Tesla Model 3 announced at $35,000, Twitter goes all-electric

Read: Tesla unveils $35,000-Model 3 with range of 215 miles, pre-ordering to start in India

In the last quarter of the previous year, Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, visited the headquarters of Tesla Motors but that wasn’t to express interest in Tesla Motors’ fancy wheeled examples, but to discuss and understand Powerwall — a compact battery system with an energy storage capacity of 6.4kWh that feeds off solar power and, if implemented on a large enough scale, has the potential to change the electricity consumption dynamic of the world. In fact, going beyond this, Elon Musk had indicated in one of his tweets that building a Gigafactory in India will be favourable — but this is a topic of discussion for another time.

In the last quarter of the previous year, Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, visited the headquarters of Tesla Motors.

Even before we had our prime minister visiting the tech lands of the United States and his subsequent visit to Tesla, there were massive words being published about a possible entry by the American EV giant in India.

There’s not enough done in the region of the subcontinent to promote electric vehicles. Yes, there’s the Indian national mobility plan and some chatter of incentivising EVs, but the government needs to make the landscape better still by fast-tracking its efforts if it wants to see fruition of its plan. There are infrastructure related hurdles for electric vehicles.

Specific to Tesla, however, such issues don’t really matter much.

India is a very cost-focussed nation. But then, Tesla’s cars will be more a lifestyle statement for the relatively rich, in comparison, and that’s the exact premise that’ll favour the company. It’ll be the image conscious oofy individuals or the recognised celebrities of our societal structure who’ll flaunt a brand like Tesla, as against the Jaguars and the BMWs they drive or get driven around in currently.

Also Read: Tesla unveils Model 3 prototype, Elon Musk says India can pre-order

It’s interesting that the traditional — figuratively speaking, of course — car manufactures, if not dismissive of Tesla, haven’t really been worried to the measure that was once imagined. And the numbers speak of it. Electric cars for big car companies represent about 2% of the total market — an insignificant number for organisations which are invested in making vehicles that run on commercially accepted fuels like petrol and diesel. But, and this is the crucial bit, it translates to a very different scenario for a company like Tesla which is in the business of building electric-only vehicles. It’s focus is EVs, unlike other companies. And, rather importantly, Tesla has been outselling EV offerings from other manufacturers.

Tesla’s cars will be more a lifestyle statement for the relatively rich, in comparison, and that’s the exact premise that’ll favour the company.

But no matter how promising this all reads in concept, the reality is, India isn’t a ripe enough market for electric vehicles. Not yet, and will not be for some time to come. Tesla, though, and I come back to saying this, can still find its survival space here.

Some might argue that Tesla will need a heavy infrastructure development to run its cars in India, but is it really true?

Tesla isn’t only in the business of making great electric cars — it’s in the business of creating infrastructure to run these cars, too. To support the vehicles, it has to provide a solution to its biggest shortcoming — battery charging. With the rising popularity of electric vehicles, a term on the parallel got introduced — ‘range anxiety’. It’s essentially the fear of running out of battery juice before reaching your destination. It’s how you’d feel lugging along the width of a desert, in the peak of summer, carrying weighty stuff, with just one bottle of water to consume.

To address this problem, Tesla started working on Supercharging stations. Superchargers fuel up the batteries to 80% of their total capacity in under an hour. A full charge from a regular power supply could take north of 12 hours. Tesla intends to have 7,200 Superchargers by the end of 2017.

Tesla isn’t only in the business of making great electric cars — it’s in the business of creating infrastructure to run these cars, too.

Now, from an India perspective, the challenge is not how far will the car go before it’s defeated by its batteries. Most consumers, it’s expected, will use the cars for basic city use, and the range is, unarguably, sufficient enough for such usage. As a matter of fact, and strictly going by Tesla’s claims of driving range, the cars will cover large enough distances for an owner to do a little weekend trip, even! Drive out, and charge the car overnight to full range again, as you catch deep shuteye moments. So to make a case to sell cars isn’t really a big deal for Tesla. The fight will come in the form of direct sales. Tesla has a similar strategy to Apple’s — it markets directly to the end consumers, by-passing the dealership model which has been instituted since as long as the automotive industry existed! There’s also the issue of product service that Tesla will need to address, but there’s a retail concept called ‘Service Plus’ that the company is expanding which will help cater to that end too.

It’s more to do with the economics of it all — economics of scale, to be precise. Will Tesla sell enough units in India to make huge investments for Supercharging stations, or its Service Plus retail solution? Does it see Indian automotive landscape shifting towards EVs? In my personal view, electric vehicles aren’t the long-term mobility solution that the world is looking for and till we find a safe way to harness and channel nuclear energy or hydrogen power, we’ll still be consuming fossil fuels for our commutes.