NewsGate Press Network

It was a short and sweet Tweet posted by Adar Poonawalla to Elon Musk on Sunday the 8th of May 2022 that set the debating society into motion with proponents heavily favoring Tesla EV to come to India.

Mr Poonawalla, the CEO of the Serum Institute of India (SII) said if Elon Musk, the maker of electric vehicles Tesla decides to invest in India it would be his best investment yet. That is if he decides.

Musk was recently in the news after he made a successful takeover bid totaling $ 44B for Twitter. In the past he had stated that in order to bring Tesla to India, Modi government should reduce import duties on electric cars.

The Sunday’s Twitter post by Adar Poonawalla while tagging Elon Musk stated  “ just in case you don’t end up buying @Twitter, do look at investing some of that capital in INDIA for high-quality large-scale manufacturing of @Tesla cars.”

Poonawalla further said, “I assure you this will be the best investment you’ll ever make.”

It may be recalled that last month, union transport minister Nitin Gadkari had publicly stated there is no problem in Tesla coming to India but only condition is ‘no import of cars from China’.

In August 2021, Elon Musk had said that US electric car maker Tesla may set up a plant to manufacture their EVs. But given the fact that import duties on cars in India are one of the steepest in the world, Elon Musk had indicated this issue should be resolved at the earliest.

At present, India charges 100 per cent import duty on fully imported cars with CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight) value more than $ 40,000 (USD). And for imported cars less than $40,00, the duty slab is 60 per cent.