Under Section E Part VI of the NAP Review, the government revealed that it would be implementing a full Vehicle End of Life policy which would come in stages. A roadmap will be formulated by the Ministry of Transport to lay out the steps towards the scrap policy implementation, but the first step is already here – a mandatory yearly inspection for cars older than 15 years in order to get their road tax renewed. Why 15 years? Could that be the vehicle age that they are looking at to enforce scrapping in the future?
According to the NAP review, Malaysia currently has 2.7 million cars on the road that are 10 years or older and the country has a very low vehicle scrap rate and a relatively high average vehicle age. With so many people having to go for 7 to 9 year loans to buy their vehicles, is this really a surprise that after suffering financial burden for so long, you would want to reap the benefit of your transportation longer?
There are currently a few situations where we go to Puspakom for their dreaded tests. It is an open secret what kind of environment that place is. A friend of mine had his tint test failed repeatedly even though his car windscreen was clear and had absolutely no tint. He argued that he should not be failed and somehow he ended up passing but with some rubber parts of his car damaged. When my E30 was sent for an ownership change inspection (B5 test), it came back with a broken glovebox latch and all the rubber trim around the door utterly raped.
If you are a straight shooter the only cash you will have to pay during these annual road tax inspections are the Puspakom fees itself. Right now there are two tests for private motorcars – the transfer of ownership test and a voluntary test which most of the time is not really voluntary – you may need certificates from these tests to renew your insurance these days. The ownership transfer test involves checking your vehicle identity (chassis and engine), chassis frame condition, and tinted glass. The voluntary inspection checks more stuff – identity, above carriage, emissions, brakes, suspension, side slip, speedometer, headlamps, undercarriage and tinted glass.
The voluntary test goes for RM50 (according to this Puspakom pricelist) and the transfer test costs RM30. So you can expect this annual inspection for road tax renewal to probably cost around these prices as well.
