The company’s CEO took to Twitter to say that he would love Tesla to make a foray in India either in 2019 or definitely next year. Musk’s tweet read, “Would love to be there this year. If not, definitely next! India.” We should mention that Musk tweeted this in response to a question he was asked. It is worth adding that this comes after Musk blamed the Indian government’s restrictive policies for making him give up on his dream of getting the electric car maker to India. He had also said that it was the FDI norms that caused a delay in Tesla‘s entry in India. In addition to this, sometime back this year, Tesla’s Indian-origin Chief Financial Officer Deepak Ahuja resigned from the company and this put a pause on Musk’s India dream once again.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 15, 2019 Musk had earlier disclosed that he wanted to drive a Tesla in India in 2017. That obviously couldn’t happen and there were a number of aforementioned reasons that contributed to that. Also, Ahuja first worked at Tesla, but he quit the company in 2015 and later re-joined in 2017. However, as we said earlier, he resigned from Tesla again on January this year.
Last year in May, CEO Elon Musk did say that he would love to roll out the electric cars in India, but the tough government regulations proved to be a barrier and he had to halt his plans of coming to the country. A user wrote on his Twitter profile “No Tesla in India.” Known for being very active on Twitter, Musk replied to him saying, “Would love to be in India. Some challenging government regulations, unfortunately.” He further added that Tesla’s India plans depended a lot on its now former CFO Ahuja. Musk said, “Deepak Ahuja, our CFO, is from India. Tesla will be there as soon as he believes we should.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 30, 2018 We should also add here that Tesla Model 3 was expected to be launched in India for around $35,000, which is approximately Rs 24,14,000. Back in 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited Tesla’s headquarters at Palo Alto where he met CEO Elon Musk. Musk game Modi a tour of Tesla’s electric car plant in California.
