News
Why Tesla’s road in India may end before it even starts
This is a preview from our weekly newsletter. Each week I go ‘Beyond the News’ and handcraft a special edition that includes my thoughts on the biggest stories, why it matters, and how it could impact the future.
For years, Indian citizens have pleaded with Tesla CEO Elon Musk about the possibility of the electric automaker building and delivering cars in the country. India, a large landmass that 1.366 billion people call home, has less than 1% of its 30 million cars being of an electric nature, the most sustainable way to operate a vehicle. However, Tesla aims to change that with an imminent entrance into India’s market. The problem is, Tesla’s road in India may end before it even begins, which would be a massive blow to the company and its supporters in the country, as Tesla fans have waited several years for any indication that the car company would finally make an appearance in their section of the world. But, strict regulations and inside political interests are halting the possibility, and it has people wondering whether the world’s leading electric car company will ever make it to the Indian automotive market.
Many of you who read Teslarati on a daily basis know that we have been tracking the situation in India since the early days. In fact, one of my first articles of 2021, while I was recovering from COVID-19 in January, was about the potential that Tesla had in India’s markets. Additionally, it seemed that some potential customers would be ready to order their first all-electric cars from the Silicon Valley-based electric car company by the time Q2 rolled around. However, these pieces of outlook from Musk were not met because the Indian government has shut down any attempt Tesla has made toward getting their products in the country without the hefty import duties. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if they will be going away soon, either, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has heavily supported the idea of local manufacturing efforts, will not be forced to leave his post or enter another election until 2024.
While local manufacturing is something Americans take a lot of pride in, especially with cars, there are undoubtedly advantages to building things domestically. First, companies must hire workers in the country that the business is stationed in. Next, the increase of manufacturing jobs not only improves the American economy, but it also provides job security for the millions of employees that are on assembly lines 40 hours (or more) a week. There are a lot of strengths in manufacturing things locally, but there is also room for foreign entities to bring their products into a market, especially if they can benefit a foreign economy like it does a domestic one.
Musk with Modi in 2015
This is something Tesla argued in its proposal letter to the Indian government a few weeks ago when it requested a reduction in import duties. The increase in Tesla imports would actually assist the country in developing a charging infrastructure, which would supply jobs to the energy sector and provide cleaner transportation options in a country where the climate and environment struggle heavily with smog and emissions. Additionally, Tesla would need a dedicated Service Center in several locations as India is a large country. Not to mention, showrooms would also provide some employment opportunities.
Musk has said that Tesla will not bring a Gigafactory to India without some sort of data that would support healthy demand, something that is obviously needed to justify building a near-billion dollar production plant in India. Doing this through imports is a tremendous idea, but 60% import taxes on sub-$40k vehicles, and 100% duties on $40,000 and up vehicles just will not get this done. Plain and simple. There needs to be some movement on the Indian government’s end.
However, the Indian politicians fail to realize that the economic and environmental advantages to having EVs in the country will be a better move long term. Instead, they fail to budge or even consider reducing import duties of any kind, at least to this point, which appears to discourage Tesla’s requests to enter the market. It would be a shame if no solution can be reached after this problem because I believe that the environmental impacts alone will be something that not only the Indian people will enjoy, but the people of the world will begin to see eventually. As the air begins to clear and the smog disperses, there could be a relative ease on the strong relationship with gas and oil India has. Sustainable energy could make its way to India within the next few years, and Tesla could see the potential for its biggest Gigafactory yet in India.
Think about the economic benefits a large-scale production facility could provide. Not only would it produce well-paying jobs, but it would also create a lot of them.
There are so many benefits for both Tesla and India if a deal can be worked out. But can it? In my opinion, Tesla may be better off delaying the India operation for another few years, when a fresh administration and new ideas can be thrown around about Tesla entering the market. It seems, for now, there won’t be much of a possibility, and Tesla may be better off expanding its efforts in the UK or elsewhere.
With that being said, I would love to hear how you feel about this issue. Is Tesla wasting its time trying to get things going in India? Should it try again in a few years? Do you feel progress can be made? Why or why not? If not India, then where should Tesla consider a new Gigafactory?
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Elon Musk
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a recent podcast interview that Tesla is not who Americans should look at to beat Chinese carmakers.
The comments have sparked quite a bit of outrage from Tesla fans on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Farley said that Chinese automakers are better examples of how to beat competitors. He said (via the Rapid Response Podcast):
“If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great—but they really don’t have an updated vehicle. The best in the business for us, cost-wise and competition-wise, supply chain, manufacturing expertise, and the I.P. in the vehicle, was really BYD. In this next cycle of EV customers in the U.S., they want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles. But they want them at $30,000, not $50,000. Like the first inning, they want them affordably.”
Despite Farley’s synopsis, it is worth mentioning that Tesla had the best-selling passenger vehicle in the world last year, and in China in March, as the Model Y continued its global dominance over other vehicles.
Musk responded to Farley’s comments by stating:
“This is before Supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.”
This is before supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford cancels all-electric F-150 Lightning, announces $19.5 billion in charges
Instead, Ford is “doubling down on its affordable” EVs and said it would pivot from its previous plans.
Reaction from Tesla fans was pretty much how you would expect. Many said they have lost a lot of respect for Farley after his comments; others believe he is the last CEO anyone should be taking advice on EVs from.
Nevertheless, Farley’s plans are bold and brash; many consider Tesla the most ideal company to replicate EV efforts from. It will be interesting to see if Ford can rebound from this big adjustment, and hopefully, Farley’s plans to replicate efforts from BYD work out the way he hopes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to hold its Earnings Call for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday, and there are a lot of interesting things that are swirling around in terms of speculation from investors.
With the company’s executives, including CEO Elon Musk, answering a handful of questions that investors submit through the Say platform, fans want to know a lot of things about a lot of things.
These five questions come from Retail Investors, who are normal, everyday shareholders:
- When will we have the Optimus v3 reveal? When will Optimus production start, since we ended the Model S and Model X production earlier than mid-year? What’s the expected Optimus production rate exiting this year? What are the initial targeted skills?
- What milestones are you targeting for unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion beyond Austin this year, and how will that drive recurring revenue?
- How will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised Full Self-Driving?
- When do you expect Unsupervised Full Self-Driving to reach customer cars?
- When will Robotaxi expand past its current limited rollout?
Additionally, these are currently the three questions that are slated to be answered by Institutional Firms, which also answer a handful of questions during the call:
- Now that FSD has been approved in the Netherlands and is expected to launch across Europe this summer, can you discuss your Robotaxi strategy for the region?
- What enabled you to finish the AI5 tapeout early and were there any changes to the original vision? Last week, Elon said AI5 will go into Optimus and the Supercomputer, but one month ago said it would go into the Robotaxi. Has AI5 been dropped from the vehicle roadmap?
- Given the recent NHTSA incident filings, can you update us on the Robotaxi safety data? If safety validation remains the primary bottleneck, why not deploy thousands of vehicles to accelerate the removal of the safety driver?
The questions range through every current Tesla project, including FSD expansion and Optimus. However, many of the answers we will get will likely be repetitive answers we’ve heard in the past.
This is especially pertinent when the questions about when Unsupervised FSD will reach customer cars: we know Musk will say that it will happen this year. Is Tesla capable of that? Maybe. But a more transparent answer that is more revealing of a true timeline would be appreciated.
Hardware 3 owners are anxiously awaiting the arrival of FSD v14 Lite, which was promised to them last year for a release sometime this year.
The Earnings Call is set to take place on Wednesday at market close.
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
