Tesla, Model 3, By Elon Musla

Tesla has unveiled its most affordable car, Model 3, on the last day of March at a special event. The car will go to production early next year and the deliveries will begin by the end of 2017. CEO Elon Musk has also revealed his plans to launch the Model 3 in other potential markets, the biggest of which is India (population wise). The following tweet by Elon Musk tweeted just before the event tells that Tesla is mostly targeting Asia Pacific, South America and Africa, countries where the affordable price of this model alone could drive numbers. The base price of the Model 3 has been set at $ 35,000. So it will translate into a little more than ₹ 23 lakh in India. Taxes and customs duty will be additional however. For these new markets that
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Paytm, re-tweeted Musk’s initial remark, while Vishal Gondal, the founder of GOQii tweeted to Musk asking, “Where/when can I pre-order for India Red colour?” In fact, these four have already shelled out the $ 1,000 booking amount in India. Model 3 is rightly priced and designed for the Indian neo rich. And there are enough of them to be found these days thanks to the start-up boom we have seen over the last decade or
Most car buyers fall below the ₹ 10 lakh mark when it comes to affordability. So a buyer of the inexpensive Suzuki cars cannot be expected to upgrade to Tesla’s Model 3 any day of his life. Hence, the numbers are going to be low and their growth, slow. Slower than the US or China.
Further, the biggest hurdle will be the lack of supercharger network or the charging infrastructure in India. Tesla aims to double the number of places offering supercharging to about 7,200 worldwide by the end of 2017. At the above mentioned event Musk also said that there will also be an India-wide Supercharger network. But he didn’t give any timeline on this. Thus, most of the charging will have to be done at home which might prove expensive and unreliable in India. Thus, Tesla will have to match the number of models it is planning to sell in India to the number of superchargers it will install under its expansion plan.
Conclusion:
There is some time before the Model 3 will be delivered to the Indian customers. Tesla said that, once the car is ready, it would begin fulfilling orders in the U.S. first, before moving on to Europe before tackling other regions. So, it is to be seen how Tesla utilizes this time to build the charging infrastructure in India. If it does it well, the success of Model 3 in India is a