Perodua is a company that plans everything in detail, 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 part of the plan.
It was the plan of the Madani government, and although Perodua will never say so publicly, the company was tasked to come up with an affordable EV. To make things even more ‘interesting’ the government announced the deadline publicly, which meant that P2 had to deliver in 2025, by hook or crook.
With no way out, Perodua had to start from scratch. Unlike Proton, which can cherry pick models from Geely’s range of EVs, P2’s foreign partner Daihatsu did not have a suitable donor car. They had to do it all themselves. The public was given ‘progress reports’ at motor shows, and everyone sat up and took notice of “Episode 2” of the Electric Motion Online series at KLIMS 2024.
Fast forward a few months and we now have the third and final episode. Titled ‘Aspirations’, it sees the eMO-II morph 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 close to production”.
At the press day of the Malaysia Autoshow 2025, Zainal said that Perodua did not receive any form of R&D grants or financial incentives from the government despite having to develop its first EV from the ground up.
“In terms of grants or incentives, nothing is finalised, because there is a requirement for us to prove ourselves first. We have to prove ourselves and deliver the product under the NIMP (New Industrial Master Plan) 2030. We have to deliver the product.
“At the same time, there is a requirement for local development and local content. So we are in the process of trying to fulfil the requirements given by the government. As you know, any incentives must be compensated by the local economic growth generated by the incentive received,” he added.
“The government has given us some localisation targets and we will commit to it. Quite a number of our local vendors will participate, at this moment 41 or 42. Apart from the engineering-related items, the biggest challenge for us is how to create the EV ecosystem in our local industry,” he elaborated.
The original plan was for the EV to be a ‘limited production’ car (as in small volume, not limited edition), but Perodua is now dreaming bigger. “Based on the product that we have, based on surveys, we have to change our direction – now we’re going for mass production. We’ll need a bit of time for that. As a start it’ll be 500 units a month and then we’ll ramp up production to over 2,000 units per month.
“When we go for mass production, we’ll need to make sure of the participation from local vendors – that’s very important. If Perodua goes for mass production from the beginning but local content is still very low, there won’t be much meaning to the local industry. In order for us to go for mass production and higher volume, it’s not just about Perodua, but we have to look at our vendor system to be in line with our planning,” Zainal said, tying back to the ecosystem factor.
Pre-production of the EV will start in September at a new EV-specific plant located within P2’s Sg Choh base, ahead of a launch close to the end of the year.
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 as well as a guaranteed future value scheme to protect the EV’s RV, click here.
GALLERY: Perodua eMO final prototype at MAS 2025
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Kudos for ability to avoid asking for tongkat
No tongkat is a myth.
If really Perodua is walking tall,no need govt protection,then throw away the tongkat..the prices have to come down ,by a big chunk.
Can u imagine a super compact 1.5 myvi costing 60K? Plus 18K of HP interest over 10 years …equals 78K.
Fully agreed. It’s right time to totally removes ev minimal selling price <MYR100k and all it's limitations set.
So with the launching of the first Perodua EV by tis year then wat hapen to the Nexis which suppose to launch last year or already bcome no exist.
P2 announced late last year that 2 models are slated for this year. Since nothing else has even been hinted, likely the 2nd model is the Nexis.
There’s no such thing as Nexis.
Cos peroduck is jepunis
The PINK Huge slab under the car?
Interesting effort. Will see how it goes for perodua. i am in the opinion that making perodua product too ‘malaysian’ will results in our product unable to reach out to neighbouring country roads. thai will view perodua product as malaysian product. indon will view it similarly… hence barrier to larger market. perhaps perodua should consider making a model out of vendors from this asean region and made it known to these partners… this perodua model is meant for regional market and not just msia local. our market size is too small to sustain perodua and proton… consider this
Wth how to drive half a car like this??
Bravo Perodua
Of course there are some spiteful comments here as usual but you guys make us proud
Madani pushed for this? Well, I must say brilliant. Good thing. Now that EV can be sold in singapore, australia, europe.. even back in Japan as a Daihatsu (rebadged, of course)
2 thumbs up. !!
Mmg patut pun belajar buat sendiri. Senang dari dulu asyik rebadge je. Takkan sampai ke tua nak rebadge je.
Perodua dah buat model sendiri sejak 2015 dik. Hasilnya bezza dan myvi.
make sure have easily accessible mechanical door opener during emergency ie. total system power failure motor wheel locked caused by dead auxiliary 12v lead acid battery!
Jom Malaysia,
JV Perodua (TYT) and CATL Battery Powered.
What is the point of showing the concept emo-ii car when the actual product is completely different? Exterior and interior too! Atleast make it look alike a little bit la.
Senang saja just slap together parts sourced from anywhere as long cheap ok la boleh jalan. They can call this Perodua ElCheapo XS
WHAT! Madani Plan? LMAO, I thought news outlet must remain neutral in geopolitics.
Wow very good news indeed, hopefully it will bring EV to the masses in a good way. At the end of the day, Good RV, that’s all that matters isn’t it?.
While we sings praises for Perodua for their independent effort to create their very own home grown EV from scratch, I tend to notice netizens keen to compare to P1, as if they are the vile organisation that has been long under gomen support, and then this pheonix rises from the ashes and show the world hey, “we can do our own EV from scratch” yippikayeay..**…!
While everybody seems to love to hate the other national automaker, most but few realised the reason to their monumental, close to 45% market share with “vice-like” grip as described by the author is their product value for money, but one tends to wonder, how?, create positive perception, despite the average body rigidity (i.e. no bumper crash bars), average material quality, this is not the route P1 was taking, they don’t go down this route and became the less popular choice (higher fc although practically robust), that and tons of legacy perception and speculation. P2 also have their share of unreliability but all falls on deaf ears as the sales figures climb to the glorious 45% market share.
So yeah, good for P2, and end the cynical criticism, P1 indirectly contributed to the industry one way or the other, many just chose to hate, because its fun to vilify and glorify the other. I bet some of the budding engineers from P1 also ended up working at P2.
This is progress…