Tesla (TSLA) received just over 600 orders for Model Y in India after launching the electric vehicle just over a month ago, according to a new report.
After years of back-and-forth negotiations to enter the Indian auto market, Tesla finally established a sales presence, opened its first Supercharger stations, and launched the Model Y in India this July.
As we noted in our article about Tesla opening orders for Model Y in India, the automaker wasn’t able to get around the high import tariffs, resulting in a starting price equivalent to about $70,000 USD.
This dramatically reduces Tesla’s prospects in the Indian market, which doesn’t move significant volumes of vehicles in that price range.
Sure enough, Bloomberg now reports that Tesla received only just over 600 orders for the electric vehicles since the launch:
The Elon Musk-led electric vehicle maker has received orders for just over 600 cars since launching sales in mid-July, a number that’s fallen short of the company’s own expectations, according to people familiar with the matter. That’s roughly the number of vehicles Tesla delivered every four hours globally during the first half of the year.
Tesla was reportedly expecting significantly higher demand and planning to use its entire 2,500-car import quota for the year, but it will now limit imports to the order amount.
Deliveries will be limited to the cities where Tesla is establishing a sales and service presence: Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, and Gurugram.
Electrek’s Take
This is to be expected. It’s both expensive for the market and also, people don’t like to pay high tariffs knowing that someone in a neighboring country can buy the product for about half the price.
As soon as I saw that Tesla was not taking the deal to circumvent the tariffs by investing in local EV production, it became clear that India would not be a significant market for Tesla.
Something needs to change. They need to band on tariffs or Tesla needs to bet on local production.
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