Archive for Proton

Transport Minister Datuk Ong Tee Keat says owners of locally-made cars without rear seatbelts will soon be able to get them installed for free, if a deal with local car manufacturers goes through. A Memorandum of Understanding between the parties involved is expected to be signed in the next few days.

“I wanted original manufacturers involved because fitting anchorage points for seat belts must be done properly. It is part of their corporate social responsibility programme. I would like to advise passengers in cars already fitted with seat belts to buckle up when travelling and for car owners without rear seat belts to install them promptly and not wait until the last minute,” said Datuk Ong.

Remember, the rear seat belt rule starts from this month (June 2008) onwards, so start buckling up! Read the previous posts on this issue to find out more about the new rear seat belt rule. There are some exemptions for certain Perodua models that have supposedly no anchorage points for rear seat belts.

Related Posts:
Compulsory rear seatbelt usage from June onwards
Rear seatbelt usage to come into effect Q3 2008?
Rear seatbelt usage to be made compulsory

See rest of upcoming Chery MPV spyshots

Ever since initial sketches of the Proton MPV was revealed by Buletin Utama TV3, there have been readers who have noticed similarities with a disguised next generation Chery MPV that has been spotted and captured on camera in Europe. It’s only natural to start speculating. Let’s take it beyond speculation for abit shall we?

Click here to read the rest of Does the Proton MPV have anything to do with an upcoming Chery MPV?

Sketches of the front and rear three quarter views of the upcoming 2009 Proton MPV have been revealed on the Buletin Utama segment on TV3 last night, revealing a front bumper design that is reminiscent of the second generation Proton Saga.

Other design details that are revealed include a swage line on the side profile of the car to hide the actual door height.

These sketches may or may not represent how the actual production 2009 Proton MPV will look like as we have not seen an actual test mule being driven on the road yet. All that has been spotted is a test mule using a Toyota Wish body with what is presumably a Proton engine and a rojak dashboard.

WATCH: Buletin Utama TV3, 26th May 2008 - Part 2

Related Links:
First sighting of new Proton MPV-related test mule
Proton MPV due in early 2009

Proton Holdings Bhd has just announced a Q4 net profit of 236.4 million ringgit, compared to 915,000 ringgit during the same period the previous year.

Sales climbed from 1.26 billion ringgit up to 1.72 billion ringgit for the financial year of 2007 (which Proton attributed to the Persona and Saga), resulting in a net profit of 202.9 million ringgit.

Source

Don’t be shocked that profit before tax for the financial year was listed as RM162.2 million, but somehow net profit for the financial year ended up more than the profit before tax. It’s probably due to tax refunds or something similiar from prior periods.

For the new financial year which will end on the 31st of March 2009, Proton plans to improve its export performance, with the Saga set to be launched in Proton’s major export markets from June 2008 onwards. We’ll get to see whether foreign media share the enthusiasm of a large amount of people here in Malaysia that are happy with the value that the Proton Saga gives. I’m very curious how the Saga will be priced in markets outside of Malaysia, which will decide what budget cars it will go against.

As for production levels, Proton is planning to increase its current production level of 6,400 units monthly up to 8,000 units monthly in the next few months. Production levels were only about 4,500 units a month before April 2008. This is in efforts to meet high demand for its Proton Persona and Proton Saga cars. Last I heard, even the automatic version of the Proton Waja CPS has a waiting list because of fleet purchases.

The Proton MPV is still set to be launched in early 2009, so we should expect to see on-road sightings of the MPV sometime before the end of the year. After its local debut, the MPV will make its way to export markets like Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam in 2010, and China in 2011.

UPDATE: If you take a look at their full Q4 financial results report document, you will find that on page 8 it is report that Proton received an R&D grant from the government under the National Automotive Policy amounting to a total of RM194 million.

The NAP encourages local investment through various incentives such as R&D grants and excise duty exemptions. So for Proton, the benefits from the NAP are RM194 million worth of R&D grant money, an unknown amount of excise duty exemptions through the Industrial Adjustment Fund. The RM194 million is registered under Other Operating Income, which accounts for more than half of the total of RM329.3 million worth of Other Operating Income for the financial year ending 31st of March 2008.

Another interesting item is the sale of the rights to use Intellectual Property for RM32 million: this is the Jinhua Youngman Europestar RCR deal which involves rebadged left hand drive Proton GEN2s sold in China, as explained on page 10.

According to a report by Automotive World, CKD assembly of the Europestar Lotus RCR at Youngman’s plant in Jinan, China is set to begin in August 2008 this year. The Europestar RCR is a badge engineered left hand drive pre-facelift version of the Proton GEN2 we have here on our local shores. A total of 150,000 CKD kits have been ordered for the next 6 years - which is about 25,000 units a year.

The Europestar RCR was initially launched by Youngman in early January this year, and sales began with a batch of 30,000 CBU imported units of the left-hand drive car from Proton’s plant in Malaysia. Before launch date, the car had already received 1,500 bookings. The RCR is being pushed in China by an initial appointment of 40 dealers which will provide a sales, service and spare parts network.

