Possessing a Tesla in India: A summer two thousand seventeen wish shown by Musk and Modi
Updated: Feb Ten, two thousand seventeen 17:23 IST
By Gulshankumar Wankar , Hindustan Times, Fresh Delhi
“Hoping for summer this year” replied Elon Musk to a tweet asking when Tesla is coming to India. Tesla’s entry into the fastest growing auto-market in the world is much anticipated, ever since PM Narendra Modi’s Silicon Valley excursion in September 2015, followed by Union road and transport minister Nitin Gadkari’s visit to Tesla’s Fremont, California factory last July, where he pitched Musk to make India his Asia manufacturing hub for the electrical supercar.
Tesla Models are not hybrids like the Toyota Camry or Prius, but plug-in all-electric cars that can be driven for more than 300km at around 100kph in one charge. The American automaker has built a network of more than Three,600 Tesla Supercharger stations across US, Western Europe, China and some parts of Japan and the Middle-East. Musk plans to take the number of Superchargers to 7,200 by the end of 2017.
For the uninitiated, a Supercharger is Tesla’s own technology for high-speed charging of cars, where a 15-minute plug-in can energise the car to vroom up to one hundred fifty km. (All figures approximate and derived from Tesla’s website. Actual India spectacle may vary.)
A Tesla Model S charges at a Tesla Supercharger station in California. (Reuters file photo)
Tesla is also known for its trademark ‘Autopilot’, a self-driving technology which primarily looked revolutionary, but came under the scanner after the death of one US Autopilot user. And in a country like India, of inconsistent lane-separators, traffic-signals and even signboards, application of Autopilot is akin to taking eyes off the road.
Plus, we still do not have pucca-roads and reliable electrified network in many parts of the country. Cattle still make a “moo-point” on roads and highways are utter of unruly drivers. Most Indians park cars outside their houses &timid;&bashful;&bashful;– on the road or under a tree, parks or public utility compounds&bashful; – where provision of a charging point to ass-plug in a car is unthinkable.
“But why only in residential buildings?” asked Vishnu Mathur, director general of Society of India Automobile Manufacturers, during a conversation in Auto Expo last year.
“Why not places like government offices, malls, parking-lots have these charging ports for say 15-30 vehicles? So suppose I go to office 10-5. I can put my car to charge during working hours, and drive back home or to anywhere after that without any stress. That would reduce the stress of wielding an electrified or hybrid with concerns of limited range,” Mathur added.
Fresh Autopilot features are demonstrated in a Tesla Model S during an event in California. (Reuters file photo)
Not just that, Tesla will have an uphill drive in India where electrified vehicles never actually picked up tempo. Before Mahindra bought controlling stake in the Bengaluru-based puny e-carmaker in 2010, very few had seen or even heard of Reva, which today, Mahindra sells e2O at Rs six lakh, alongside an electrified sedan, eVerito, commencing Rs 9.50 lakh.
Electrified two-wheelers, mostly mopeds, too have failed to sell good due to poor built and brief durability of the product. Torq Motorcycles is at a nascent stage. The only successful electrified vehicles here could be the e-rickshaws, thanks to their commercial use and entertainment in taxes and licensing of the owners.
But unattractive models, lack of favourable government policy and doubts about these cars’ run on the road have made electrical vehicles-owners all the more sceptical.
The National Electrical Mobility Mission Plan 2020, drafted by the ministry of powerful industries, aims at “step by step ensuring a vehicle population of about 6-7 million electrical/hybrid vehicles in India by 2020”. With no word on the automotive policy in the Union Budget 2017-18 or on the FAME policy, and continued uncertainty over diesel and clean-fuel technologies, Tesla coming to India could be a big gamble.
But if the Model Three, Tesla’s most affordable product, hits Indian roads at around Rs forty lakh, things may switch. But as of now, Elon Musk’s midsummer fantasy set in India seems far from reality, given the fact that Model three is going for production only by mid 2017, and the very first roll-out in US is likely by 2018.