BANGALORE - With Tesla deciding not to set up its manufacturing plant in India after a year of discussions, the electric automaker joins the dozens of foreign companies that have either shelved plans to enter India or pulled up stakes in the past five years.
On May 13, Tesla officially abandoned its efforts to enter the Indian market and started to reassign local employees when it could not get the government to lower import tariffs for foreign electric vehicles (EVs).
Tesla had sought to first test demand in India by selling EVs imported from production hubs in the United States and China at lower tariffs. But the Indian government had wanted it to first set up a local manufacturing facility.
The same week, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk met Indonesian president Joko Widodo in the US over investment opportunities in the South-east Asian country.
At least eight foreign automakers - including General Motors, Fiat and Ford Motor - have left India, the world's fourth-largest automobile market, since 2017.
US auto major Ford Motor stopped production in its Chennai and Sanand plants from September 2021. It also shelved plans for a plant manufacturing EVs for export on May 12 despite getting government approval for production-linked incentives.
The company, which has been in India for over 30 years, had invested about US$2.5 billion (S$3.4 billion) in plants, and incurred losses of over US$2 billion.
In April, Nissan's Datsun stopped making its cars in its Chennai plant over low sales performance. American motorcycle makers Harley-Davidson and United Motors (UM) exited in September 2020 and October 2019 respectively, citing lack of demand for their products.
Italian carmaker Fiat stopped operations in India after seven years in March 2019 over poor sales. In December 2018, a few months before its decision to stop production at its Ranjangaon plant in Maharashtra state, the company sold a mere 75 cars, while local market leader Maruti Suzuki sold over 119,000.
South Korean SsangYong Motor Company pulled out in 2018, while General Motors exited in 2017 after over two decades in India due to mounting losses and inadequate interest in its Chevrolet and Opel models.
The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (Fada) said the "sudden exits" of Ford, GM, Man Trucks, Fiat, Harley and UM motorcycles caused a total loss of 64,000 jobs and dealer investments of 24.85 billion rupees (S$440.4 million).
Analysts say the reasons for the dwindling interest could be unfavourable policies like high taxes on imported and locally made cars, and lower-than-expected demand for cars, especially after falling incomes and unemployment in the pre-pandemic economic slowdown worsened into hardships during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Inflation hit an eight-year high in April. Diesel and petrol prices were also at an all-time high until the government trimmed fuel taxes on May 22.
About 15.12 million two-wheelers were sold in 2021, followed by 2.71 million passenger vehicles, according to market tracker Statistica. Some 570,000 commercial vehicles and 220,000 three-wheelers were sold that year.
Fada's retail data shows that from pre-pandemic levels in 2019 to 2022, demand for two-wheelers declined by 29 per cent and by 46 per cent for three-wheelers.
Sales of commercial vehicles fell by 26 per cent and passenger vehicles like cars by 1.7 per cent, showing that the downturn affected well-off buyers as well. Only tractor sales grew by 15 per cent.
India's auto sector has seen a slowdown for half a decade now, with sales plummeting 30 per cent even before the pandemic. This is due to multiple factors like falling demand, fuel price rise, over-dependence on China for crucial components like semiconductors, emission policy changes, and higher taxes as the government pushes the industry to shift to EVs. Market leaders like Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai and Japan's Toyota survive but have shrunk production targets too.
Fewer new foreign companies are also registering in India. According to data from the annual reports of India's Ministry of Corporate Affairs, new registrations have fallen from 157 companies in 2014, from when the reports are available online, to 83 in 2021.
In recent years, the Indian government has tried to woo global companies looking to diversify beyond China. But a February 2021 parliamentary standing committee report on the challenges and opportunities of attracting new investment in the post-pandemic economy observed that most companies leaving China "shifted their base to Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, etc, and only a few came to India".
Indian and foreign companies face challenges including administrative and regulatory hurdles, inadequate and costly credit facilities, tedious land acquisition procedures, inadequate infrastructure facilities, high logistics costs and a large unorganised manufacturing sector, the report said.
