According to CNBC Indonesia , Tesla and the Indonesian government have reached an agreement under which Indonesia will provide $5 billion worth of nickel to Tesla over the next five years. According to the agreement, Tesla’s reliance on iron phosphate batteries for its vehicles won’t be as strong going forward. We will rely on Reuters and other news sources for the specifics because Google Translate struggles with Indonesian.
Joko Widodo, the president of Indonesia, met with Elon Musk in May to discuss developing Tesla’s commercial ties with Southeast Asia’s largest economy, Indonesia. Tesla might be more open to the concept of constructing a new factory in the nation thanks to this new business arrangement than previously.
Tesla and I are currently in negotiations all the time, but they have started purchasing two fantastic goods from Indonesia. Luhut Pandjaitan, the Coordinating Minister for Maritime and Investment Affairs, made this statement in a Monday interview. He also mentioned that Tesla had a five-year agreement with nickel processing businesses based in Morowali, Sulawesi Island. According to Reuters, the nickel elements will be utilized in Tesla’s lithium-ion batteries.
In order to guarantee supplies for investors, Indonesia earlier this year halted nickel ore exports. Indonesia is interested in developing into a hub for the manufacture of electric vehicles and batteries. This action has had the desired outcome by luring investment from large Chinese steel corporations as well as South Korean businesses like LG and Hyundai. However, the majority of nickel investments made thus far have gone toward producing raw metals like ferronickel and nickel pig iron.
According to a senior source who spoke to Reuters last week, the government intends to impose an export tax on certain metals in order to increase income and promote more domestic manufacturing of high-value goods.
CnEVPost provides some insightful observations on the subject. It claims that two Chinese firms, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and CNGR Advanced Material Co, declared at the end of July that they will provide Tesla with ternary precursors for battery materials, specifically nickel, cobalt, and manganese compounds. The two Chinese firms may be the suppliers behind the Tesla contract, according to the most recent reports and the earlier statement. Both companies operate nickel smelting plants in Indonesia.
The Inflation Reduction Act’s new EV incentives do not apply to vehicles with batteries whose raw materials are obtained from China or Chinese owned enterprises, therefore if that is the case, those supplies will not be going to any electric vehicles sold to American consumers. However, Tesla is free to sell such cars in any other markets across the world, and it most certainly plans to do just that.
A new factory in Indonesia, what about it? Elon recently considered creating 10 to 12 new factories globally. Nothing prevents one of them from being in Indonesia.
Screenshot of an Tesla Battery Day 2020 video from YouTube as the featured image
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