Gujarat in talks with Tesla; could invite it to Vibrant Gujarat Summit

The Gujarat government is in talks with Tesla to convince it to establish a plant in India according to a new report by divyabhaskar.co.in which reveals several developments about this matter.

The report states that a high-level Gujarat government official has said that the state is in touch with Tesla and is trying to bring the American EV company to India. The source said that the Gujarat government has begun communicating Tesla about investing in Gujarat with a company official.

The state official cautioned that the talks began only recently and are still at an early stage. In the coming days, the Gujarat government will make proposals for the various investment opportunities in the state. It will also invite Tesla to the next Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit.

Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit, a biennial investment forum of the state, is yet to be confirmed for 2021. Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said on Wednesday that the state has not decided whether it will hold the 10th edition of the event in January 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s according to a report from outlookindia.com.

Video Source: youtube.com/Kelly Blue Book

A full-scale Tesla manufacturing plant in India could demand a strong export focus, as even its rumoured cheapest car of under INR 25 lakh (Tesla Model 2) could be too expensive for India and an investment cannot be justified with local demand. All three potential locations for the Tesla India plant, namely Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat, offer the advantage of having an export shipping port in the state. The company may see Maharashtra offering the best of export potentials, though. The Nhava Sheva port or the Jawaharlal Nehru port is the country’s largest. Moreover, just earlier this year, a new major port at Vadhavan near Dahanu was approved. The INR 65,000-crore port will bring India in the list of top 10 container ports in the world.

The Tesla India configurator will go live probably in January, Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO, Tesla, has said. The company plans to launch its first car, presumably the Model 3, in India in 2021. Beyond that, it may introduce the Model Y compact SUV in our market. The Model X executive SUV and the Model S executive sedan would arrive here eventually. As for the Cybertruck, it is safe to assume that the North America-focused electric pickup truck would not see a launch in India.