As seen in the image shared by the ‘Tesla Club India’ on Twitter, the V2 150kW charger is placed in a warehouse sort of arrangement and is expected to be installed at the brand’s first-ever showroom in India.
Tesla Inc has been planning to enter the Indian market for some time now and if things go as per plan for the U.S. based EV brand, they will start operations in the country by early 2022. While Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla has made it official on Twitter that they are starting India operations soon, there’s still little knowledge of the brand’s India plans. While they have got themselves a corporate office in Mumbai, and reports have indicated them setting up its first showroom in Mumbai, there’s no formal announcement from Tesla or Musk.
In the past year or so, we have seen multiple Tesla cars enter India for homologation purposes, and now, for the first time, Tesla’s trademark Superchargers have been spotted in India. An image of Tesla Supercharger has surfaced online, being shared ‘Tesla Club India’ on Twitter. It is expected that the Supercharger is being imported to be installed at the brand’s first-ever showroom in India.
Tesla recently opened its superchargers for all vehicles, and are believed to the V2 150 kW stations, which get two plugs for charging, Type 2 and CCS2. While Tesla is already working on V3 250kW charging stations, the V2 150 kW charging stations are much faster than most of the fast chargers available in the country. For instance, majority of DC fast chargers are either 50 kW or 64 kW in capacity. While they are fast enough to top up a battery of smaller EVs like MG ZS EV or Tata Nexon in under 1 hours, bigger luxury cars with battery packs upto 90 kwh takes time to get charged on these chargers.
Tesla has been testing its Model 3 and Model Y in the Indian market, and we are not sure which one will debut in the country. While Tesla Model 3 is the most affordable EV from the brand, making it the obvious choice, Indian market is SUV driven and most of the luxury brands prefer SUV EV than sedan EV. This makes Tesla Model Y an option for the India launch.
Tesla will launch the initial set of cars through a CBU route, but can look at domestic assembly of the vehicles given the lower import duties and additional tax benefits on the India made electric vehicles. Tesla earlier tried to get an exemption on import duties of electric cars, but Nitin Gadkari said only India-made vehicles will be given tax duty benefit.
