Perodua is an organization that plans all the pieces intimately, and sticks to it. Annual sales records, a vice-like grip of its No.1 position and market share that’s now pushing 45% are testaments to the discipline and efficiency at play in Rawang. Heck, Perodua is now the No.2 carmaker in ASEAN after overtaking Honda in 2024. But an EV in 2025 wasn’t a part of the plan.
It was the plan of the Madani government, and although Perodua won’t ever say so publicly, the corporate was tasked to give you a reasonable EV. To make things much more ‘interesting’ the federal government announced the deadline publicly, which meant that P2 needed to deliver in 2025, by hook or crook.
With no way out, Perodua had to start out from scratch. Unlike Proton, which may cherry pick models from Geely’s range of EVs, P2’s foreign partner Daihatsu didn’t have an acceptable donor automobile. That they had to do all of it themselves. The general public was given ‘progress reports’ at motor shows, and everybody sat up and took notice of “Episode 2” of the Electric Motion Online series at KLIMS 2024.
Fast forward just a few months and we now have the third and final episode. Titled ‘Aspirations’, it sees the eMO-II morph right into a crossover of sorts with a ‘fastback’ roof, like a smaller version of the Toyota C-HR+ EV that surfaced in March. Perodua president and CEO Datuk Seri Zainal Abidin Ahmad said that this final prototype is “very very near production”.
On the press day of the Malaysia Autoshow 2025, Zainal said that Perodua didn’t receive any type of R&D grants or financial incentives from the federal government despite having to develop its first EV from the bottom up.
“When it comes to grants or incentives, nothing is finalised, because there’s a requirement for us to prove ourselves first. We now have to prove ourselves and deliver the product under the NIMP (Latest Industrial Master Plan) 2030. We now have to deliver the product.
“At the identical time, there’s a requirement for local development and native content. So we’re within the technique of attempting to fulfil the necessities given by the federal government. As you realize, any incentives have to be compensated by the local economic growth generated by the motivation received,” he added.
“The federal government has given us some localisation targets and we’ll commit to it. Quite various our local vendors will participate, at this moment 41 or 42. Other than the engineering-related items, the largest challenge for us is how you can create the EV ecosystem in our local industry,” he elaborated.
The unique plan was for the EV to be a ‘limited production’ automobile (as in small volume, not limited edition), but Perodua is now dreaming greater. “Based on the product that we have now, based on surveys, we have now to vary our direction – now we’re going for mass production. We’ll need a little bit of time for that. As a start it’ll be 500 units a month after which we’ll ramp up production to over 2,000 units per 30 days.
“Once we go for mass production, we’ll have to be sure of the participation from local vendors – that’s very essential. If Perodua goes for mass production from the start but local content continues to be very low, there won’t be much intending to the local industry. To ensure that us to go for mass production and better volume, it’s not nearly Perodua, but we have now to take a look at our vendor system to be consistent with our planning,” Zainal said, tying back to the ecosystem factor.
Pre-production of the EV will start in September at a brand new EV-specific plant situated inside P2’s Sg Choh base, ahead of a launch near the top of the 12 months.
For more on Perodua’s first EV, including a full walk-around and details on the unprecedented Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) battery leasing programme in addition to a guaranteed future value scheme to guard the EV’s RV, click here.
GALLERY: Perodua eMO final prototype at MAS 2025
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This Article First Appeared At paultan.org
