Tesla may run on Indian roads in 2020: Elon Musk to IIT-Madras students

Breaking his silence over India plans, Elon Musk tweeted in March this year that he would love to be in the country in 2019 or next year

Tesla's Elon Musk said he is planning to bring his company to India within a year. In a recent interaction with IIT Madras' Avishkar Hyperloop Team, Musk said the launch wouldprobably take place in a year’s time, the team said in a statement. Musk did not divulge any further details about the launch.

Tesla, an American automotive and energy giant, has been looking to launch its vehicles in the Indian market for a few years now. In May, Musk had tweeted, "Would love to be in India. Some challenging government regulations, unfortunately. Deepak Ahuja, our CFO, is from India. Tesla will be there as soon as he believes we should." Earlier, Musk had blamed the government’s policies for delaying his India dreams. 

The Avishkar team has made strides as a debut finalist and was the only Asian team to qualify for the finals of SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition 2019, organised by SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company. It was one of the top 21 teams out of 1600+ teams participating globally in this event.

In this competition, the final round (testing and evaluation of the actual prototype), took place at the SpaceX Headquarters in California, US, on July 21, 2019. The team interacted with Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and explained their ideas to him. 

Avishkar Hyperloop is a student team from the Centre For Innovation (CFI) - IIT Madras, which is working on an indigenous design and development for building the first-ever self-propelled, completely autonomous Hyperloop Pod in India.