The Indonesian Redux and Its Electric Opportunity
The Indonesian Redux and Its Electric Opportunity
How can the third and fourth most populous countries work together?
When it comes to the journey of President Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia to see President-elect Donald Trump it's important to note that we've been back here before. Maybe this time we have a chance to get it correct.
President Biden seems to think so and is hosting Subianto at the White House this week. The two leaders will work together on “sustainable approaches to food security, the clean energy transition, democracy and pluralism, regional peace and stability, and people-to-people ties, as well as advancing our cooperation on humanitarian aid and disaster relief.”
I took Trump hotel developer and Indonesian billionaire Hary Tanoesoedibjo around Washington D.C. We made the usual stops. Wilbur Ross at Commerce. Carl Icahn. You know the type.
There are a few photos of us together. Since then Hary’s party has fallen out of favor in Indonesia though Hary was there at Mar-A-Lago when Trump won. There he is with Johnny McEntee whose father is tied into the MGM casino.
A lot has changed in eight years. Will President Trump open Indonesia — the world’s fourth largest country — to America? There simply aren’t that many Indonesians living in America. Indeed Tyler Cowen notes that Indonesians are outnumbered in the U.S. by 14 other Asian-American sub-groups. Most estimates give an answer of about 100,000 total, this from a country of 250+ million. Surely the first step of an alliance must be to get these two groups more closely aligned.
Might a joint Indonesian-American electric vehicle approach be in the offing?
You can think of a Tesla as a joint Chinese-American operation which has outlived its usefulness. To the extent that Musk has any utility at all to Xi it’s in his role as a political figure. That becomes increasingly tenuous as the world shifts. China wants its own car maker BYD to be preeminent.
Hence Prabowo going to see Xi and signing a $10B trade deal concerning lithium and nickel deals.
What I would do were I President-elect Trump or President Probowo Subianto I’d want my own electric vehicles which would obviate the need for being downstream of the Chinese. I'd want to shift from a commodity business to a value added one and I'd want to do it in dollars.
LAND Moto seems an obvious fit, especially given its founder Scott Colisimo’s past relationship with Indonesia.
I suspect that we’ve hit peak car and we may well have hit peak gas motorcycle too.
Still it's hard to imagine that everyone is going to jump into an Aptera even if Aptera and the California motorcycles regulations are pretty impressive. One of the bright spots of a Trump presidency may well have been California going much further on environmental regulations.
So we're left with two wheeled electric vehicles as the future of transport, a switch that is having a huge effect on take home pay. Some delivery drivers in Kenya are doubling their income by switching from gas-powered motorcycles to electric alternatives.
Scott Colosimo put it to us this way.
“Cleveland CycleWerks had a CKD operation in Bintaro (Just outside Jakarta) and we had 27 motorcycle shops across the region from Jakarta, to Jogja to Bali. Indonesia has always been good to me, it is a country with many young, driven people, and they love American culture, which extends to our motorcycles.”
The obvious concern is Indonesia's grid but I'm not so convinced that's necessary if we take the Aptera technology and bring it together with electric bicycles and motorcycles.
You could imagine a world where LAND Moto bicycles were fashioned with Aptera-style solar panels built into the seat and that you'd greatly reduce the need for people to plug in their electric motorcycles.
I had one of Scott's employees draw up renderings of what an Aptera-style seat might look like. It’s not a bad concept sketch.
One of Aptera’s strongest backers is the United Arab Emirates which is only now taking an interest in investing in the Muslim country.
I’m sure that there are other ways in which the world’s third and fourth most populous countries can work together but this is a start.
Were I President Trump I’d even think seriously about expanding the Lobito and Luzon corridors to include a corridor in Java. It’s time for America to start competing in the world’s largest Muslim country.