Indian-American academic, entrepreneur and author, Vivek Wadhwa, in a post on social media, said that he had asked Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk to consider moving his manufacturing to India where he would have ruled the market by now. He said he had warned Musk to not pick China who would “rob him blind”.
Wadhwa’s post on X comes after Elon Musk, scheduled to come to India, meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and announce an investment of $3 billion, cancelled the trip at the last moment, only to show up in China days later.
“Elon is going to be the biggest loser here. A few years ago, I exchanged emails with him about the risks in China. I warned him they would rob him blind and urged him to consider moving manufacturing to India instead, where he would have dominated the market by now,” said Wadhwa in the post. He had quoted a post by Director of Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies, Theresa Fallon, who said that US and European automakers are failing in China because they were looking only for short-term gain and transferring technology, management techniques and know-how to China. “It was good while it lasted but that era is over,” said Fallon.
CHINESE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
Fallon had posted a CNBC report that stated that Chinese firms have caught up with foreign firms such as General Motors who taught them the automotive trade. Firms like GM made a fortune selling cars in China when it opened its auto market to foreign firms in the 1980s. It is however, now, companies such as BYD, Geely and Great Wall that are taking their products overseas. Many tech companies such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Nio are entering the industry.
Jeep’s joint venture in China went bankrupt, while foreign firms such as Ford, GM, Hyundai, Kia and Nissan are expected to move out of the country in the coming years.
The report stated that global firms taught the “inexperienced Chinese partners a lot about making cars”. “For a long time, it was worth it,” said the report, adding that foreign firms are now being pushed out. It said new models in China come up in a fraction of the time it takes automakers around the world, and at lower prices. Moreover, Chinese also prefer to buy Chinese brands.
ELON MUSK’S CHINA GAMBIT
Elon Musk’s surprise visit to China won him some concessions, but left India stumped. He excused himself from the India trip due to “very heavy Tesla obligations” but the invitations for the event had gone out by then.
But despite the “very heavy Tesla obligations” Musk showed up in China, and met Premier Li Qiang. Musk’s surprise visit to China was reportedly intended to discuss the rollout of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software and the data-transfer permissions.
He received an endorsement from a top Chinese auto association that said Tesla’s Model 3 and Y cars were compliant with data-security regulations, which could allow Tesla cars into parts of China that were earlier barred. Tesla also reached an agreement with Baidu to use its mapping licence for data collection on China’s public roads.
Musk then said on X that Tesla might make FSD available to customers in China ‘very soon’.
Chinese rivals such as XPeng and Huawei Technologies are also looking to roll out self-driving software of their own.
(With Reuters inputs)
