Indonesia Officially Invites Tesla
Indonesian President, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has finally pitched a deal for Tesla.
After months of back and forth, will-they-won’t-they negotiations, it seems the Indonesian government has landed on a deal to allow Tesla access to their massive nickel reserves in return for a full end-to-end setup in their country.
This means that Tesla will receive nickel, and can then go from smelting, all the way to the final product - an EV factory outputting 500,000 vehicles per year.
“We had a lot of discussions, particularly on how Tesla can build their industry from upstream to downstream, end-to end starting from smelter then build the cathode and precursor industry, build EV batteries, build lithium batteries [and] then the vehicle factory. Everything in Indonesia, because that’s very efficient. That’s what I offered,”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has spent the last couple months entertaining Indonesian government officials, and sending Tesla teams to check on the viability of the country’s nickel reserves and market. It’s no surprise he’s interested either; as Tesla has been buying nickel rights around the world for years now. And despite the EV company’s push to find better sources for lithium, nickel is still a major component in EV batteries.
Time will tell if Musk signs the deal. The decision likely hinges more on if Tesla can sell and/or export the 500,000 proposed vehicles per year from Indonesia. However, should they accept, Tesla will gain not only nickel, but greater reach into the South Asia market.
GigaJakarta has a nice ring to it.