Re: Video: Driving the Tesla Model 3 in California! Quote:
Originally Posted by karan561 Also, as i mentioned in the video that many people (including some BHPians living in India) had pre booked (online) the Model 3. However there is no response/update from them about when they will get their model (In India) or will they get an refund ? |
Yeah, it seems like Elon is not taking India as seriously (and rightly so I guess considering the low volume he'll get out of India). He's responded a couple of times to tweets about India launch, and his latest one on August 1 hasn't been very encouraging.
I really hope something changes within the next 5 years as long as Nitin Gadkari has the Transportation ministry, he is very pro-EV and maybe with the right push he could propose some modifications to the taxation on foreign EVs (possibly reducing the import duty for EV CBUs in particular). As for manufacturing, I don't know how much localization % is required for CKDs, but if zero is okay, it might be easy to go the CKD route. If there need to be locally sourced components according to law, then it is very difficult for Tesla as they are very tightly vertically integrated as opposed to the rest of the world's car manufacturers (meaning a lot of parts that would traditionally come from suppliers, in Tesla's case are built right in the factory where the cars are finally assembled). Thus they would have to significantly alter their manufacturing process/ design which would make it an even harder decision for Tesla to commit to. Going further, the technical competency for the core components (example batteries, LCDs, electronics) simply does not exist in India yet (China has it in spades), so anything other than 100% imported CKD sounds difficult to me.
The right person needs to whisper either in Gadkari's ear to make some loophole/exception, or in Elon's ear to build an assembly plant in India for CKD unit assembly. Barring that, Tesla will just have to CBU it, volume be damned. But with low volume, there is no case for a Supercharger network, and I don't think Tesla has entered any market where they haven't built Superchargers. It just doesn't make sense to sell a car in a country where you cannot at least theoretically traverse the entire country using DC fast charging (of course, third parties in India can come up with their own network but a Tesla without the Supercharger network doesn't complete the picture in my opinion). The upcoming Bharat charging standards seem to be compatible with Teslas from my limited reading on the topic, and also our government is probably going to push for CCS charging as well (which is the European default), so third party charging should be sorted. But I digress.
I would hang on to my reservation if I had one. I really hope they launch in India soon, or I'm going to have to start looking at LHD-import-to-India laws in a few years (I hear its a total no-no legally)!
@Karan: Off topic question, what do you use for audio capture for your videos? Do you go with the internal mics with your camera (incidentally what do you shoot with), or do you have a wired/wireless mic setup? I'm looking at external mics for my GoPro Hero 5 Black.
Last edited by Harshal.Bhosale : 12th August 2019 at 11:07.
|