Indonesian Car Market, Days before Pressure

Save as much as you can before the rainy day

That might be a match sentence for Indonesian Automaker. Forget about the recall crisis, Indonesian car market is not affected by that and (possibly) not sensitive enough with the recall issues, but the distributors need to boost sales as much as they can. Why so? Because the hard days are yet to come.

The causes are:

Progressive Tax Plan

The progressive tax means higher tax will applied for the second car. If the owner buy his second car, the car will have higher tax than the first one, if he buy the third, it has higher tax than the second one and so forth. Conclusion is to prohibit Indonesian to have multiple cars. Good news for crowded Jakarta street, bad news for Automaker. It’s still on debate to be applied in Jakarta, which is the biggest market for automobile in Indonesia.

No Subsidized Gas for New Car

Most (maybe ‘nearly all’) car in Indonesia used the subsidized Octane 88 gasoline. It’s a hidden feature of tax rebate I know, but Indonesia is not an oil land anymore (I will discuss about it more in the next post). Some policy plan has been discussed regarding this problem, and the last one is the car which produced in 2000 and thereafter are not allowed to consume the subsidized gas. It’s still on debate, but the latest news said that Pertamina, the one and only oil company allowed to sell the subsidized gas is booked Rp 456 billion (about US$ 45.6 Million) loss because of the gas. If the rule really applied, good news for Pertamina, bad news for Automaker, as the demand of the new car estimated to be decreased because of this.

Increasing Steel Price

The steel price is reported to be doubled from last year, because of steelmaker increasing operarional cost. This will create a pressure to the price of the new car as they need more pocket to buy the main ingredient. Okay they will charge more to the customer, but remember the demand is contradictionary to the price. Bad news for Automaker bad news for Consumer too.

The last one is slow but sure will make the car price more expensive, the first two? Still on the debate but when those two are really applied, the market will be totally changed. The Automaker must boost car sales as much as they can before running out of time.

—
Anton Hermansyah

Simulation of Nissan LEAF Operational Cost in Indonesia

The earth hero Nissan LEAF will come into production in 2011. I don’t know how much it cost but probably around $30,000 — $40,000. The issues of rising electricity price in Indonesia simply gives me idea to estimate the operational cost of Nissan LEAF here.

First, I look up for the charging specification of LEAF, there are three kind of charge ‘Slow’ which is the standard one, ‘Fast’ which halved the time with double amp, and ‘Quick’ which enables you to charge in less than one hour. In the full capacity, the Lithium Ion battery could run the LEAF for 160 km.

Type	Amp	Volt	Time (Hour)	Capacity	Range (km)
Slow Charge	100	20	16	100%	160
Fast Charge	220	20	8	100%	160
Quick Charge	440	20	0.42	80%	128

Below is the table of Indonesian electricity cost,based on 2009 price.

Class	VA Limit	Charge Cost (Rp/kVA/Month)	Usage Cost (Rp/kWh)
S-1/TR	220 VA	0	Subscription Cost/Month : 14,800
S-2/TR (1)	450 VA	10	Block I	0 – 30 kWh	123
			Block II	> 30 kWh – 60 kWh	265
			Block III	> 60 kWh	360
S-2/TR (2)	900 VA	15	Block I	0 – 20 kWh	200
			Block II	> 20 kWh – 60 kWh	295
			Block III	> 60 kWh	360
S-2/TR (3)	1,300 VA	25	Block I	0 -. 20 kWh	250
			Block II	> 20 kWh – 60 kWh	335
			Block III	> 60 kWh	405
S-2/TR (4)	2,200 VA	27	Block I	0 – 20 kWh	250
			Block II	> 20 kWh – 60 kWh	370
			Block III	> 60 kWh	420
S-2/TR (5)	> 2,200 VA to 200 kVA	30.5	Block I	0 – 60 hours on	380
			Block II	> 60 hours on after	430
S-3/TM	> 200 kVA	29.5	Block WBP	KxPx325
			Block LWBP	Px325
R-1/TR (1)	Up to 450 VA	11	Block I	0 – 30 kWh	169
			Block II	> 30 kWh – 60 kWh	360
			Block III	> 60 kWh	495
R-1/TR (2)	900 VA	20	Block I	0 – 20 kWh	275
			Block II	> 20 kWh – 60 kWh	445
			Block III	> 60 kWh	495
R-1/TR (3)	1,300 VA	30.1	Block I	0 – 20 kWh	385
			Block II	> 20 kWh – 60 kWh	445
			Block III	> 60 kWh	495
R-1/TR (4)	2,200 VA	30.2	Block I	0 – 20 kWh	390
			Block II	> 20 kWh – 60 kWh	445
			Block III	> 60 kWh	495
R-2/TR	> 2,200 VA to 6,600 VA	30.4	560
R-3/TR	> 6,600 VA	34.26	621

After look at the price of electricity, I match LEAF charging specification with the price. All of the charging types are under S-2 class, but only Slow charge under TR (4) and the rest are TR (5).

