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Opinion: Tesla and India is the right thing at the wrong time
Tesla and India will not be working together any time soon, as new reports now indicate that Tesla has pulled its team responsible for entrance into the Indian market to other regions. Tesla and India might be a powerful one-two punch in the future, but in 2022, the two are just the right thing at the wrong time.
When Tesla first started making moves toward entering the Indian automotive market, there was a lot of excitement. The unbelievable potential of a partnership between the world’s leading electric car company and a government that primarily focuses on domestic manufacturing efforts, mainly due to the Make in India initiative, had people buzzing. However, there were still hoops to jump through. Any person with any sort of knowledge about India and cars knows that it is an expensive place to own one, especially if it was not built there. Getting cars from outside of India into the country doubles the cost of the vehicle on most occasions due to import duties. This is when Tesla started to realize how difficult this whole process might be.
Tesla places its India entry on hold after failing to secure lower import taxes: report
In routine negotiations, even with companies and governments, there is always a brief standoff period to see who will budge first. The hypothetical game of chicken can be magnified when dealing with two large entities, but eventually, something happens where someone makes a move, and things start to come together. I thought a great, recent, and relevant example of this would be the Elon Musk-Twitter buyout, where, as the board of the platform mozied over the Tesla CEO’s offer, new developments were few and far between, as expected. Nothing was going to move forward until someone budged.
The issue is that sometimes people choose not to budge because their needs in a particular deal are non-negotiable. When the needs of both sides are non-negotiable, it complicates the entire ordeal, and this is what made the Tesla-India deal stagnate: Two large entities that had specific requirements to make something happen. Neither was asking for a small thing, so it is not necessarily unreasonable that Tesla put its plans for India on hold.
Tesla needed to test demand for its cars. It would only be able to do this by building them in Fremont, California, Austin, Texas, Brandenburg, Germany, or Shanghai, China, and then shipping them to India. The problem with this system was it would not be an accurate representation of what Tesla might be able to sell in the market, as the vehicles would still be subjected to massive import duties that would double the cost of the car in some cases. Only a small percentage of the population would be able to afford that, and with very little EV infrastructure in India, it made the company’s products even less attractive. Tesla was effectively stuck between a rock and a hard place because it had an interest in building and selling cars in India, it just needed to confirm that the people of India wanted to buy the cars. Indian government officials rarely offered commentary that was indicative of a willingness to budge.
India wanted Tesla to commit to building a new Gigafactory in their country, which would align with the government’s focus on domestic manufacturing efforts and would likely give officials enough to pull back import duties for Tesla. However, Tesla could not commit to this: there was no indication that demand would be high enough to justify an entire factory, and Tesla was not sure it would be able to export vehicles from the Indian factory to other countries. Given the economic situations across the world during the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, neither entity would be able to budge from their needs.
India and Tesla were the right thing, just at the wrong time. Given the extreme demands that both Tesla and Indian officials needed, it was best to not beat a dead horse any longer and move on from the potential partnership, at least temporarily. Tesla does have a lot of potential in India, but it cannot justify purchasing massive land plots for a new facility, it cannot justify spending millions more on showrooms and service centers, and it can not adequately test the want for its vehicles with massive import taxes trailing behind every car sent to the market.
Try again in a few years, hopefully.
I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.
News
Tesla Optimus is learning martial arts in new video teasing capabilities
For the past few months, Tesla has been refining its capabilities and making some serious progress on what Optimus is capable of. This morning, Musk released a new video showing Optimus learning Kung Fu, perhaps its most impressive feat yet.
Tesla Optimus is learning martial arts, a new video released by CEO Elon Musk shows, a crazy development and advancement in the robotics project the company has been working on for a few years.
Optimus has been a major focus of Tesla for the past several years, especially as Musk has said he believes it will be the biggest product of all time and could be the biggest contributor to the company’s valuation.
For the past few months, Tesla has been refining its capabilities and making some serious progress on what Optimus is capable of. This morning, Musk released a new video showing Optimus learning Kung Fu, perhaps its most impressive feat yet:
Tesla Optimus learning Kung Fu pic.twitter.com/ziEuiiKWn7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2025
The video shows Optimus working with a Kung Fu teacher, known as a Shifu, going through what appears to be some sort of routine of combinations. It’s quite impressive to see the fluidity of the movements and Optimus’s ability to keep up with Shifu.
