As electric vehicles are making inroads in the Indian market, it seems that the US electric vehicle maker Tesla chief executive Elon Musk is high on the list of people various of the country's states want to set up shop in their region.
Several Indian states - including poll-bound Punjab - have invited Musk to set up a manufacturing plant for his company.
Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu invited the tech entrepreneur to the state to set up a manufacturing unit of Tesla, as the businessman said he was still “working through a lot of challenges with the government".
In July 2021, Musk tweeted “import duties on electric vehicles in the country are highest in the world by far”.
Then, in October 2021, news agency Reuters reported citing sources that top Tesla executives, including India's head of policy, Manuj Khurana, approached government officials in a closed-door meeting to demand that taxes be cut, arguing that they were too high.
According to the present tax structure, Tesla would have to pay 110 percent import tariff on its cheapest Model 3 car, which costs around $47,000 in the US market.