Head Of Investment Coordinating Board: Tesla Is Not Leaving Indonesia, Negotiations Are Still Ongoing

Illustration. (Photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Head of the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) Bahlil Lahadalia also spoke about the fate of Tesla Inc.'s investment. in Indonesia. He said that negotiations with the company were still ongoing today.

As is known, recently the news about Tesla's failure to invest in Indonesia surfaced after Tesla decided to build its electric car factory in India.

Bahlil said from the start that he had a talk with electric car maker Tesla Inc. conducted by the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Investment (Kemenko Marves). Meanwhile, BKPM is behind him.

"I want to say that this is still negotiable, no one leaves, when they leave, they just leave. This is still a process, so if people are in business negotiations these deals usually go up and down", he said during a virtual press conference, Wednesday. , February 24th.

As previously reported, Tesla was reportedly increasingly positive in choosing India as its second production base in Asia. Yet at the same time, Indonesia is also making an approach.

Elon Musk's company is reportedly nearing the final stages of reaching an agreement to produce electric cars in India. If the deal happens, Tesla will have 3 production bases, namely in the United States, China, and India.

PT Pertamina (Persero) President Director Nicke Widyawati revealed that Tesla was not interested in investing in EV batteries in Indonesia. He said that their interest was in developing an energy storage system (ESS).

"Tesla is interested in energy storage, not in electric vehicle batteries", she said at a hearing with Commission VII, Tuesday, February 9.

Nicke said that Tesla's interest in developing domestic ESS was due to a plan to increase the number of solar power plants (PLTS) massively in Indonesia. With the increasingly massive PLTS, the electricity supply to ESS will be more reliable, so it is considered to be an attractive business for Tesla.

"They (Tesla) came to Indonesia to see the potential to maintain the reliability of supply from PLTS is ESS, this is a big market", he said.

This is in line with what was conveyed by the Deputy for Investment and Mining Coordination of the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Investment, Septian Hario Seto, on February 5.

Seto said the investment plan proposal offered by Tesla was different from other potential partners, namely a company from China, CATL, and a company from South Korea, LG. He said this difference was because the basic technology used by Tesla was different from the two other companies.

According to Seto, Tesla is likely to invest in the energy storage system (ESS) sector. ESS is like a 'power bank' with large-scale gigantic batteries that can store large electric power up to tens of megawatts, even up to 100 MW for stabilizers or as a replacement as a peaker generator (peak load support).

Furthermore, Seto explained, at night when the electricity consumption of the community is high, this can take advantage of this ESS. In addition, Tesla said that Indonesia which is an archipelago has the potential to combine new and renewable energy with this ESS technology.

"They told us that from the demand side with other countries it is already very high, but the supply of ESS is not much. If they want to cooperate with Indonesia with an archipelagic country with potential EBT, they can combine ESS technology in Indonesia", said Seto.