Bookings hit a speed breaker: India woes for Tesla?
Elon Musk’s grand India plans seem to have hit a speed breaker. Since its India entry a few days ago, Tesla has not been seeing much traction on the sale front. The electric cars from Tesla, seen as awesomeness on wheels by the world, are seeing very few takers in the Indian market place.
As against a sales target of 2500, Tesla outlets have attracted only 600 bookings so far. This, according to car enthusiasts, could mean a thumbs down for the car maker. What could be the reason, many ask. The answer is very clear.
Electric cars sport price tags of around Rs 22 lakh in India at the moment. Compared with this, Tesla models come for more than Rs 60 lakh, and that seems to have turned out to be a major deterrent.
Going by statistics, Tesla garners around 600 bookings every four hours globally. However, when it comes to India, the 600 bookings are what have come in so far since the sales window opened. This is a major fall in expectations of what Tesla had hoped to score in the Indian market on debut.
Expectations go for a toss at Tesla camp
Contrary to expectations of Tesla executives, India’s import tax on cars has not been reduced. Though Tesla had hoped to see import tax on cars being pulled down, the Trump tariffs scuttled the car maker’s plans. A 50 percent tariff imposed by the US on India over the nation’s import of Russian crude has made it difficult of Tesla.
The luxury electric car maker had earlier been very reluctant to test the India market earlier, owing to the near-100 percent tariffs India slaps on car imports. However, it finally decided to drive into India, and had announced the Model Y in July. But the Rs 60 lakh price tag seems to be holding car lovers to delay their purchase plans, much to the worry of Tesla.
Buyers remain hard to find
The global company had lined up plans to ship around 350 to 500 cars to India this year. But for the moment, it doesn’t seem like Tesla would want to do that. Considering that the company had targeted utilising its full quota of 2,500 cars this whole year, the latest sales bookings are proving to be a dampener.
In a few days from now Tesla is expected to drive in around 500 cars from Shanghai in China. The company, as per web sources, will also look at limiting car deliveries to regions such as Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Gurugram.
