Tesla Financial News

BYD and Tesla, the world’s top two electric-vehicle makers, have a lot in common these days—except in terms of market value, where the U.S. company is roughly seven times as big. It takes a lot of faith in chief executive Elon Musk’s promise of autonomy to rationalize the difference.

Tesla to start manufacturing in India, ensures that the king of Indian EVs and the king of American EVs drive in separate lanes but Tata Motors and Tesla may race against each other in the luxury car segment. Posing competition risk to a few of the upcoming models of M&M and Tata Motors at the upper end of the SUV market, the policy allows 8,000 units of electric vehicles above $35,000 (Rs 29 lakh) to be imported annually at lower duty of 15% vs 70-100% currently for 5 years against an investment of $500 million for local manufacturing.

Elon Musk's X shows support to paediatrician Kulvinder Kaur Gill's against 'Canada govt-supported efforts to cancel her Notably, OpenAI and its flagship offering, ChatGPT, have been in Musk's firing line since the lawsuit, going so far as to call the San Francisco-based startup "closed AI". Recently, Musk's xAI had also decided to join the ranks of Meta and Mistral by open sourcing Grok AI under the Apace 2.0 licence. Musk had launched Grok AI in November last year as an alternative to popular chatbots on the market, including ChatGPT and Gemini (formerly Bard).

Musk surely knows how to control the narrative and the noise. His relentless honking at Raisina Hill’s policy making precinct for the last 4 long years did electrify the imagination of the government bureaucracy. That is why the auto industry executives in private see Narendra Modi government’s recently announced new electric vehicle policy, the last business before the announcement before the 2024 elections, predominantly as a red carpet rollout for just one eccentric billionaire: Musk. Even then to straight jacket the initiative as ‘The Tesla policy’ is a cynical response: The timebound and ceiling based 55-85% import duty cut on electric cars above a certain value, linked to specific localisation and investment milestones to boost domestic manufacturing would benefit incumbents Tata Motors, Hyundai, VW Group as much as it would Musk or accelerate the plans of Phat Nhat Vuong, founder of Vietnamese OEM VinFast, that has been looking to set up base in Tamil Nadu. Predictably therefore, the initial outrage of local players has evaporated post the announcement!

Chinese electric vehicle makers are showcasing their latest models, including a flying car, as they take on global rivals at the Bangkok International Motor Show

Vietnamese automaker VinFast plans to sell its electric vehicles in Thailand

In 2024, the «Magnificent Seven,» a group of the biggest technology companies, saw most of its members continue their impressive 2023 performance, except for Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock. Facing a myriad of challenges such as waning sales and growing competition in China, Tesla stock has underperformed the S&P 500 by a wide margin.

Shares of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) rose 3.4% in premarket trading Tuesday after the Italian news outlet Il Sole 24 Ore reported that the country’s Industry Ministry officials reached out to the carmaker about the potential production of electric trucks.

Investing.com-- Shares of China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (SZ:300750), also known as CATL, rose on Tuesday after reports showed the company was in talks with Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and other U.S. automakers to potentially license its battery technology instead of building a plant there.

By Akash Sriram and Zaheer Kachwala

(Reuters) -Lucid said on Monday it is raising $1 billion in capital from an affiliate of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), sending the shares of the luxury electric carmaker up about 8%.

The S&P 500 has surged by +9.7% in the initial 56 business days of 2024. This marks the 15th best start to a year since 1928.

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s X Corp. against the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has documented the increase in hate speech on the site since it was purchased by the Tesla owner

Workers at Volkswagen’s factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, will vote next month on whether they want to be represented by the United Auto Workers union

Oppenheimer analysts have revised their delivery forecasts for Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), reducing their initial estimates.

Investing.com — U.S. futures slipped lower Monday, consolidating at the start of a holiday-shortened week ahead of the release of key inflation data and several Fed speakers.

Xiaomi's CEO said on Monday his goal for the firm's first electric vehicle was that it would be the «best looking, easiest to drive and smartest car» priced below 500,000 yuan ($69,424), as the Chinese electronics maker gears up for orders this week. The company will on Thursday evening announce its official price range and start taking orders for the car, dubbed the SU7, with the SU short for Speed Ultra. CEO Lei Jun's comments, made on his official Weibo account, mark the first time the company has confirmed the upper end of its price range. Anticipation for the car has been building up since Xiaomi unveiled the vehicle in December and announced it aimed to become one of the world's top five automakers. Lei has touted it as having technology capable of delivering acceleration better than Tesla cars and Porsche's EVs.

Elon Musk’s long courtship of Indian officialdom may have finally paid off. Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted him to open one of his Tesla “gigafactories” in the country, as part of its efforts to expand its long-moribund manufacturing sector; Musk, meanwhile, wanted India to address tariffs on electric vehicle imports that rendered foreign-made Teslas uncompetitive. On March 15, the government announced a new scheme to promote investment in EVs. Any company willing to invest $500 million in a new manufacturing facility that begins production in three years (and with at least a quarter of its components added locally, to begin with) will also be allowed to import 8,000 high-end vehicles a year at a lower tariff of 15%. It’s generally assumed that this quid pro quo will be enough to get Musk — and, hopefully, one or two other companies, like Vietnam’s Vinfast Auto Ltd. — to bite. Certainly, the EV producers that currently dominate the Indian market are already bracing for competition. On the one hand, this looks like business as usual. Officials have made a habit of using the supposed potential of the domestic market as an inducement for foreign investors. The stick of high tariffs together with the carrot of possible consumer demand growth should be enough to lure in people like Musk, they think.

India units of luxury car manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi may steer clear of the government’s new electric vehicle (EV) policy, which stipulates a sharp cut in import duty on condition that a $500 million investment is made in local manufacturing. The luxury car makers that have already been present in India for decades would rather accelerate local assembly of EV models in the country as the money will need to be ploughed in within three years of receiving approval under the scheme, said auto executives. The aforementioned companies didn’t officially comment on investments under the new policy. Given that luxury car manufacturers have already invested in India through plants and operations, they don’t see much benefit in another large investment for a segment that’s currently less than 2% of the broader car market. Besides, assembling kits in India already allows for a lower duty structure.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is well known for his patronage of Dogecoin (DOGE) and sending the crypto community into a tizzy with his tweets about the meme coin. In the past, his cryptic tweets about Dogecoin have helped the token make new gains. 

By Lewis Krauskopf