Modi in US: Elon says Tesla will come to India "as soon as possible"

 Modi in US: Elon says Tesla will come to India "as soon as possible"

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the electric car maker would be in India "as soon as humanly possible".

His comments followed a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a state visit to the United States.

The Indian government said it had invited Musk to explore investment opportunities in electric mobility and the commercial space sector.

Musk said he was "trying to find the right moment" for this to happen.

Modi's meeting with Musk, who also owns Twitter, came days after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey accused India of threatening to shut down the platform for not following his orders. to remove content from the website.

Dorsey's allegations, made in an interview with an independent news programme, have been strenuously denied by the Indian government, calling them "a complete lie".

Musk commented on the episode on Wednesday, saying Twitter had no choice but to obey local governments or "we'd be shut down."

"We will do our best to provide the freest expression possible under the law," he said.

Musk also called himself a "Modi fan" and said India had "more promise than any big country in the world."

“He [Mr Modi] really cares about India because he is pushing us to make big investments in India, which we intend to do. We are just trying to find the right time,” a- he told reporters. "I am confident that Tesla will be in India and will do so as soon as humanly possible."

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The bumpy road to electric car dreams in India

Tesla is in talks with Indian bureaucrats and ministers as it seeks to break into the domestic market.

Reuters reported last month that Tesla had offered to set up a factory to build electric vehicles and was also considering making batteries for electric vehicles in the country. “They take India very seriously as a base for production and innovation,” Federal Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar told the agency in May.

The company's initial plans to open a base in India were scrapped last year after the Indian government insisted Tesla build cars locally, while the automaker said it wanted to export first to India in order to be able to prove the claim.

Musk said he also hopes to bring Starlink satellite internet service, operated by his company SpaceX, to India.

"We don't want to rush into an announcement, but I think it will most likely be a significant investment in our relationship with India," he told reporters.

Modi arrived in New York on Tuesday for a three-day state visit seen as a watershed moment in bilateral relations between India and the United States.

He will be entitled to a welcome ceremony at the White House on Thursday before speaking directly with President Joe Biden.

day, more than 70 US lawmakers wrote to Biden urging him to raise human rights issues with Modi during his trip. They said they were concerned about growing religious intolerance, freedom of the press and attacks on civil society groups in India.