JAKARTA. The government has appointed state-owned arms manufacturer PT Pindad to produce electric motors for the national electric car project as the firm already had the capabilities, State-Owned Enterprises Minister Dahlan Iskan said Friday.

Dahlan said Pindad would produce one of the four planned electric car models projected by the government. “We expect to start production next year,” he said.

He said of the four models, the smallest one, in the class of Honda Jazz compact hatchback, would be produced by state-owned enterprises.

“The larger ones will be produced by private sectors. They are capable of doing it,” he said.

Pindad president director Adik Avianto said his company had been producing electric traction motors for trains.

“We have been producing electric motors for trains in the past 15 years. Now we are about to transfer the technology from what we have been doing to those for electric cars,” he said.

He added that the electric traction motors for trains were larger than those for electric cars.

Adik also said Pindad had acquired technical assistace from a Japanese consultant having experience in producing electric traction motors.

“We are communicating intensely with the Japanese consultant. We need to find out how big the car will be, what equipments are needed because the requirements are different than those for larger train,” he said.

“Once we produce the traction motors then Indonesia will have electric cars with local components.”

He said the traction motors being developed were for public transportation and buses while for the electric car had yet to be finalized because the requirements were still kept changing.

“We have been entering the business [producing traction motors] for electric cars just in the past one month.”

Dahlan said he had also requested state-owned train builder PT Inka to finalize its own team to support the production of electric traction motors in the next two years. (Arya Dipa/ The Jakarta Post)

Editor: Edy Can