Tesla EV: Will never give company-specific incentives in the EV sector, government officials said on Tesla's demand
India will never provide company or enterprise-specific incentives in the electric vehicle sector, a top government official said on Friday. The statement comes amid pressure from American electric car maker tesla for special concessions to set up its factory in the country.
The official said, that if the government has to consider giving incentives, it will be only for all those EV manufacturers and entrants who want to come to India.
The official said that inter-ministerial discussions have been held on US-based electric car manufacturer Tesla's demand for custom duty concession. But "we never" came to any conclusions on them.
In 2021, the US-based electric car maker sought a cut in import duty on electric vehicles (EVs) in India.
It had requested the government to standardize the tariff on electric cars to 40 percent regardless of the customs value.
Currently, cars imported as completely built units (CBUs) attract customs duty ranging from 60 percent to 100 percent depending on engine size and cost, insurance, and freight (CIF) value less or more than US$40,000.
The official said when asked if the government was considering specific concessions for tesla, "Never. It will never be company-specific. It will always be for all entities and companies. If any concessions are given, these will always be tied to very stringent performance criteria for everyone. It will never be anything enterprise-specific."
The official clarified that the fee concessions and other reports related to the company are "mostly speculative in nature".
"They have asked for some concessions but we never came to any conclusion. There has been no conclusion on that," the official said.
Last month, Commerce and industry Minister piyush goyal visited US-based electric vehicle major Tesla's manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. And said that the company will double its auto component imports from India.
Elon Musk, head of tesla Inc., the world's largest electric car maker, met prime minister Narendra Modi in New York in june and after the meeting, Musk said that he planned to visit india in 2024.
There are reports that india is considering giving customs duty concessions to tesla to set up a plant in the country. In September, Goyal said the company was looking at purchasing components worth about US$1.9 billion from india this year, up from US$1 billion in 2022.
Going forward, the demand for electric vehicles will increase and this will help in driving the growth of the sector. Earlier, the government had said that it was not considering formulating a separate policy to give incentives to Tesla. The company can apply to avail support measures under existing schemes like PLI for auto and advanced chemistry sales.
The government has launched production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes for Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) battery storage with an outlay of Rs 18,100 crore and a PLI scheme of Rs 26,058 crore for auto, auto-components, and drone industries.
In august 2021, Musk said that if tesla was successful in importing vehicles into the country for the first time, it could set up a manufacturing unit in India. He had said that tesla wants to launch its vehicles in india "but the import duties are the highest compared to any major country in the world!".
Currently, india imposes 100 percent import duty on fully imported cars with a CIF (cost, insurance, and freight) value of more than US$40,000 and 70 percent import duty on cars costing less than that.
Some domestic EV manufacturers are also against offering any kind of company-specific incentives.
click and follow Indiaherald WhatsApp channel