Jakarta Goes Green with Charging Stations, Electric Cars

Indonesian minister Dahlan Iskan (pictured) has been personally testing the little electric hatchback car. (Click to enlarge)

We love green technologies, we love cleaner air, and we love cheaper solutions. Thankfully, Jakarta might be on the right track to all those three wonderful things in the near future – for personal cars at least. The Indonesian state electricity utility (PLN) has just finished installing 10 electric car charging stations in Jakarta a couple of days ago as part of a bid to promote the use of electric cars in the near future. How near? In the next year or two.

At the moment, the Indonesia-made electric cars are still at the prototype stage. The government plans to create electric vehicles in four classes of cars that are similar in size to the Suzuki Carry, Toyota Avanza, Honda Jazz, and then a larger Mercedes-Benz. Interestingly though, the minister of state-owned enterprises, Dahlan Iskan (pictured above), who is the one aggressively pushing the electric car program, is looking forward to getting his hands on a third prototype next week, which is more like a Ferrari level of sports car:

The first electric car prototype is a minibus, while the second one is a small hatchback (pictured above). The first prototype was developed by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and the Research and Technology Ministry, while the second and the third prototype are developed by local vehicle maker Ahmadi Mesin. The second prototype has now been used by Mr. Iskan since July 16. The minister said via Detik that if his hatchback car can drive 1,000 km without encountering any problems, then the car would pass the test and should be ready for mass production. Up until two days ago, he claimed to have driven 300 km with the car without any problems. Its batteries can go 150 km on a full charge. Dahlan is ambitious that the mass production can happen as early as the beginning of 2013 should the infrastructure issues be solved by then, while the industry minister M.S. Hidayat was a bit more cautious, telling Okezone that maybe the mass production can start in 2014.

The electric car seems like a great idea to save money as well as the environment in the country. Dahlan said via Okezone that a single electric charge for the little hatchback with a 150 km-range would only cost around IDR 50,000 (US$5.30) while the usual fuel-load would cost around IDR 300,000 ($31.80) – though he should’ve pointed out that all that fuel would carry you further than in the electric minicar. He also claimed that the cost of building each charging station is much cheaper: building a typical petrol station would cost at least IDR 3 billion ($318,000), and would take two years of construction [1]; whereas for electric charging points, you only need one week to build it. The country can also eventually save up to IDR 500 trillion ($53 billion) with this project according to the minister’s claims to TribunNews.

If you’re wondering how much the electric car cost, the tiny hatchback car, which is named after its developer, the Ahmadi Mesin 5.0, is touted at around IDR 200 million ($21,200) – a pretty large price tag for a tiny vehicle. While for the electric supercar, the minister is anticipating a price of around IDR 1.5 billion ($159,000).

The cars look good, the infrastructure is slowly underway, and it offers cheaper personal transport than oil-powered cars – everything just seems too good to be true. I hope that it’s all feasible soon though.

[Source: Kompas; Pictures: RRI.co.id and Detik]

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