This year (2021), Tesla has finally decided to launch in India, but it has not been as successful as many of its earliest supporters thought it would be. In spite of the hoopla that earlier existed around Elon Musk and his electric car company, the reception towards the inauguration of Tesla in Mumbai has been unexciting.
Those are the many early investors who ordered their Model 3 as early as 2016 and now feel forgotten and cheated. Others were also forced to struggle to make the company reimburse their $1000 deposit and the company had not notified them yet about the processing time.
A Tesla enthusiast, Vishal Gondal, stated that he was disappointed by his visit to the shop. So, he, as well as others, had once believed in the Tesla vision, yet years of silence and delays ate away at such confidence.
Even others, such as Varun Krishnan and Amit Bhawani, showed their disappointment with the lack of communication and the poor state of the launch event, in comparison with the hype over the store opening of Apple in the same area. What is worse is the fact that Tesla is highly priced in India. Model Y begins at almost 60 lakhs ($68,000), which is quite expensive compared to the price of this model in the U.S. Its car is imported from China, which adds more cost to the vehicle by charging import costs. No factory is yet built locally, and therefore, these prices are likely to remain high at least in the short run.
With Electric cars accounting for a small ratio of total car sales and latest cars accounting for 1% of the total sales, Tesla will have a hard time finding a large customer base. Consumers also fear after-sales service and a small Supercharger network. Tesla will install charging stations in Delhi and Mumbai, but this might not suffice.
Meanwhile, the Indian consumers have a variety of other good EVs to choose from, such as Tata Motors, BMW, and MG Motors. Taken together, the delayed timing, the expensive cost, and the weak local presence, Tesla has lost the interest of several of its early adopters. Even though it can continue affecting the EV market, its arrival in India has not met the hype.
