Elon Musk Postpones India Visit, Says Later This Year

Tesla chief Elon Musk was to visit India scheduled for today, 21 April to meet Indian PM Narendra Modi & also meet other startups operating in the field of Space exploration. In a turn of event, citing 'very heavy obligations' he announced the delay.

Elon tweets, "Unfortunately, very heavy Tesla obligations require that the visit to India be delayed, but I do very much look forward to visiting later this year."

Elon Musk's visit to India, originally scheduled for April 21 and 22, has been postponed.

He needs to attend Tesla's earnings call on April 23, which may be the reason for the delay.

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He had met the Prime Minister in the US June last year and assured that Tesla will enter the Indian market "as soon as humanly possible". His visit was anticipated to have come with an announcement of an investment in India at the range of $2-$3 billion, mostly for building a new factory, and other necessary infrastructure to make & sell Tesla EV's.

At the moment, India's EV market is relatively small but growing at a rapid pace, dominated by local carmaker Tata Motors. Total sales of EVs in India made a mere 2% of total car sales in 2023, but the government is targeting 30% of new cars to be EVs starting 2030 which opens up a great opportunity for a greater market penetration.

Musk's visit to India has come at a stage when Tesla is battling a slowed-down sales in it's major markets inside the United States and also in China. This has also resulted in an announcement of layoffs affecting 10% of its workforce earlier this week.

The details of Elon Musk's India visit has been very closely-guarded, with very little info other than his public tweets on his social media platform X that he would be meeting PM Modi in India.

Earlier, Elon Musk had opposed India's high import taxes for EVs and was constantly lobbying for a change via his tweets. Recently, in March, Indian government unveiled a new EV policy lowering import taxes to 15% from as high as 100% on some categories of EV market, if only the carmaker would invest at least $500 million and sets up a factory locally in India.

Recently, Tesla was already begun scouting for showroom space in New Delhi and Mumbai, with its Berlin factory producing right-hand drive cars aiming to export to India starting later this year, according to Reuters report.