Electric Motorbike Adoption in Indonesia seen with HCD lens

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Somia CX Thoughts

7 min readAug 16, 2023

Indonesia has big plans to make this country an EV manufacturing hub. Packed with nickel reserves as one of the main components to make EV batteries, Indonesia sees this as an opportunity not only for investments but also to reduce the carbon emission in which 30% is contributed by transportation (Jakarta Post). As a fact, Indonesia has more than 125 million motorbikes compared to 17 million cars (BPS).

With regard to motorbikes, the government plans to have sales over 1.9 million units of electric motorbikes by 2030. To support this goal, the government has developed some schemes such as subsidies and incentive programs to own electric motorbikes. Despite those initiatives, until last October 2022, there are only 32,000 electric motorbikes on the road, thus it is quite still a big gap compared to the goal (Reuters).

In this writing, we are trying to dissect deeper through the lens of Human Centered Design (HCD) on the adoption of electric motorbikes in relation to the gap.

EV adoption through the lens of HCD

Human Centered Design has three lenses for innovation, namely Desirability, Feasibility and Viability. The idea is to find the sweet spot of intersection of those 3 lenses to make the innovation work. Let’s have a look one by one.

Desirability

The main questions in this lens are: Do people need it? Do they want it? What do they desire?

Electric motorbikes offer some advantages over the usual internal combustion engine motorbike (gas powered), such as low cost per mileage, low maintenance (no need to regularly change engine oil) along with environmental benefit (low to zero emissions). But the real question is, does motorbike EV suits the main needs of user in terms of mobility?

As an example, an online ojek drivers, they can travel more than 100 KM per day or around 1,000 Km per week (Jakarta Post), but most of the electric motorbikes can only last for about 50–70 KM with a single battery. To accommodate this, they need to recharge their batteries, which takes time about 4–5 hours (Jakarta Post). This is certainly not ideal, because the driver do not have the time and they will lose orders and income. One of the alternatives is to utilised a battery swapping mechanism in battery-swap stations. It would only take less than a minute to put their drained battery and swap it with the new ones fully charged. However, these stations are not easily find like conventional gas stations. In Jakarta area, driver can still manage to find these stations along their route, but when they need to go outside Jakarta, it becomes harder to find.

How about for personal use? Can urban city-dwellers who reside in suburb and work in the city can utilize the electric motorbike, provided with the conditions above? What proposition do they value regarding electric motorbike compared to conventional internal combustion engine bike?

One of our team members is interested to purchase electric motorbike. He resides in the outskirt of Jakarta (Tangerang Selatan). Every now and then he goes to our office located in Jakarta, but he commute using public transportation (KRL train, Busway, MRT) from Tangerang Selatan to Jakarta. He does not have the intention to use the electric motorbike for commuting from Tangerang Selatan to Jakarta, instead he will use it to commute from his house to the KRL train station in Tangerang Selatan (then commute using public transport to Jakarta) and also for riding around Tangerang Selatan (which he thinks the city’s public transport is far from adequate).

It is interesting to note that he wants to reduce carbon emissions though utilizing as much public transport as he can and the electric motorbike option exist due to lack of public transport infrastructure in Tangerang Selatan. He does not prefer to have another combustion engine motorbike as it will contribute to more carbon emissions. It seems for him, the drive to reduce emissions coupled with lack of public transport in an area or city might be a strong drive to adopt electric motorbike.

Feasibility

The main questions in this lens are: Do we have the technology to build it? Can it be done? The short answer is yes, but does the technology performance align with the real world situations?

Electric motorbikes relies on batteries and electric powered engine. Some manufacturers have 2 slots of batteries to allow user to reach higher mileage (such as Gogoro that can reach up to 150KM or Polytron FOX-R up to 130KM), but most manufacturers only have 1 slot batteries and thus lower mileage, as we mentioned before this could cause a problem.

Another aspect to consider is the topography of Indonesia. In short, the roads in Indonesia’s city is not all fully flat. Why is this important? Because imagine a user in Bandung for example, which has hills, up and downs road conditions, the engine and batteries need to work harder to climb those steep roads, which in turn draining up the batteries faster. As a result, user get less mileage that he/she would have in a flat roads. Based on the finding by a South East Asian publication agency, 70% of ride-hailing drivers in Bandung returned their electric motorbike because it simply does not make their ends meet.

The engine wattage also play a role in the ability to climb a steep road, the higher the wattage, the higher chance the bike can climb. However, continuously being given heavier loads can damage the engine’s dynamo risking of engine failure.

Viability

The main question in this lens is: is it sustainable for the business? What can be financially viable?

Currently, the electric motorbike adoption in Indonesia is led by online transportation company, namely Gojek and Grab. In general, their driver need to “rent” the motorbike provided by the companies through collaboration with several electric motorbike manufacturers. Some of these manufacturers also building the supported ecosystems such as the battery-swap stations. The question would become, are ride-hailing platform will be the main channel to sell manufacturers’ electric bike or they are using it to find out more about the market first? The number of electric vehicles deployed by Grab and Gojek by October 2022 is less than 15,000 (validnews.id) about less than half of the total electric motorcycles per last year, would this be a sustainable business in the long run to reach sales of 1.9 million units by 2030?

In terms of pricing, in general, electric motorbike has higher price compared to conventional internal combustion engine motorbike. For example, Gesits (as one of leading local manufacturer) with its G1 product costs about IDR 28 million, while a consumer can buy a Honda beat for less than IDR 20 million. The initial “investment” of owning an electric motorcycle can also be a major factor for a customer to switch, even though the operational and maintenance costs are less in the long run compared to the conventional motorbikes.

Polytron, Indonesian local manufacturer offer its electric motorbike, FOX-R, equipped with premium features but with an interesting twist of “battery rental” program. Customers pay a monthly battery subscription of IDR 200,000 (2 years guarantee) and initial purchase of the motorbike around IDR 20 million. With this condition, it makes one of our team members who are interested to purchase to think more than twice, would the IDR 200,00 per month can justify his usage? on top of that the cost electricity (charging) will still occur, and if compared to traditional combustion engine, it seems the numbers does not add up.

One other aspect is distribution channel, do manufacturers have the capacity to reach out to potential customers? We spoke to one of the sales representatives of a local electric motorbike manufacturer, he said that other manufacturers are trying to collaborate with them to help distributing their products, since this sales representatives company have a better reach out in terms of showrooms, stores and dealers across Indonesia.

It seems manufacturers need to iterate on their business models to foster (faster) adoption and sustainable business through collaborating and leveraging existing players in the whole ecosystem.

Where do we go from here?

Based on the 3 lenses above, the adoption has still quite a long way to go to reach the 2030 goal. We need to better understand about the electric motorbike user and market so that governments, manufacturers and other players can take more informed decisions.

Start with understanding the user’s first. Electric motorbike manufacturers need to understand what are the main consideration, expectation and needs in adopting, to derive the hygiene factors of requirements to provide better solutions and experience to its users, not just on the product level, but also on the ecosystem level (distribution channels, swap stations, service centres, etc).

Here are some key questions to be explored for both electric motorbike users and non-users:

What is the current user’s behaviour regarding mobility?