Tesla has been “working hard” to scale Optimus production, Musk said last week, a project that has obviously confronted both AI and manufacturing teams with a variety of challenges.
The plan is to have an annual production run-rate of one million units by 2030, and there were plans to build 5,000 units this year.
Musk still believes Optimus will make up roughly 80 percent of Tesla’s value. In January, he said it would be “overwhelmingly the value of the company.”
Tesla plans to launch the Gen 3 version of Optimus soon, and although a video of a new-look prototype was released by Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, the company’s frontman stated that this was not what the next-generation prototype would look like.
Elon Musk confirms Tesla has never shown Optimus V3 design yet
This video seems to show there is still significant progress being made on the Optimus project, and it will be perhaps one of the most impressive humanoid robots available to consumers in the coming years.
Elon Musk
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 gets new release date, Elon Musk details
“Last minute bug cropped up with V14. Released is pushed to Monday, but that gives us time to add a few more features.”
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving version 14 has gotten a new release date after new details from CEO Elon Musk opened up some new perspectives on the suite.
Originally slated for an “early wide release” of v14 this past week, then a launch of v14.1 and v14.2 this week and next week, respectively, delays arose after Tesla’s Autopilot team found some issues within the software.
Tesla FSD V14 set for early wide release next week: Elon Musk
Musk detailed on X this morning that a “last minute bug” appeared before release, which has now pushed FSD v14’s release back to this Monday:
Last minute bug cropped up with V14. Released is pushed to Monday, but that gives us time to add a few more features.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2025
Musk also said the delay would give Tesla the ability to “add a few more features,” which seems like an added advantage, although he did not provide any additional details on what these features could be.
In classic Musk fashion, he has teased the capabilities of this version of the FSD suite since it became public knowledge that Tesla was working on it. He said that it is the second most important update for the AI/Autopilot team since FSD v12.
V14 will have a parameter count that is ten times what previous iterations were, which should provide more accuracy and a more human-like operation.
🚨 Tesla is making “significant improvements” in FSD software and plans to increase parameter count by roughly 10x from what people are currently experiencing pic.twitter.com/r974W6ToGi
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 23, 2025
Musk has said v14 “feels alive” and has used the word “sentient” to describe its performance. The goal with the new FSD rollouts is to eliminate as many interventions as possible, making it as close to human driving as possible.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) just got a weird price target boost from a notable bear just a day after it announced its strongest quarter in terms of vehicle deliveries and energy deployments.
JPMorgan raised its price target on Tesla shares from $115 to $150. It maintained its ‘Underweight’ rating on the stock.
Despite Tesla reporting 497,099 deliveries, about 12 percent above the 443,000 anticipated from the consensus, JPMorgan is still skeptical that the company can keep up its momentum, stating most of its Q3 strength came from leaning on the removal of the $7,500 EV tax credit, which expired on September 30.
Tesla hits record vehicle deliveries and energy deployments in Q3 2025
The firm said Tesla benefited from a “temporary stronger-than-expected industry-wide pull-forward” as the tax credit expired. It is no secret that consumers flocked to the company this past quarter to take advantage of the credit.
The bump will need to be solidified as the start of a continuing trend of strong vehicle deliveries, the firm said in a note to investors. Analysts said that one quarter of strength was “too soon to declare Tesla as having sustainably returned to growth in its core business.”
JPMorgan does not anticipate Tesla having strong showings with vehicle deliveries after Q4.
There are two distinct things that stick out with this note: the first is the lack of recognition of other parts of Tesla’s business, and the confusion that surrounds future quarters.
JPMorgan did not identify Tesla’s strength in autonomy, energy storage, or robotics, with autonomy and robotics being the main focuses of the company’s future. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving and Robotaxi efforts are incredibly relevant and drive more impact moving forward than vehicle deliveries.
Additionally, the confusion surrounding future delivery numbers in quarters past Q3 is evident.
Will Tesla thrive without the EV tax credit? Five reasons why they might
Tesla will receive some assistance from deliveries of vehicles that will reach customers in Q4, but will still qualify for the credit under the IRS’s revised rules. It will also likely introduce an affordable model this quarter, which should have a drastic impact on deliveries depending on pricing.
Tesla shares are trading at $422.40 at 2:35 p.m. on the East Coast.
Tesla Optimus is learning martial arts in new video teasing capabilities
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 gets new release date, Elon Musk details
Tesla just got a weird price target boost from a notable bear
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