The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Days after deferring India visit, Musk lands in China
TESLA CEO Elon Musk on Sunday arrived in China, barely a week after he cited Tesla-related “obligations” to defer his much-anticipated India visit to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and founders of an Indian space startup. Amid a sharp decline in production of Tesla units and questions raised by its inventors, Musk is expected to discuss the rollout of Tesla’s Full Self-driving software and permission to transfer data overseas with Chinese government officials, news agency Reuters reported.
Musk has been looking to obtain approval to transfer data collectedin china to train algorithms for its autonomous driving technologies. the company since 2021 has been storing all data collected by its Chinese fleet in Shanghai as required by Chinese regulators.
While New Delhi has only rolled out an electric vehicle policy (Ev) last month, largely to accommodate the Texas-based car maker, Tesla operates its biggest plant globally in Shanghai, producing over 1 million units of Model 3 and Model Y cars a year.
Chinese state media reported that musk met chinese premier li Q ian gin beijing on sunday during which lit old musk that tesla’ s development in China could be regarded as a successful example of Us-china economic and trade cooperation. Tesla has sold more than 1.7 million cars in china since it entered the market a decade ago. Moreover, China is also crucial for Tesla as it supplies its cars to New Zealand, Australia and Europe.
Reuters reported that Musk’s visit coincides with the Beijing auto show, which opened last week and ends on May 4. Musk’s itinerary Sunday afternoon also included a meeting with Ren
Hongbin, a government official who heads the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, the organiser of the Beijing auto show, the Chinese state media reported.
Prior to Musk’s visit to India, policy makers had kick started the consultation process to release guidelines for the ev policy. hours after musk announced on april 20 that he is postponing his visit to India, Union Finance Minister N irma las it ha ram an had said that India is making policies to ensure big companies are attracted to India for investment, especially in light of industries expressing concerns around China.
To attract investments into the EV space, the Centre has lowered import duties to 15 per cent from 100 percent for models of electric cars with a combined cost, insurance, freight prices of $35,000 or above for five years, a key precondition for Tesla’s entry to test out the “market potential” in India.
Earlier, the Centre is learnt to have turned down China-based
BYD’S proposal to build a $1-billion EV plant in partnership with Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd in June last year. The rejection of the proposal was in line with India’s broad policy to filter Chinese investments in crucial sectors in India.
A vibrant ev ecosystem is part of India’ s policy push to help reduceextreme dependence on imported crude oil. india’ s oil import dependency for FY24 climbed to 87.7 per cent from 87.4 per cent in FY23, according to official data. Cutting costly oil imports continues to be a key focus area for the government, and it also found a mention in the BJP manifesto for the 2024 Lo kS ab ha polls. A similarstrategy was seen in the case of mobile manufacturing where Apple and other global mobile phone manufacturers are receiving incentives under the Production Linked Incentive Scheme to begin making phones in india and help create a broader manufacturing base in the country.