- Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Elon Musk apologised to Piyush Goyal for not being able to travel to California and meet him due to ill health.
By: Shubham Ghosh
AMERICAN electric car manufacturer Tesla is considering doubling the number of components it imports from India, the South Asian nation’s trade and commerce minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday (14) said through a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Following his visit to Tesla’s manufacturing facility in Fremont in California, US, Goyal tweeted, “Proud to see the growing importance of Auto component suppliers from India in the Tesla EV supply chain. It is on its way to double its components imports from India.”
Visited @Tesla’s state of the art manufacturing facility at Fremont, California.
Extremely delighted to see talented Indian engineers & finance professionals working at Senior positions and contributing to Tesla’s remarkable journey to transform mobility.
Also proud to see… pic.twitter.com/FQx1dKiDlf
— Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) November 14, 2023
Goyal was, however, unable to meet Musk during his visit as he was unwell, he added.
“Missed Mr Elon Musk’s magnetic presence and I wish him a speedy recovery,” Goyal wrote.
Musk expressed his gratitude to the Indian minister and apologised for not being able to travel to California to meet the latter. He said he was looking forward to meeting Goyal in the future.
It was an honor to have you visit Tesla!
My apologies for not being able to travel to California today, but I look forward to meeting at a future date.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2023
“It was an honor to have you visit Tesla! My apologies for not being able to travel to California today, but I look forward to meeting at a future date,” he said responding to the Indian minister’s tweet.
In June, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi met Musk during his state visit to the US where the latter reportedly told him about Tesla’s plans to establish a facility for the production of electric vehicles in India.
Goyal said in September, Tesla was eyeing to source components worth between $1.7 billion (£1.3 billion) and $1.9 billion (£1.5 billion) from India this year, having bought $1 billion (£813.5 million) of components in 2022.
His visit to the US was supposed to feature talks with Musk around Tesla’s plans to set up a factory in India to manufacture a $24,000 (£19,524.1) car, sourcing more components and establishing charging infrastructure across the nation, Reuters said last week.
