engineering not feature engineering which is what it is used to doing global manufacturers such as daimler and even others have tried to do it but failed a senior executive of a leading automaker with ev plans said adding but if it does competition in india will be more interestingtesla can leverage indias attractive large component base in the country to localise and pare prices further a veteran in the car business who has run south korean auto giants estimates that building an assembly plant would not require more than usd 100 million and they can easily buy global supply chain tyres seats and other components from india where it is already a global player the company already sources differential gears from sona for the globe and other components from sandhaars mexico unitbut india has competition south korea being a frontrunner it has a large domestic market is accelerating towards evs has an fta with the us and access to fast growing east asian markets in april south korean president yoon suk yeol met musk in washington at the latters request to set up a gigafactory in the country and the korean government is on record on its intention to offer tesla major concessionsthen there is indonesia where tesla has been looking at setting up a battery and ev plant leveraging the huge availability of local nickel mines a key raw material for batteries that it wants to secure in mexico it has already announced its sixth gigafactoryso what does india offer the indian luxury car market is very small at around 3700038000 ice internal combustion h engine cars which grew at over 50 per cent in 2022 over the previous year much quicker than the overall market but in 2022 only 40000 electric cars were sold mostly by tata motorsbut analysts suggest that the nature of this market could change dramatically in three or four years with car makers from hyundai m g motors volkswagen tatas ola electric byd and volvo lining up launches some 10 to 15 of the 38 million car market would be electric still less than the governments target of 30 per cent but reasonable enough to attract new investmenttesla could also negotiate with the government for the production linked incentive pli scheme for electric vehicles and components by tying up with component makers and making india a hub for its global supply chainahead of that however the government has requested the tesla team to talk to successful global players who are making india into a manufacturing base it will also have to rebuild its india team since most of those involved in the earlier proj ect earlier have left or moved to the usstarting from scratch tesla could learn from the experience of apple which was initially snubbed by the government for its proposal to sell secondhand refurbished mobiles in india since then after months of tough negotiations it has become a model of the pli schemesource business standard by etauto desk etauto