Union Minister of Road Transport, Highways & Shipping Nitin Gadkari visited Tesla factory near San Francisco in USA last week and offered to promote joint ventures between the global leaders in electric car manufacturing and the Indian automobile companies with a view to introducing pollution free road transport in India, especially commercial and public motor ehicles.

Gadkari said the Indian Government was committed to encouraging alternate pollution free transport in the country by providing incentives to bio-fuel, CNG, Ethanol and electric vehicles.

He proposed to the Tesla senior executives to make India their Asia manufacturing hub and offered land near major Indian ports to facilitate export of their vehicles to South and South East Asian countries.

Tesla senior executive admitted that their manufacturing hub has to be outside the US for markets in rest of the world and appreciated the Indian offer of cooperation which they said will certainly be considered at the appropriate time in future. They said India will definitely be a market for their next generation low cost sustainable model-3

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