REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Energy minister Ignasius Jonan predicted that commercialization of electric cars could be faster than expected as the environment-friendly technology has already been very popular in a number of countries.
"When I talked with people working in the oil and gas sector they said that it could possibly be effective by 2050. I however think it would be faster than we imagine. It will be like the case of cellphones, PC and tablet," he said after attending a seminar on Powering Indonesia here on Wednesday.
He said electric car from the US like Tesla has already been very popular and used in many countries.
He said if it is not burdened with taxes such as import tax the price of electric cars in Indonesia could compete with that of conventional ones. Tesla unfortunately is fixed at up to Rp2 billion and so it is still quite high for people to buy, he said.
Jonan said every country is now competing to create greener environment and in the case of Indonesia it has been committed to reduce carbon emmission based on Paris COP 21 Agreement.
He said the Indonesian government has formed a team consisting of officials from the finance ministry, the ministry of industry and the ministry of energy to draft a regulation in the form of a presudential decree for the development of electric cars to refuce carbon emission and realize the 23 percent target of combined renewable energy sources by 2025.
In connection with electricity power supply and facility Jonan said he has had a concept of selling electric batteries at gas filling stations in cooperation with state-owned oil company Pertamina.
"The battery technology is very important. All 6,000 gas filling stations will later provide electric batteries. Electric cars later may replace their batteries at the stations instrad of filling gasoline. So an empty battery could be exchanged with the fully-charged battery upon payment," he said.
The minister said through the electric car development policy gas and fuel oil imports could later be reduced.
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