ELON MUSK all but confirmed Tesla Inc. will enter India last week, sparking jubilation among fans, some of whom have had their electric cars on order for years. But it may prove the company’s hardest market yet to crack.

The world’s richest man Jan. 13 tweeted “as promised” in response to a report on a Tesla-focused blog that the automaker was in talks with several Indian states to open an office, showrooms, a research and development center — and possibly a factory.

“It’s really happening,” said Nikhil Chaudhary, a 20-year-old student at the University of Delhi who helped start India’s Tesla fan club in early 2019, adding he “went crazy” when he heard the news.

Arun Bhat, 34, a company director in Bengaluru, the city formerly known as Bangalore, was similarly overjoyed, saying that at last there’s a possibility he’ll be able to get behind the wheel of the Tesla Model 3 he ordered in 2016.

For all the hype, Tesla’s foray into India is far from a done deal. The company is in discussions with state officials but is yet to decide on an Indian base, according to the Tesmanian blog post that triggered Musk’s response, which came after months of unsubstantiated speculation in local media. A Tesla representative in Beijing declined to comment.

Although India is Asia’s third-biggest economy and home to a budding middle class, it hasn’t rolled out the welcome mat for electric vehicles (EVs), unlike neighbor China, where Tesla set up its first factory outside of the United States and now dominates electric car sales.

EVs account for about 5 percent of China’s annual car sales, compared with less than 1 percent in India. And most market watchers expect China to power ahead of other countries when it comes to EVs in the near term, thanks to generous government subsidies, a hankering for greener vehicles among the nation’s young, upwardly mobile population and solid charging network.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), around 60 percent of the world’s public slow and fast-charging spots are in China. As Chinese carmakers roll out competitive EV models and develop a diverse ecosystem, the country is “heading toward disrupting the current global auto industry landscape,” UBS Group AG analysts wrote in a report last month.

India has been making moves but they’re not on the same scale.

In 2015, it launched a Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and EV (FAME) plan, with a 9 billion rupee (US$123 million) commitment to subsidies that cover everything from electric tricycles to buses, according to the IEA. A second generation of the FAME program introduced in 2019 was larger, with 100 billion rupees to encourage EV purchases and build out charging infrastructure. (SD-Agencies)