Tesla is expected to make an initial investment of USD 2 billion to set up an assembly factory in India. Tesla will increase purchases of auto parts from the nation to as much as USD 15 billion. Tesla would set up a factory in India in 2024. Most of the car would be made in Tesla Berlin and it would be sent to India for final assembly. This would help Tesla avoid India’s high duties.
India is projected to have 7.5 million car sales per year in 2025. India would be a big market for the $20,000-25000 car that Tesla is o planning to make.
Tesla is reportedly moving forward with plans to introduce its Full Self-Driving (FSD) suite in China. FSD is Tesla’s most advanced driver-assist system, capable of navigating both highways and inner city roads.
FSD’s entry into the Chinese market has been speculated for some time. Just recently, observations from Tesla watchers indicated that the owner’s manual on Tesla China’s website featured references to FSD Beta. This was short-lived, however, as Tesla China’s owner’s manual was updated to remove references to the advanced driver-assist system.
Tesla is reportedly preparing to bring FSD Beta to China. Several Chinese government departments have released a joint notice indicating that vehicles with mass production conditions that support Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous capabilities could be allowed to do road tests in limited areas.
Tesla increasing FSD purchases in China to the level of FSD usage in the United States would be worth about $3 billion.
How much money will Tesla make from the FSD rollout in China?
1 million existing vehicles in China + 700,000 vehicles sold to China in 2023 = 1.7 million vehicles capable of FSD already
1.7 million * 15% take rate * $12,000 FSD price = $3 billion pretty much straight to the… pic.twitter.com/zccIiFjJMq
— Jacob Hilton (@jcubhilton) November 23, 2023
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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India is difficult, to be sure. But China? I don’t know that it matters how much money he makes in China, as getting it out may be so difficult as to make it, effectively, into play money.
I just can’t see many plusses from being involved with China economically for the next sixty years or so, and that’s assuming they get a new, radically more benevolent, regime tomorrow (which is more than a little unlikely).
For every investor that zips in and zips out, making money in the maneuver, there will be orders of magnitude more investors that will rue the day–and almost all (and possibly all) of the long-term investors will be in that category.
This will be a template for a next generation assembly plant for Tesla that isn’t a Gigafactory. It will be a smaller lower cost factory like Tesla’s Megafactories that could be built faster with less Capital in more places. This doesn’t replace GFs but it supplements them. It will be easier to fully automate in Alien Dreadnought style and with Optimus to fill in as needed.
The Indian bureaucracy is legendary. I wonder how Musk will bypass that. I hope he’s prepared to just walk away if they start throwing spanners in the works.