India’s transport Minister visits Tesla, offers up land for factory in the country

Flashback to when we reported that India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, met with some executives at Tesla, we now have, via the Indian Express, learned that India’s Transport and Highways Minister, Nitin Gadkari, met with Tesla executives on the 15th to talk about introducing and increasing the adoption of “pollution-free road transport” with a focus on commercial and public vehicles i.e trucks, buses and two-wheelers.

Nitin hopes to accomplish this by having Tesla settle in India to create an “Asian manufacturing and assembly hub”. Gadkari goes on to state:

“the Indian government is committed to encouraging alternate pollution-free transport in the country by providing incentives to bio-fuel, CNG, ethanol and electric vehicles.”

Further, in his meeting with the Tesla team, he “offered up land near major Indian ports to facilitate export of their vehicles to South and South East Asian countries.”

Despite the fact that Tesla is not going to move into India at the moment, they explained that they “appreciated the cooperation” from the government on wanting to better the local environment, and that they [Tesla] would consider India when the opportune time arrives. Most likely being when the Model 3 rolls out.

Tesla is also considering China in its plans to establish manufacturing capacity in Asia. The automaker has been in discussions with potential partners and was believed to be close to a deal for an important plant in Shanghai before Elon Musk poured some cold water on the speculation.

With countries such as India and China experiencing hazardous and harmful levels of low-level air quality, it is great to see the Indian government taking the initiative in bettering the environment for its citizens. According to the Washington Post, who talked about one report from Greenpeace, India’s citizens, on average, have surpassed China in terms of the average amount of fine particulate matter they’re exposed to. Being subject to these levels of pollutants for a prolong amount of time can cause various health risks such as cancer and long-term damage to ones lungs.

Fortunately, when electric vehicles, HEPA air filters along with their ‘bio-weapon defense mode’ when it comes to the Tesla Model S and X, and other forms of clean energy, enter these markets in volumes, the quality of air will increase substantially. Not only do the HEPA air filters provide insurmountable levels of clean, breathing air to the occupants in the vehicle, but it also cleans the air around the vehicle too.

In order to curb its carbon emissions, India is exploring ways to push its entire fleet to be electric. While the country is primarily betting on small and cheap EVs, attracting Tesla could go a long way to help achieve their goals.