Elon Musk says Tesla CFO deciding whether, when company enters India
India has been hard-pressed to get Tesla to set up shop on its soil, but Elon Musk says the move won’t happen until he gets the green light from his Indian chief financial officer.
The billionaire said in a tweet on Wednesday that tough government regulations have prevented him from moving forward with his plans to roll out Tesla cars in India.
"Would love to be in India. Some challenging government regulations, unfortunately," Musk tweeted in a response to a Twitter user who wrote "No Tesla in India" to him.
Musk then added that company CFO Deepak Ahuja, who is from India, will alert him when it’s a good time to enter.
“Tesla will be there as soon as he believes we should," he tweeted.
Ahuja joined Tesla in 2010 after spending 15 years at Ford Motor Co.
Last year, Musk said he predicted Tesla cars could come to India as early as this summer, but that move was delayed due to the country’s current tax structure and a slew of outdated laws preventing foreign businesses to come in.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made moves, however, to abolish more than 1,400 archaic laws that have prevented business growth for the country in recent years, but his goal for all newly sold cars to be electric models by 2030 has been viewed as too ambitious by carmakers because of poor infrastructure and limited manufacturing capabilities.