In Indonesia’s second vice presidential debate, Gibran Rakabuming — the eldest son of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and running mate of Prabowo Subianto — tried to trap his rival Muhaimin Iskandar by asking the latter’s team’s campaign about lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP), a nickel-free electric vehicle battery.
“Are you anti-nickel?” Gibran asked. “Indonesia has the largest nickel reserve in the world, but you are talking about LFP instead. That is the same as promoting Chinese products.”
Gibran made confusing, arrogant remarks throughout the two-hour-long, nationally broadcasted sparring, but his attempt to frame his opponent as “anti-nickel” and, therefore, “promoting Chinese products” was the strangest.
Obviously, Chinese companies are leaders in nickel-based EV batteries.
CATL, a Chinese firm, and the biggest electric vehicle battery producer, has long supplied nickel-based batteries to car makers worldwide. CATL is now building a $ 6 billion nickel mining and processing, EV battery materials, EV battery manufacturing, and battery recycling facilities in Indonesia’s North Maluku Province.
Another example is Chinese company Lygend Resources Technology, which partnered with Indonesian firm Harita Nickel and built the world’s largest nickel sulfate plant. In March last year, Lygend announced that it had made the first EV battery-grade nickel sulfate from Indonesia.
Gibran was partially right: China is also a dominant player in LFP. Chinese EV manufacturer BYD, a strong challenger of CATL and deemed as “Tesla’s biggest threat”, is a pioneer in developing LFP technologies and came up with a new battery called Blade. The battery is long and flat-shaped and is claimed to have the ability to maximize power output and save space.
When it comes to China in the EV landscape, it is not one battery or the other. Since 2022, I have spoken and written about how China is the dominant player in both nickel-based and LFP batteries. As a result, whichever type of battery eventually prevails and wins the market, China has long made sure it has a secure position with both.
Indonesia, on the other hand, has placed all its bets only on the nickel-based EV ecosystem. Perhaps Gibran and his father, Jokowi, are frustrated with the fact that LFP is gaining popularity globally.
None of the Chinese EV brands that have entered Indonesia uses nickel batteries, including BYD which was launched in the country last week. BYD Asia Pacific General Manager Liu Xueliang promised Indonesian reporters that his company would “learn to use nickel”, even though his boss – the company’s chairman – had declared that “LFP batteries are the right choice for China.” Even CATL and its customer Tesla are slowly moving towards LFP batteries.
Jokowi’s aspirations for a nickel-based EV ecosystem are indeed facing many hurdles, from rapidly developing alternative techs to slow adoption to unfocused policies. Now, two things are becoming clear: first, Chinese companies are tremendously fast-moving and pragmatic, and second, for all of Indonesia’s failures to predict and anticipate industry trends, it only has itself to blame.
Antonia Timmerman is CGSP’s Southeast Asia Editor.
