Last Updated on: 15th July 2025, 12:21 pm

After years and years of discussion and delay, Tesla is finally starting to sell cars in India! The company has launched a store in Mumbai, the banking center of India, and you can now buy the Tesla Model Y in India.

On to the bad news. Thanks to India’s high tariffs on imported vehicles, the starting price for a Model Y in India is about $69,800. That’s far above the starting price in the US, $44,990, and other markets.

So, on the plus side, people in India can finally buy a Tesla electric crossover, but on the minus side, they really do have to be rich to do so.

Joining Tesla’s Mumbai store, the company will also be launching one in the country’s capital city, New Delhi, soon. Service and delivery centers, Tesla charging stations, logistics hubs, and more elements of the Tesla ecosystem are also on the way.

India is the 3rd largest auto market in the world. However, its high import tariffs make it hard for foreign automakers to find much success there. Elon Musk tried to get Tesla around those tariffs with some kind of exception for years, but he apparently gave up on the effort after India wouldn’t budge. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Musk not long ago when Musk was in President Donald Trump’s good graces, and many assumed Tesla might finally get special treatment and enter India on the cheap. However, that clearly didn’t lead anywhere for one reason or another.

There’s a 70% tariff on EVs in India, and a 30% luxury tax. It is what it is. Selling a $70,000 vehicle in India, Tesla will compete with luxury brands and will find buyers. However, this is no mass-market offering there. “The question is whether they are going to threaten the mass market,” Vivek Vaidya, global client leader for mobility at research firm Frost & Sullivan, told CNBC. “The answer to that is no because the most popular selling cars probably sell at one-tenth of this price.”

We will finally get to see, though, how much demand there is for Tesla vehicles in the giant auto market of India.

“India first announced a new EV policy last year that promised to reduce duties for companies that commit to building up a local supply chain. While this could help Tesla push its prices down, the company has yet to commit to building any local manufacturing plants in India,” CNBC adds.

If Tesla decided to produce cars in India, that is surely far down the line. It would still need to cut costs tremendously to appeal to the mass market there, and the company currently uses its massive production facilities in China to build cars and ship them to other countries in the region. With Tesla sales drooping instead of rising, there’s no need to maximize existing production facilities let alone build big new factories.

Anyway, I’m very curious to see how Tesla can do in India. Will it be enough to make a difference, or will it just be a blip in the numbers?

Oh, as a final note that just came to mind, this is just another example showing that demand for the new Tesla Model Y — and Tesla vehicles in general — is not soaring. Tesla wouldn’t enter a new market and try to offload Model Y vehicles there if it had too much consumer demand for the Model Y in its existing markets. Or perhaps the plan is to produce and sell a new, more affordable electric car after all; Tesla sees India as an important market for that; and it’s just getting its foot in the door now with a “luxury” Model Y. Hmm … we will see. Sales are either going to go up or down, and we’ll see what India means for the company in coming years — now that Tesla’s finally in the market.