Indonesia’s wealth of natural mineral resources, especially raw materials for electric vehicles (EV), has received attention from the government itself and abroad. The reason is that not all of them are owned by every country, so our country can use them for the needs of our own nation as well as other nations. With upstream to downstream processing, the end result will provide benefits for the country.
Among our country’s largest natural mineral resources are lithium and nickel, which are important raw materials for making EV batteries, and are useful for vehicles in the Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) category. Apart from that, various electric vehicle products involve this metallic mineral as their constituent material.
Quoted from the Antara news agency, in the 2023 performance meeting, in Nusa Dua, Badung Regency, Bali, Friday (22/12/2023), the Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment (Marinves) Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan stated that Indonesia had just received a source natural mineral power in super large quantities. Namely, a jumbo lithium source was found in our own country, which is expected to be able to support the production of electric vehicles or EVs.
President Joko Widodo talks about electric car batteries [Instagram: @jokowi]. “I just received a report, yesterday a very large source of lithium was discovered in Indonesia,” explained the Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries.
Although we haven’t explained in more detail about this jumbo discovery of lithium, with this finding Indonesia has one of the important components in the development of electric vehicles so that it can reduce dependence on other countries.
In a presentation at the 2023 performance meeting, the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries noted the downstreaming of the mining sector to support electric vehicle production as one of the main pillars of the energy transition.
Indonesia is one of the largest automotive markets and industries in Southeast Asia with a target population of battery-based electric motorized vehicles (KBLBB) on the road by 2030 reaching 13 million for two-wheelers and cars reaching two million units.
Currently, Indonesia’s vehicle population has reached 129 million motorbikes and 23 million cars.
“Previously, the need for lithium made Indonesia afraid if we didn’t have it. We were prepared to look for it from Australia, but now we have it and the source is very large,” he continued regarding the discovery of lithium in very large quantities.
With this finding, there is a potential source The natural mineral resources needed for the development of electric vehicles in Indonesia are becoming increasingly complete, namely nickel and cobalt, and now lithium.
On the same occasion, Deputy for Infrastructure and Transportation Coordination at the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Rachmat Kaimuddin, said that the Indonesian automotive industry is quite developed, although still relatively small in terms of the global market.’
Currently, Indonesia’s production reaches around 1.4 million units of cars, of which 400 thousand units enter the export market. Meanwhile, the government’s target is 600 thousand electric cars produced in seven years or until 2030. Current production capacity is still relatively small, namely reaching 30 thousand to 40 thousand.
“In seven years, that 30 thousand to 40 thousand must increase to 600 thousand, that’s what we need to prepare and of course it’s not just the factories coming, we also prepare the market, we also have to prepare the refill infrastructure. We be optimistic and have to work hard,” he concluded.
