After speculations and rumors doing rounds for several months, we finally have some news about Tesla's manufacturing plans in India. Karnataka's Chief Minister, B.S Yediyurappa, has just confirmed in a statement saying, “American carmaker Tesla will open its electric car manufacturing unit in Karnataka." Earlier last month, the company registered its first entity in India, its R&D centre, as 'Tesla India Motors and Energy Private Limited', in Bengaluru.
Details are scarce at the moment and it must be noted that Tesla themselves haven't made any official announcement yet. However, Elon Musk's subtle tweets on Twitter have pretty much confirmed the same. What we do know is that the company will be headed by Venkatarangam Sreeram (Bengaluru-based start-up entrepreneur), Vaibhav Taneja (Chief Accounting Officer), and David Feinstein (Global Senior Director of Tesla) in India.
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The American automaker had been eyeing the Indian market since 2016, but despite several plans, the speculations remained as speculations, until now. Tesla is currently the most valuable car company in the world. It was in October 2020 when Musk first hinted about Tesla beginning operations in India in 2021, and it is finally coming to fruition now. At the onset, Tesla will be bringing its products to India via the CBU route before eventually manufacturing them here in India. Local manufacturing will also give a huge boost to Karnataka's economy with the generation of employment and business opportunities.
Tesla is also widely known for its impressive charging infrastructure in international markets and the company could help set up charging stations across India, thus helping their business as well. As the company plans to launch its first product in India by June this year, we speculate that the first Tesla to hit our roads will be the Model 3. The Model 3 is the most affordable EV up the American carmaker's sleeve and is expected to be priced around INR 60 lakh (ex-showroom), when launched in India.
The Model 3 comes with a maximum electric range of 500km and comes with all the latest Tesla trademark features. It comes with 8 cameras, forward RADAR and 12 Ultrasonic Sensors, enabling active safety technologies including collision avoidance, and automatic emergency braking. The base variant can go up to 350km on a single range. It comes with a supercharging rate of 200km per hour, which cuts down to 50km per hour in a standard charging set up. The long-range version, on the other hand, has a 500km range and does triple-digit speeds in just 3.8 seconds in ludicrous mode.
Stay tuned to IndianAutosBlog for more updates on Tesla and the latest four-wheeler news.
