<\/p>\n
Tesla is struggling mightily in India, reportedly selling just 350 Model Y’s in India since it debuted last year, according to Reuters. But now the company is debuting a new version of the Model Y to help goose sales in the burgeoning EV market. <\/p>\n
Pricing due to heavy tariffs means Tesla still has a lot of work to do to succeed on the subcontinent, but CEO Elon Musk arguably isn’t making it easy for his company.<\/p>\n
Last year, as Tesla was looking to break into the Indian market, Musk got into a back-and-forth of insults with an Indian-origin billionaire and amplified a controversial post claiming, “If Indians set foot in England and become English. Then the English who set foot in India became Indian. Therefore the English did not rule India…”<\/p>\n
I won’t waste space explaining the difference between colonization and immigration because none of TheStreet’s readers are that obtuse, but safe to say Tesla has struggled mightily so far in India, and only time will tell if an expensive new version of the Y will help change things.<\/p>\n
Tesla Model Y L has more range and more seats. <\/p>\n
Photo by NurPhoto on Getty Images<\/p>\n
Tesla brings new Model Y to boost sales in India<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Tesla launched a new six-seater version of the Model Y that is popular around the globe, just not in India. <\/p>\n
The Model Y L has third row seating, between 500 and 681 km of range and a price tag of about Rs 61.99 lakh (6.2 million rupees or $66,000), according to Overdrive Magazine. While the $66,000 price tag for an all-wheel-drive Model Y seems like a bargain compared to the regular Model Y’s $64,000 price, the average price of an electric vehicle in India is currently\u00a0much lower. For instance, BYD’s Model Y competitor, the BYD Sealion 7, costs the equivalent of about $53,000 to $59,000 USD there.<\/p>\n
For perspective, Tesla introduced the Model Y L in China last year at a starting price of about $49,700.<\/p>\n
Between mid-July, when it entered the Indian market, and February,\u00a0Tesla received orders for just over 600 vehicles\u00a0in the country, according to media reports.<\/p>\n
Related: Ford CEO Jim Farley takes unexpected turn on EVs<\/p>\n
The reason for Tesla’s higher prices is the nearly 100% tariff it pays on imported vehicles.<\/p>\n
In February, the U.S. and India announced that they had reached a \u201cframework for an interim agreement\u201d on trade that included India eliminating or reducing tariffs with an emphasis on U.S. food and agricultural products, including dried distillers\u2019 grains, red sorghum for animal feed, soybean oil, and other U.S. staple crops. <\/p>\n
Officials also said that India would cut tariffs on high-end\u00a0American cars\u00a0to 30% from as high as 110%. India will also eliminate tariffs on Harley-Davidson motorcycles under the interim agreement.<\/p>\n
However, India did not make any concessions on electric vehicles, despite the government’s claim that\u00a0it wants to boost EVs from the current 5% to 30% of the country\u2019s automotive sector by 2030. <\/p>\n
So far, Musk has unsuccessfully lobbied the Indian government for years to lower its tariffs on EVs, but the government has balked, stating that if Tesla wants unfettered access to the market, it needs to build the vehicles in India.<\/p>\n
Tesla recently scrapped plans to build a factory there, opting instead to ship vehicles from China.<\/p>\n
Stakes for Tesla \u201ccould not be higher,\u201d say BNP Paribas analysts<\/p>\n
Tesla is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings results on Wednesday, April 22, after the closing bell. <\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Tesla shared it was pulling the plug on the Model S and Model X and would replace that production capacity with Optimus humanoid robots as part of the company\u2019s plan to build 1 million of them per year.<\/p>\n
That plan may worry investors, since there is currently no discernible market for humanoid robots, and selling 10,000 of them in a year would be impressive. But the vehicle models the company is getting rid of haven\u2019t sold, either, so it may be a wash in the end.<\/p>\n
Still, analysts at BNP Paribas aren\u2019t taking this Tesla experiment lightly because the company is also spending a lot of money to make it happen.<\/p>\n
According to BNP, the other models that combined delivered 16,000 vehicles in the quarter benefited from\u00a0demand that was artificially inflated, so once again, moving off of them makes sense.<\/p>\n
However, Musk has made some pretty big promises about what Optimus and Robotaxi can do, and the firm says it\u2019s time for Tesla to \u201cput up or shut up\u201d in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe view 1Q26\u2019s deliveries \u2014 modestly below consensus \u2014 as yet another input to the TSLA stock\u2019s challenged setup for this year, with EGS storage deployments also meaningfully light,\u201d BNP analysts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA critical factor to this year is the Co.\u2019s progress rate in its active Robotaxi fleet, which is climbing yet still limited to just two cities. The core catalysts for TSLA center on its ability to show meaningful progress toward its\u00a0AI-defined future, inclusive of Robotaxi fleet expansion (targeting seven new cities in 1H26) and commercialized production of Optimus by year-end.\u201d<\/p>\n
BNP reiterated its underperform rating and $280 price target on Tesla shares.<\/p>\n
Related: Tesla Full Self-Driving faces its biggest challenge yet<\/p>\n
#Tesla #takes #big #swing #model #major #market<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tesla is struggling mightily in India, reportedly selling just 350 Model Y’s in India since…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[259],"tags":[237,2313,33,1193,3553,2610,426],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4558"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}