Tesla’s India letdown spurs discounts on unsold Model Ys

So... their great entry into India only resulted in 200 sales. This makes their German plant touting how they were fulfilling orders across a huge number of regions seem a bit comical. Size of the orders matters. At 110% duties, I believe that would mean the $70k price tag would create $33,333 in revenue for Tesla, which I imagine is extremely low margins for a model Y. Therefore, a $2200 USD discount is actually a fairly large hit on their profit for the sale of the remaining vehicles. Given the logistics and administration for opening sales to a new market, I can't imagine selling only 200 vehicles is generating a profit for them overall in the region. Even though India has over 1.4 billion people, their annual new car sales are extremely low. In 2024, it was only 4.27 million new vehicles total. It's a tiny market. And I imagine a good chunk of those sales were lower priced vehicles. So long as that duty is in place, I can't see this market ever growing all that for Tesla. IMO, opening sales to India was meant as nothing more than another stock pump. It was probably bullish news... before anyone realized how few sales it would result in.

Elon schlong suckers will spin this in the most bullish way possible. Eagerly awaiting their dog shit takes on this.

Wow 200 units sold! That's a formula for success!

Wasn't India supposed to replace the sales lost after Europe decided it had enough of Musk's blatant fascism? lol

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Nah, they'll just ignore it.

Seems like South Korea and the Middle East took up a large chunk of their lost European, Chinese, and US demand.

I seem to remember something about India requiring companies to have a plant within the country in order to get duty exclusions. Would need to look deeper into that though.

Since everything with Tesla is *potential*, laced with an absurd amount of hype around fulfilling it, you get that disconnect of "we could sell a billion!" Followed by the reality of 200....

Great for those profits lol

It’s funny because it was completely clear to everyone including Tesla that this was going to be tiny in volume. Only Wall Street idiots with zero understanding of the automotive markets and armchair expert Tesla sheeple would ever have been stupid enough to think this would have an impact on Tesla volume worth mentioning within the next 8 to 10 years. And please, dear sheeple: - I know there’s a lot of people living in India, and even plenty who could very easily afford a car such as Tesla (or any non-cheap car) _if they wanted to_. Which they don’t - India have increased their number of charging points to a seemingly large number, but it’s still completely unsuitable for electric cars because almost all of those are slow chargers, and it’s a _huge country_ so many != density - Yes they have pledged to have a gazillion BEVs on the road and build the bigliest charging network in the world, but their grid won’t allow them to and they have zero initiatives to build it up.

Yes, especially if you have Chinese content. A way to reduce it is to build a CKD plant, but then you will still have large duties on parts and of course you need a certain scale to make it feasible, which Tesla will have trouble to achieve.

I mean, there's tiny... and then there's 200 sales total in half a year. India has bigger pollution problems than cars. Namely their ICE scooters and motorcycles; especially those without catalytic converters. I know they're working to replace those with electric, but that should be the priority. They also use significantly less energy to travel than cars do, which will help with the grid situation. They also definitely need to build out a lot more renewable energy in the nation to replace their coal power plant situation. Over 70% of their energy comes from Coal. When it comes to cars, I imagine they're also running a lot without catalytic converters that need to be quickly replaced. Although, given how over populated the nation is... the environmental psychopath in me may question doing that... Fun fact... for as polluted as India is, their people generally create less emissions per capita than wealthier nations. I think they only produce about 1/10th of the GHG emissions of what the average American produces. They have over 4.2x the US population, but produce less than half as much GHG emissions.

>Fun fact... for as polluted as India is, their people generally create less emissions per capita than wealthier nations. I think they only produce about 1/10th of the GHG emissions of what the average American produces. They have over 4.2x the US population, but produce less than half as much GHG emissions. It's about 1/7th now, so yeah much lower per capita. But they also have around a third the land mass of the US and much worse emissions controls for pollutants besides CO2. Really high population density and widespread poverty is good for lowering CO2 emissions per capita but not so good for air quality.

Even though you're probably right about the 2200 being a significant hit to tesla. Is 2200 on a 70 k vehicle really gonna move the needle on sales?

Bullish.. new price target 850

India is price sensitive market with high import duties. New car sell for as low as 7k. Majority of new cars are sold in $7-15k price range. It’s a tiny market for any car priced above $40k.

Tesla will end up like the swedish brand Saab……

So instead of $70k it’s now $67,800? Wow. What a bargain. I’m sure they’ll sell like hot cakes now…

I don't know what else they were expecting in a country where 99% of people don't have a standard of living anywhere near necessary to even be able to afford one of their cars. 1% of a billion and a half people is theoretically a lot, but 200 cars sold is embarrassingly miniscule lmao

Anyone in India that can afford their cars probably just bought a legit luxury car. Other than those 200 people

A chimpanzee as CEO could sell 200 cars in India

There are plenty of folks in Indian with the means to purchase Teslas. Actually, there are (low) millions. I happen to have a couple dozen working for me who can. They choose not to.

In India nearly all EVs are either Tata or MG. However, Hyundai sold more EV6 than Teslas.

eLon is at it again! The silver lining is that his billions are in Tesla stock too🫣

India as an automotive market is a hard nut to crack. Also, with all the duties and tariffs, they would be competing with BMW, Mercedes and Audi for a share and their build quality does not stand up to that level.

🤞

Buyers are obviously waiting for the refreshed model, you’ll see!! /s

yeah especially for the quality.... \*sarkasm off\*

Nah... Saab never wennt full Nazi before being bought out!

Well he is shovelling the money from the stocks into his personal account anyway... so no worries as long as the cult is going on the money belongs to the cult leader!

It might help them sell the remaining 100 units they sent to India. ;)

Landmass doesn't really matter, IMO. Land isn't what creates emissions; people are. This fun fact was more a chide at Americans having IMMENSE levels of greenhouse gases ... on account of our excessive levels of consumption. Our homes are bigger and all have HVAC, we all own cars, we have significantly longer commutes, we buy all the things, fly all the places, take massively pollutive cruises for fun, eat all the beef and meats, and throw out all the things. All under the guise that we're making our lives better and more meaningful. Of course, the main cause of that isn't because Indians are better people than Americans, but rather that Americans have a lot more money burning holes in our pockets... (prior to burning holes in the environment) This is considering that India is still using 70%+ coal energy, while the US has dropped our coal energy mix from 55% to only 15%. My mistake if that 1/7 is true. I'm using [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita) which sadly seems to have stopped recording data as of 2023.

Please don’t insult Saab. Saab has been a great brand for decades.

Also, as well India produces a lot of electricity from coal and oil and there is very little incentive for renewable power, meaning GHG production is very high.

Correct. Ironically, if India transitions from ICE to EV, demand for electricity will grow, especially if they start adopting more automobiles over public transit and micro mobility. That would necessitate rapidly growing out their grid, which could certainly come from renewable, but if China is any example, it'll also lead to more coal power production as electrical demand rapidly shoots up.