Here’s something interesting: the rebadging deal includes royalty payments for legal usage of the Proton GEN2 design. So legally, Youngman - the company behind the Europestar brand - holds the rights for the Proton GEN2 designs in China.

If another Chinese company decides to rip the GEN2 off, it won’t be Proton against a Chinese company in the Chinese courts. It will be a Chinese company against another Chinese company, which could lead to more favorable results than the precedents we have seen previously where a Chinese company who has ripped off a Japanese or western design can get away with it easily.

There will be more cars from Europestar in the Chinese market in the future. While there will likely continue to be some form of platform and parts sharing with Proton, future Europestars will be engineered by Lotus engineering consultants and will be be much further differentiated from the Protons it may share parts with - something like how a Seat Ibiza is a Volkswagen Polo but does not look like one.

Picture above snapped in China courtesy of Astley Ho, find more photos after the jump.

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Click here to read the rest of Europestar RCR CKD assembly to begin in August

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi claims that the government has stopped Proton’s protective policies because it has started up programs like the Industrial Adjustment Fund which exempts excise duty payment depending on the how much the manufacturer has invested in Malaysia.

“The Government has implemented various measures such as giving incentives and grants, technical training through international strategic partnership, which also benefit the entire industry,” said Abdullah.

Since prices have not really come down in the past few years (manufacturers who wish to keep their strong brand loyalty and perception of good second hand value which Malaysians consider important when purchasing a car will never suddenly drop the prices of their cars because they do not want to anger their existing customers by having their car’s second hand values affected), these non-national manufacturers who have benefited can channel the money into a) increasing specs, b) increasing marketing expenditure to increase sales or c) laugh all the way to the bank.

There has not been and probably will never be any disclosure on which companies are getting duty exemptions, but we can see some form of relaxation in policies here and there. For example, Cam Soh finally managed to start assembling his Chery vehicles here - vehicles which are priced rather closely to Proton’s.

Related Posts:
RM400 million for Proton vendor development

According to Entrepreneur and Cooperative Development Minister Datuk Noh Omar, his ministry will be approaching to discuss the development of a new type of taxi to replace the the bulk of the aging taxis that we currently use, which use the Proton Saga/Iswara models. The new taxi would be an exclusive model designed to be a cab and not based on a passenger car model.

An idealistic thought, but in reality as it is a mass-produced model like the new second generation Proton Saga can only barely touch the RM30K price tag, and with the impending higher fuel prices, taxi operators already have to deal with that as it is and it is not realistic to burden them with a higher purchase cost that would like be associated with this specially developed cab because of its limited volume.

Even in the UK, cabs in most areas use passenger car models, and only the city of London has special London Taxi Cabs built by London Taxis International. The latest model is the LTI TX4, powered by a 2.5 liter VM Motori diesel (360Nm at 2,000rpm) mated to a 5-speed auto or a 5-speed manual.

Source (scroll to bottom)

According to a report by Turkish paper Today’s Zaman, Proton intends to make Turkey its European production center. Proton’s Turkish distributor is Ulu Motor, part of the Ulubaslar Group.

The Turkish automotive industry produced 1.13 million vehicles last year, and expects to hit the 2 million annual production mark by 2012. It is now ranked number 10 in the world in terms of annual production of cars. In the past 4 months this year, Turkey’s automotive exports rose 52% compared to the same period in 2007.

Proton Vendors Association president Dr Wan Mohamed Wan Embong says automotive vendors in Malaysia needs to speed up mergers and acquisitions so that Proton vendors will be stronger and will be able to perform in-house design and development including costly engineering and testing, as small and medium vendors would probably not be able to afford such R&D.

Sometime last month, the government announced a RM400 million fund under the Automotive Industry Development Fund for financial assistance for Proton vendors to improve quality and production levels.

A story back in 2006 mentioned that Proton had 270 vendors at that time. Proton now still has over 200 suppliers, but only 140 of them are members of the Proton Vendors Association. Even back during those times, the efforts for consolidation had already begun, but the process seems to be taking a long time.

“It is slow because it is not a easy task to group the entrepreneurs into one, where they have to report to possibly a boss again. And the fact that when you want to be an entrepreneur you have to be independent,” Dr Wan Mohamed added.

Dr Wan Mohamed himself is involved in a consolidation of four vendors under a new company called Automotive Network Alliances which specialises in car interior trim and noise control products.

Related Posts:
Proton Vendors Association wants protection
Proton vendors urge government to go ahead with voluntary scrapping
Proton wants certified vendors
Proton vendors need to buck up!
RM400 million for Proton vendor development

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Readers often send in artist’s impression of their favourite real or imaginary cars, and this one is a work by reader Zarul. He’s created a wallpaper which features his impression of how a Proton MPV could look like.

You will find another image after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of Reader Zarul’s Proton MPV Wallpaper