- Saturday, July 27, 2024
Elon Musk is likely to meet Indian trade minister Piyush Goyal later this week to discuss the company’s plans to set up a plant in the Asian country.
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA is mulling a reduction in taxes on imports of completely built units of electric vehicles for a period of up to five years in a bid to woo companies such as Tesla Inc. to sell and eventually manufacture its vehicles on its soil, Bloomberg reported.
The Narendra Modi government is working on an electric vehicle (EV) policy to enable international car makers to import vehicles run on battery power on concessional duty rates if they commit to ultimately making them in India, the report added, citing sources that spoke on the condition of anonymity.
They added that a final decision was still to be taken.
In 2021, Tesla had sought duty cuts on import of EVs. It wanted to have the rates slashed to 40 per cent from the present range of 70-100 per cent for its vehicles, depending on their import value.
Company chief Elon Musk is likely to meet Indian trade minister Piyush Goyal later this week to discuss the company’s plans to set up a plant in the Asian country. The latter is currently in San Francisco to take part in ministerial engagements of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.
The Austin-based company is eyeing to make inroads into one of the world’s most promising auto markets where the demand for EVs is growing among the country’s burgeoning middle class. From India’s perspective, investment by the US automaker would facilitate the government’s push to raise the share of manufacturing in the country’s GDP while also generating employment.
India’s EV market is currently at a nascent stage with such vehicles accounting for just 1.3 per cent of the total passenger vehicles sold in 2022, BloombergNEF said.
The country’s adoption of EVs has been challenged by high prices of cars and lack of charging stations, among others.
