India asks Tesla to cough up EV plant investment plan, 'the ball is in their court as...'

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EV manufacturing in India. In an interview with Bloomberg, Rajesh Kumar Singh, the secretary of department for promotion of industry and internal trade said that now it's up to Elon Musk’s Tesla to make the announcements of their manufacturing plans. “We will help them out in terms of giving them the contacts at state level.

There have been contacts made at that level with state governments and the central government. VinFast has already announced and we expect a few others," he said. VinFast, the Vietnamese automaker recently broke ground on an EV manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu.

Earlier this week, the Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter that it didn’t identify, reported that Tesla is planning to send a team of people to scout for locations in India this month for a proposed $2 billion to $3 billion electric car plant. Tesla would also look to increase purchases of auto parts from the nation to as much as $15 billion, Bloomberg reported in November. Musk’s carmaker has for years been been making a case for cutting import taxes before it commits to any significant investment in one of the world’s biggest automobile markets.

To get tax concessions, companies will have to invest at least ₹41.5 billion and start producing EVs from a local plant within three years, Centre said in March. Singh said that the policy should help spur growth of EVs in the country. “We expect it to lead to a penetration of four-wheeler electric vehicles to at least 10% by 2030," he said.