JAKARTA, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia is set to start its first electric vehicle (EV) battery cell production in April this year, the country's Ministry of Investment said Thursday.
The ministry's Special Staff for Regional Relations, Tina Talisa, said in a statement that the EV battery cell can be powered up to 300 watt-hour and would be produced by PT HLI Green Power with a maximum production capacity of 10 gigawatts.
"Starting April, the PT HLI Green Power factory will start its mass production and more than 90 percent of the products it produces will be exported mainly to South Korea, then to India," she said.
Talisa said further that the battery cells will be processed from raw materials, including nickel, manganese, cobalt and lithium.
Indonesia is known as one of the world's largest nickel producers, having around 72 million tons of reserves of nickel ore, or 52 percent of the total amount of nickel ore around the world, according to 2020 data from the country's Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources. Nickel is a primary component of EV batteries. ■
