On 12 January, the state chief of Karnataka Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yediyurappa said in a tweet that Tesla would start its operations in India with a research and development unit in Bengaluru. Later, he deleted the tweet which had already attracted more than 8,500 likes and 1,800 retweets.

According to a regional TV channel, Tesla Inc will establish an electric car manufacturing unit in Karnataka, quoting state chief Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yediyurappa.

“American car company Tesla will set up its electric car division in Karnataka,” he said in a statement.

Soon after the state government confirmed the news, netizens expressed excitement, and others shared memes.

ccording to the media reports, Tesla registered a company in India on 8 January named Tesla India Motors and Energy in Bengaluru. Tesla India’s main office will be located in the heart of Bengaluru’s business area – Lavelle Road.

As India’s petrol price rose for the sixth day in a row on Sunday, a few netizens took a dig at increasing petrol price and underpinned the need for electric cars in India.

This is not the first Elon Musk project in India. On 28 December, Nitin Gadkari, India’s federal minister for road transport and highways, said that Tesla cars would be seen on Indian roads in 2021. At the time, the news sent ripples through India’s car market that is still dominated by cars running on petrol and diesel.

In August 2019, the government in India’s Maharashtra state approved a proposal to build the world’s first Hyperloop transportation project.

Hyperloops are train-like passenger vehicles which are designed to move at high speed through sealed tubes, free of air and frictional resistance, hence sharply cutting travel times.

According to the media report, Musk’s other project, Starlink SpaceX’s internet communications project, submitted its recommendations to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) last year for a concerted push for satellite broadband in the country.]