“We have everything figured out,” says Arun Bhat, a businessman in the southern city of Bengaluru and an ardent Elon Musk fan. “Only the car is missing.”
—Elon Musk via Twitter
So why bother? Tesla is growing quickly throughout the world, expanding production and sales in China, awaiting German government permission to start building electric vehicles at its Giga Berlin plant and preparing to make Teslas in Austin, Texas. Mercurial billionaire Musk has teased the possibility of Indian production—as an enticement for a tariff waiver. “If Tesla is able to succeed with imported vehicles, then a factory in India is quite likely,” Musk. But the Modi government hasn’t bent in its demand for the company to commit to local production before it considers a waiver or subsidies.
Despite some eager local fans, auto analyst Bakar Sadik Agwan with GlobalData in Hyderabad, India, sees significant local hurdles for Tesla. Notably, there are so few charging stations that using a Tesla to travel between cities will be impossible unless the company sets up its own network. “They will need a strong sales network, they need a service network and as well as they need their own charging infrastructure,” says Agwan.
Local roads are yet another challenge. Many aren’t mapped on GPS and traffic in dense cities is often blocked—in some places by stray. Tesla’s Autopilot feature “where you just plug in the address from point A to point B won't work in India,” says Jay Shah, a businessman in Ahmedabad in western India who has also pre-booked his Tesla. “The roads are not marked, there are animals on the road, there are two-wheelers on the roads, so it is next to impossible.
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