Elon Musk dodged another India visit, and many who placed $1,000 Tesla deposits admit the dream is over, while fanboys keep the faith.
Emily Scherer for Rest of World
7 MAY 2024 • MUMBAI, INDIATRANSLATE
- Elon Musk was supposed to visit India in April 2024, which fueled rumors that Tesla will finally make inroads in the country this year.
- Musk postponed his plans two days before the visit, citing “heavy Tesla obligations.”
- Disillusioned Tesla enthusiasts say they will now buy a car from the company only if they see it in a showroom.
When Tesla allowed Indians to get their hands on its wildly popular electric cars for the first time, Vishal Gondal was among the first to grab the opportunity.
Within hours after the company opened its pre-booking portal for India in April 2016, Gondal, a fan of Elon Musk and Tesla, paid $1,000 (then 66,237 rupees) to pre-book the Tesla Model 3. At the time, there was no clarity on what the car would eventually cost in India or when the company would start delivering the vehicle to the country. But Gondal, who had driven a Tesla in the U.S. earlier, was swept with excitement.
For almost seven years after that, Gondal, founder and CEO of health-tech startup GoQii, patiently waited for his Model 3. By 2023, when there was still no sign of the car, he decided to cancel his booking — and that was the start of another ordeal.
Gondal had to chase Tesla’s India executive over emails for six months before he received his refund in June 2023. “There was no communication, no emails. And even years later, there was no apology [from the company],” he told Rest of World.
Tesla still does not sell its cars in India — the third-largest auto market in the world.
Several Indians who had bought into the Model 3 dream in 2016 have had an experience similar to that of Gondal. Some of them believe they won’t ever buy a Tesla now that there are other electric car models available in the country, while others want to wait until the company sets up a showroom and establishes robust post-sale services in India. Only a few Musk loyalists in India are still committed to what they believe is the best electric car.
“It would be stupid if I say I’ll do it again,” Amit Bhawani, YouTuber and founder of tech blog PhoneRadar, who had booked the Model 3 in 2016, told Rest of World. “If I see a showroom in Hyderabad with a proper service center, then I might. I won’t trust [Musk] anymore.”
Bhawani’s pre-booking amount was refunded in February 2020 after his YouTube video about canceling his Tesla order garnered attention. He also posted about his ordeal with getting a refund in a couple of posts on X. “Someone just let me skip the whole queue and gave me the refund to make me silent,” he said. “I found that normal people who canceled were not given refunds, and only influencers or people with [a] blue tick those days were refunded.”
In 2016, Tesla’s move to open pre-bookings for the Model 3 in India was received with much excitement. Within hours, several prominent tech and business leaders in the country had booked a Tesla, and posted about it on social media. Since then, Musk has set many dates for when the company will enter India: in the summer of 2017, sometime in 2019, and “as soon as humanly possible” in mid-2023. The carmaker even registered an Indian subsidiary in Bengaluru in January 2021, but there is still no official channel to buy a Tesla car directly from the company in India.
When Musk announced his plan to visit India earlier this year, many anticipated that Tesla would finally start talking about manufacturing in the country. However, just two days before the scheduled trip, Musk called it off, owing to “very heavy Tesla obligations.” He made it to neighboring China just a week later.
“People who booked around eight years ago aren’t the ones to fret on [the] $1,000 amount,” Yugal Joshi, partner at global research firm Everest Group, told Rest of World. But delays in rumored investments — in manufacturing cars, in setting up a gigafactory — and the recent cancellation of Musk’s India trip coupled with his “closeness to China” are complicating matters in an already uncertain environment, he said. “It is hard to estimate the arrival of Tesla cars on Indian roads unless there is clarity on tariffs.”
Until a couple of years ago, Tesla’s website showed a cancellation button when a prospective buyer logged in. But that option was “taken away” and replaced with an email ID, according to Nikhil Chaudhary, co-founder of a 5-year-old online community called Tesla Club India.
Tesla Club India, which has more than 18,600 followers on X and hundreds of members on its WhatsApp group, routinely receives queries from people about how to cancel their bookings, Chaudhary told Rest of World.
Some prospective buyers have been pushed to track down Tesla employees on LinkedIn to move their cancellations along.
Varun Krishnan, founder of tech blog FoneArena, claims to be the first person to book the Model 3 in India. He told Rest of World he got his $1,000 refund in January 2022, after months of following up with Tesla employees in Hong Kong and California.
Tesla’s refund, after adjusting for inflation, should amount to $1,300 in 2024. But the company continues to refund $1,000.
“We joke about how much that $1,000 would’ve been worth had we invested in Tesla stock instead,” said Gondal, who now drives the Audi e-tron. In April 2016, Tesla’s share was priced $16 apiece. It now trades at around $160.
“Owning a Tesla makes you look cool and stand out. People with money can spend a fortune just for these two aspects.”
For years, Tesla’s pain point in India has been the exorbitant import duty, which nearly doubles the price of the cars. On March 15, the Indian government proposed a reduced import duty of 15% on cars costing $35,000 at 8,000 units a year, as long as manufacturers set up local production within three years.
According to a Financial Times report, Tesla is sending U.S. employees to scout a location to set up a gigafactory in India worth up to $3 billion. Rest of World reached out to Tesla’s press email as well as an India sales manager, Ankit Kesarwani, but did not receive a response.
Tesla is “looking for a liberalized duty regime as well because it’s a huge undertaking they’re doing,” Mahesh Murthy, founder of venture capital fund Seedfund and digital marketing firm Pinstorm, told Rest of World. Murthy pre-booked two Model 3 cars in 2016 and has not sought a refund, as he believes that Tesla is bullish on India but the circumstances haven’t so far aligned.
According to Murthy, there’s been “intense lobbying” by members of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, an association of domestic vehicle makers, to keep Tesla out. SIAM did not respond to Rest of World’s requests for comment at the time of publishing.
Ankur Bisen, senior partner at consulting firm Technopak, told Rest of World that Tesla’s standing in the Indian EV ecosystem is not the same as eight years ago because there are multiple viable options in the market now.
“2016 was a very different time, a different era as far as EV maturity is concerned. Beyond Tesla, we didn’t know anything about the EV space, right?” he said. “But today … the [Indian] government itself has come out with an EV report; there’s a lot of focus on two-wheeler EVs; Tata has taken a very bold stance on EVs and so have other auto manufacturers.”
According to Everest Group’s Joshi, Indians’ obsession with Tesla aligns with the global trend. Tesla “was ahead of its peers with its minimalist design, features, technology adoption, and focus on driving experience,” he said. “Owning a Tesla makes you look cool and stand out. People with money can spend a fortune just for these two aspects.”
Fans argue that Tesla has better range than most electric vehicles. German-made EVs from the likes of Audi and BMW, according to Arun Bhat, another co-founder of Tesla Club India, are internal combustion engine vehicles converted into EVs. “Luxury for me doesn’t only mean leather seats. [Tesla’s core technology] is leaps and bounds ahead of anything available in the market,” he told Rest of World. Tesla’s over-the-air software updates make it worth the hype, according to the Tesla Club founders. “Tesla’s still updating the 2014 Model S … well past their warranty time,” Chaudhary said.
Ananya Bhattacharya is a Rest of World reporter based in Mumbai, India.
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