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Research and Technology Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta launched on Friday an electric car tryout and familiarization program at Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta as part of preparations for the limited production of the environmentally friendly vehicles by 2016.

Your comments:

I noticed the comment: '€œBecause they were environmentally friendly and did not cause pollution'€.

Not correct. If the electricity used to charge the batteries was provided by a fossil fuel power station, all that changes is the location from where the pollution is emitted. If, on the other hand, the electricity is provided by a renewable source, then the pollution is lower.

The car itself is still made from components that somewhere in the manufacturing chain will have involved the emission of CO2 (steel, for example, is still made using carbon).

I wish the project well but I suspect that many Indonesians will not be sufficiently wowed; at least not in my city, where loud exhausts are a prized addition from the variation shop.

John Elliott