HYDERABAD: Days after Tesla boss Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla would drive into India “Next year for sure,” sending EV enthusiasts into a tizzy, Telangana government officials too confirmed that the state is pulling out all stops to position itself as the go-to destination for EV giants like Tesla, which currently has three Gigafactories, two in US and one in Shanghai, China.
Telangana has already begun making inroads in the EV space with approvals being given recently to Greenko Energy Holdings and Singapore-based ChargeXO for setting up 1 gigawatt battery storage units each at investments of nearly Rs 300 crore per unit, Telangana IT and industries principal secretary Jayesh Ranjan said.
The state is gunning for mega EV investments worth US$4 billion by 2030 and has come up with a dedicated EV policy that will extend tailor-made benefits to mega and strategic projects with investments of over Rs 200 crore or employment generation of over 1,000. The state government is also establishing a 400-acre energy park at Divitipally.
But when it comes to players of Tesla’s scale much will hinge on how the competing states perform in NITI Aayog’s challenge for being selected as a location for Gigafactories, said Ranjan.
“The states selected by Niti Aayog to set up Gigafactories would attract massive sops from the Centre, making it attractive for companies like Tesla to set up shop. We are focussing on that,” he explained. NITI Aayog has mooted plans of setting up around 10 Tesla-style Gigafactories that would qualify for sops to boost battery manufacturing in the country and is awaiting the Union Cabinet’s nod for it.
In a 2017 report, NITI Aayog had estimated that India would require at least 20 Gigafactory-scale battery manufacturing plants, collectively producing approximately 800 GWh of batteries per year by 2030 to support 100% EV sales across all types of personal vehicles.
Here it may be pertinent to add that Tesla’s largest gigafactory at Nevada is spread over 3,200 acres with 5.3 million square feet operational space and employs 7,000 people. Yet it is only about 30% done and once completed, is expected to be the biggest building in the world and entirely powered by renewable energy sources, as per Tesla’s website.
According to a recent Castrol study, India could achieve mainstream EV adoption and the annual EV market could be worth $2 billion by 2025 if three tipping points – price point of Rs 23 lakh, charge time of 35 minutes and range of 401 km per charge — are met.