‘I’m keen on Modi’: Elon Musk on his friendship with Indian High Minister Modi

CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, and proprietor of Twitter, Elon Musk, on the Viva Generation convention on the Porte de Versailles exhibition middle on June 16, 2023 in Paris, France.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk says he’s “extremely serious about the way forward for India,” including that it has “extra promise than any huge nation on this planet.”

“I’m keen on Modi,” Musk admitted Tuesday in a video interview revealed on High Minister Narendra Modi’s authentic YouTube web page. 

“He in point of fact desires to do the precise factor for India. He desires to be open, he desires to be supportive of recent corporations, however on the identical time be sure that it accrues to India’s merit,” stated the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX after their assembly in New York.

Modi and Musk closing met in 2015 when the Indian high minister visited Tesla’s Fremont Manufacturing unit in California. 

The Indian high minister is on his first state discuss with to the U.S., the place he is anticipated to carry high-level talks with leaders and industry executives on protection, era and India’s position within the Indo-Pacific.

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President Joe Biden shall be website hosting him at a White Space dinner in Washington on Thursday, the place Modi is anticipated to satisfy a slew of industrial leaders together with Apple’s Tim Cook dinner, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella.

Modi “in point of fact cares about India as a result of he is pushing us to make important investments in India, which is one thing we intend to do and we are simply attempting to determine the precise timing,” Musk stated.

Making an investment in India

India holds nice doable for Tesla, one analyst informed CNBC.

“Each unmarried U.S. corporate which has a indexed subsidiary in India has observed upper expansion and worth introduction in India,” Nilesh Shah, managing director at Kotak Mahindra Asset Control, stated. 

“U.S. traders shall be reassured that construction a U.S.-India partnership shall be a real win-win scenario for each nations,” he added. 

Investments from Tesla would purpose to make stronger India’s sustainable power technology essentially thru sun and wind, stated the CEO of the EV maker. 

“India is excellent for sun. The volume of land space you in truth want to generate sufficient electrical energy to energy India could be very small. I consider it might be almost definitely 1% or 2% of the land space in India, so it is very potential.” 

Different spaces of funding come with desk bound battery packs and electrical cars. 

“India shall be a promising marketplace for Tesla as their destiny in China shall be very similar to different American automobile producers who ended up being crushed by means of Chinese language competition,” Shah highlighted. 

Musk additionally stated that he is occupied with making improvements to India’s web connectivity and hopes to convey SpaceX’s Starlink satellite tv for pc web carrier to the South Asian country. 

This will also be “extremely useful for faraway or rural villages the place they most likely might haven’t any get admission to to [the] web or the web could be very pricey and gradual,” Musk stated. 

Musk stated Modi invited him to discuss with India, and it would occur once subsequent yr.

Modi’s discuss with to New York noticed him crossing paths with U.S. astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, investor Ray Dalio, and Grammy award winner Falguni Shah.