Type	VA	kWh	Class	Block
Slow Charge	2,000	32	S-2/TR (4)	II
Fast Charge	4,400	35.2	S-2/TR (5)	I
Quick Charge	8,800	3.67	S-2/TR (5)	I

I calculate the total cost based on the charging type and it’s pricing category, then looking for the cost per km, which is the total cost divided by maximum range (see the first table).

Type	Charge Cost	Usage Cost	Total	Cost/km (Rp)
Slow Charge	54	11,840	11,894	74.34
Fast Charge	134.2	13,376	13,510.2	84.44
Quick Charge	268.4	1,393.33	1,661.73	12.98

Then I compare with the ordinary gasoline car. I chose Nissan Livina with HR15DE engine, because this car fall under same category based on the body size with LEAF. Assuming Octane 88 price : Rp 4,500/l; Octane 92 : Rp 6,000/l; Octane 95 : Rp 6,200/l

Type	Fuel Cons. (km/l)	Cost/km (Rp)
		Octane 88	Octane 92	Octane 95
City	11	409.09	545.45	563.64
Combination	16	281.25	375	387.5
Highway	21	214.29	285.71	295.24

Then I calculate the percentage of how much Indonesians could save if they use LEAF instead of Livina.

1. In the City

	Slow	Fast	Quick
Octane 88	81.83%	79.36%	96.83%
Octane 92	86.37%	84.52%	97.62%
Octane 95	86.81%	85.02%	97.70%

2. In the Combination Route

	Slow	Fast	Quick
Octane 88	73.57%	69.98%	95.38%
Octane 92	80.18%	77.48%	96.54%
Octane 95	80.82%	78.21%	96.95%

3. In the Highway

	Slow	Fast	Quick
Octane 88	65.31%	60.60%	93.94%
Octane 92	73.98%	70.45%	96.46%
Octane 95	74.82%	71.40%	95.60%

The calculation shows that Indonesians could save at least 70% of their daily operational cost if they’re using LEAF. From here we also know that the Quick Charge could give the cheapest cost among the three charging type, but don’t use it too much because the battery is not charge in full capacity.

So, buy a LEAF everyone??

—
Anton Hermansyah

Hybrid Car, Does It Still Far-Far Away from Indonesia?

The next step of the automobile is the hybrid car, well I won’t talk about the specification or which hybrid you should use, but how long we should wait for a Prius, Insight or FCX park in our garage in Indonesia.

There some borders that Indonesian citizens have in order to have a hybrid car, mostly about the price and cost, and mostly it come from the government, here’s some that I got :

The Lebaran Effects?

At the half of the month (September), my friend, Fajar told me that Dow Jones and Han Seng Index are fall by more than 10%, and I asked him, “how about Indonesia?”. He answered “We can still relax at this time, it’s still stable”.

I asked him back “Why?”, “I have no idea”, He replied. I answered my own question (with joking) “Maybe there’s a Lebaran effect, so demands are increasing and hold the economics from falling down”. “Just maybe”, Fajar replied.

I look at the newspaper and everybody said “The Black Monday“, because Lehman Brothers was filed for bankruptcy.

I would have a review about the Index movement at this month, unfortunately I couldn’t get the closing price data until the end of the month (my data end at 19^th of September), but I hope it’s enough to give a brief picture about the market at three countries (United States, Hong Kong and Indonesia)

Joker's Game Theory in The Dark Knight

In The Dark Knight movie, there is a scene where Joker traps two ferries that carrying people out of Gotham. Each boat has different passengers :

• Boat 1 = Contains the prisoners, several policemen and jail guardian
• Boat 2 = Contains civilians, they are free and look more educated than most people at the first boat

Each of the boat has a bomb placed inside and the detonator to detonate the other bomb, so Boat 1 could detonate the bomb in Boat 2 and vice versa.

With time limit given, they have to choose between to detonate or not, and both of the boat can’t communicate to each other. Yes, this is could be a prisoner’s dilemma or game of chicken because they faced morality problem, they could be a murderer.

Gas is for Deep Pockets?

I buy gas for my motorcycle every Tuesday and last time I went to the gas station, it shocked me with the price. I never felt the rapid increasing price like this. I usually buy a 92 octane gasoline (Premium Grade) and it has reached Rp. 10.600 per liter (about US$ 4.39 per gallon), last two weeks I bought it in Rp. 10.300 per liter (about US$ 4.26 per gallon). Six months ago I could bought it in price Rp. 8.600 per liter (about US$ 3.56 per gallon).

I could do some saving if I use the octane 88 (Regular Grade) one which price is Rp. 6.000 per liter (about US$ 2.48 per gallon) instead of the 92 octane one. Well all I can say is it just a matter of habit. When you usually fill up your tank with a higher octane there are a lot of consideration if you want to downgrade your gas.

But I’m not all alone, other countries has the same condition with me in Indonesia. For example :