It is one of the very first steps in a national strategy to stop all sales of fuel-powered vehicles across the nation by 2050.

So far, under the strategy, the Indonesian government has set a target of having 13 million electric motorbikes and 2.2 million electric cars on the roads by 2030.

This compares to more than 112 million motorcycles and 15 million cars on Indonesian roads as of 2019, data from Indonesia’s automotive industries association showed.

“To create economies of scale, we have to create a market,” Indonesia’s energy minister Arifin Tasrif said at the presentation of the project on August 18, calling for the conversion of technology into electric bikes to be developed at small and medium-sized business levels.

Indonesia has a very large number of motorbikes, especially in big cities, creating a large amount of emissions to the environment

The government is also working on converting public buses that use fossil fuel into electric buses, a transport ministry official told the same event.

Indonesia, which has the biggest economy in Southeast Asia and the world’s fourth-largest population with more than 275 million people, is one of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters.

The country also has ambitious plans of becoming a global hub for the production of batteries and electric vehicles, taking advantage of its rich supplies of nickel laterite ore used in lithium batteries.