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Charging stations are not missing link for EV adoption, official says
The government believes a lack of affordable car models, rather than insufficient charging infrastructure, is creating a bottleneck to electric vehicle (EV) adoption in Indonesia.
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Rachmat Kaimuddin, undersecretary for transportation and infrastructure at the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister, speaks to reporters on March 19, 2024, after delivering his keynote speech at the HSBC Investment Forum in Jakarta. (TJP/Deni Ghifari)
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nadequate charging infrastructure is not the key problem inhibiting electric vehicle (EV) adoption in Indonesia, a government official has said, pointing instead to a lack of affordable car models for would-be buyers.
The shortage of charging stations is a problem, but not a significant one, given that “there are not that many [electric] cars yet,” said Rachmat Kaimuddin, undersecretary for transportation and infrastructure at the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister.
“All this time I have been saying that charging is probably not yet a bottleneck today. The bottleneck is to provide affordable EVs for the people,” Rachmat said in his keynote speech at an event held by HSBC in Jakarta on Tuesday.
Data from state-owned electricity company PLN shows that, at the end of 2023, the country had only 1,081 public charging stations, a number that is far below the millions in China and hundreds of thousands in the United States.
However, it is worth noting that both of those countries are also far ahead of Indonesia in EV adoption. Nikkei Asia reported that EVs accounted for 31 percent of automobile sales in China last year.
Rachmat said charging stations would spring up automatically once the market created demand for them, but added that there was an EV affordability problem in Indonesia.
Two EV models have been produced in Indonesia since 2022, namely the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Wuling AirEV. The former starts at US$45,000 and the latter was tagged at $15,000 or more, depending on the configuration.
