Mumbai want non-polluting future in present day: Aaditya Thackeray
@the_news_21
Mumbai: If the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government succeeds in its attempts to woo US based e-Automobile major Tesla, then the company could well set up its fourth production facility of e-Automobiles outside of the USA. The move could also boost efforts of the government to curb use of fossil fuels and reduce environment pollution.
Maharashtra’s senior-most Minister of Industries Subhash Desai and young Environment Minister Aaditya Thackeray combined forces on Thursday to woo USA’s E-automobile major Tesla to roll out their futuristic offerings through a manufacturing base and research and development (R&D) facility based in the premier state of India.
Desai cited the recently announced Industrial police of Maharashtra (launched in 2019) and told the global director of Tesla, Rohan Patel that it laid a special emphasis on non-polluting e-vehicles of the variety manufactured by the latter’s company. He noted that this provided a ‘golden opportunity’ for Tesla to invest big in Maharashtra that would accord it a customized red carpet treatment along with commensurate basic infrastructure facilities and special incentives to make a foray in the Indian automotive industry.
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Desai noted that the state government was bullish on futuristic technology that emphasised non-polluting alternatives to conventional applications and had decided upon a course which moving forward would offer companies like Tesla an unenviable business advantage. A customized foothold in the Indian automobile sector with special incentives could be instantly availed of by Tesla through an investment in the manufacturing and research and development facilities, both Desai and Thackeray emphasised.
Thackeray noted that e-vehicles would prove a boon to improving the quality of life and health particularly in high vehicular density metropolises like Mumbai as the commensurate benefits of pollution-free vehicles would be tangible, visible and adopted. The global director of Tesla, Patel and his colleague Dr Sachin Seth were enthusiastic about a foray into the Maharashtra automobile sector which according to them was a large marketplace for their e-automobile offerings.
The webinar was also attended by the principal secretary in the urban development department Bhushan Gagrani, principal secretary industry Venugopal Reddy and MIDC CEO P Anbalgan as well as industries development commissioner Harshadeep Kamble.
Tesla, that enjoys a market capitalisation of $ US 394 billion, currently accounts for a 20 per cent share of the global markets for electric vehicles of the plugin a charge variety and has set up factories in the Netherlands (in 2013), China (in 2019) and Germany (to go on stream in 2021) apart from their US operations where a $ US 1 billion unit was recently launched in Austin (Texas).
