Tesla
The pioneer of the electric car market, Tesla, is all set to enter the Indian market and dominate the Indian roads this year. With the company commencing its production with its prominent Model 3, here is all you need to know about :
Tesla Inc. was founded in 2003 by the engineers' Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in San Carlos, California. It was originally called Tesla Motors, a name the company changed in 2017. The company is named after the 19th-century wonder, Nikola Tesla, as a tribute to him. Although Musk has long been the face of Tesla, he did not join the company until 2004. He invested $30 million into the company and became the chairman of its Board of Directors. The Roadster, Tesla’s flagship sports car, made waves when it was released in 2008.
In 2014, Tesla announced the conversion of their patents to open-source patents in the spirit of the open-source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology. This means that Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use their technology. Such a move is capable of transforming the entire automobile industry of the world as they can access Tesla’s patented technologies and improve their cars.
If we compare a Tesla to any of India’s own electric cars, we can see a huge difference in almost every performance and design standards.
Let’s have a comparison between a Tesla Model 3 and Tata Nexon EV:
Model 3 Nexon EV
Top speed 260km/h 120 km/h
Battery 50KWH 30KWH
Range 402.3 Km/charge 312 Km/charge
Acceleration 3.1 sec 9.9 sec
(0–100Km/hr) (0–96 km/h)
Time to full 5hr 45 min 8 hrs
Charge
Price 60 Lakhs 13.99–16.40Lakhs
(expected)
Tesla Model 3 offers several other features such as autopilot, gigantic screen, Automatic emergency brakes(AEB), Sportscar design, automatic lane changing feature and many more. However, some of these features like the AutoPilot will be extremely tough to provide to the Indian market as congested roads in the country will be a challenge just too difficult for the AutoPilot system to tackle.
The best thing about having a Tesla is that, like a mobile phone, it updates itself frequently and these system updates make the car better over time.
Tesla is expected to launch 5 cars in the year 2021–2022. Tesla Model 3, Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X are launching soon in India at an estimated price of Rs. 60.00 Lakh, Rs. 1.50 Crore and Rs. 2.00 Crore, respectively.
For any car costing over Rs. 27 lakh, the import duty applied to it is 100 per cent. For anything less than that it is 60 per cent, so yes, Tesla will be expensive to buy in India.
However, if an assembly plant were to be set up, then the import duty would be around 10 to 15 per cent and given that the Government has recently reduced GST on EVs from 12 per cent to 5 per cent, the incentive will help give electric cars some traction and a much-needed momentum. This will make the cars much more affordable.
We believe that Tesla’s entry in India is capable of doing wonders in leading the fuel-based automobile industry to an electric-powered future. Tesla has established itself as the best electric car manufacturer there is and if made affordable, it will be one of the best in its segment!
