Perodua is an organization that plans all the things intimately, and sticks to it. Annual gross sales information, a vice-like grip of its No.1 place and market share that’s now pushing 45% are testaments to the self-discipline and effectivity at play in Rawang. Heck, Perodua is now the No.2 carmaker in ASEAN after overtaking Honda in 2024. However an EV in 2025 wasn’t a part of the plan.
It was the plan of the Madani authorities, and though Perodua won’t ever say so publicly, the corporate was tasked to provide you with an reasonably priced EV. To make issues much more ‘fascinating’ the federal government introduced the deadline publicly, which meant that P2 needed to ship in 2025, by hook or criminal.
With no manner out, Perodua needed to begin from scratch. Not like Proton, which may cherry choose fashions from Geely’s vary of EVs, P2’s overseas accomplice Daihatsu didn’t have an appropriate donor automobile. They needed to do all of it themselves. The general public was given ‘progress stories’ at motor exhibits, and everybody sat up and took discover of “Episode 2” of the Electrical Movement On-line collection at KLIMS 2024.
Quick ahead just a few months and we now have the third and ultimate episode. Titled ‘Aspirations’, it sees the eMO-II morph right into a crossover of types with a ‘fastback’ roof, like a smaller model of the Toyota C-HR+ EV that surfaced in March. Perodua president and CEO Datuk Seri Zainal Abidin Ahmad stated that this ultimate prototype is “very very near manufacturing”.
On the press day of the Malaysia Autoshow 2025, Zainal stated that Perodua didn’t obtain any type of R&D grants or monetary incentives from the federal government regardless of having to develop its first EV from the bottom up.
“When it comes to grants or incentives, nothing is finalised, as a result of there’s a requirement for us to show ourselves first. We have now to show ourselves and ship the product underneath the NIMP (New Industrial Grasp Plan) 2030. We have now to ship the product.
“On the identical time, there’s a requirement for native growth and native content material. So we’re within the technique of making an attempt to fulfil the necessities given by the federal government. As you understand, any incentives should be compensated by the native financial development generated by the motivation acquired,” he added.
“The federal government has given us some localisation targets and we are going to decide to it. Fairly quite a lot of our native distributors will take part, at this second 41 or 42. Aside from the engineering-related objects, the most important problem for us is find out how to create the EV ecosystem in our native trade,” he elaborated.
The unique plan was for the EV to be a ‘restricted manufacturing’ automobile (as in small quantity, not restricted version), however Perodua is now dreaming larger. “Primarily based on the product that we’ve, based mostly on surveys, we’ve to vary our course – now we’re going for mass manufacturing. We’ll want a little bit of time for that. As a begin it’ll be 500 items a month after which we’ll ramp up manufacturing to over 2,000 items monthly.
“Once we go for mass manufacturing, we’ll want to verify of the participation from native distributors – that’s essential. If Perodua goes for mass manufacturing from the start however native content material remains to be very low, there gained’t be a lot which means to the native trade. To ensure that us to go for mass manufacturing and better quantity, it’s not nearly Perodua, however we’ve to take a look at our vendor system to be in step with our planning,” Zainal stated, tying again to the ecosystem issue.
Pre-production of the EV will begin in September at a brand new EV-specific plant positioned inside P2’s Sg Choh base, forward of a launch near the tip of the yr.
For extra on Perodua’s first EV, together with a full walk-around and particulars on the unprecedented Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) battery leasing programme in addition to a assured future worth scheme to guard the EV’s RV, click on right here.
GALLERY: Perodua eMO ultimate prototype at MAS 2025
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