Top 20 EV brands in May 2025 – BYD leads, Tesla overtakes Proton for 2nd; Denza, Xpeng neck and neck

May 2025 saw BYD keep Malaysia’s EV sales crown on its head with 1,148 units, according to the road transport department‘s (JPJ) data, while Tesla (here comes the Model Y Juniper) leapt from selling just 108 units in April to a strong 1,075 in May (its first four-digit monthly sales so far this year), overtaking Proton’s 862 (the company announced 916 including exports) for second place.

Of course, Proton currently only has one EV model, versus Tesla’s two and BYD’s five. BMW has many more EVs on sale, but it took fourth with a modest 179 units. However, this is a considerable improvement over the 119 units it managed in April.

Denza (129) and Xpeng (125) are almost equal – Denza currently sells one model; Xpeng two. In seventh and eighth respectively are Chery (116) and Zeekr (105) – Chery has one EV model on sale; Zeekr two. All other brands were sub-100 unit sellers in May.

What about the EV brands’ year-to-date (YTD) scorecard? BYD is still up there with 4,355 units, having closed the last three months with four-digit sales each. The runner-up is Proton with 3,399 (not including 233 exports), while Tesla (1,810) is third after quite an up-and-down five months.

Apart from a hiccup in February (short month?), BMW has posted relatively consistent monthly sales to end up fourth in the YTD standings (766 units), while Denza, having only launched the D9 MPV in February, is at a very commendable fifth place (524), with Xpeng (505) hot on its heels.

Rounding up the top 10 are Zeekr (465), Porsche (276), MINI (227) and MG (224). Chery (213), although seventh in May thanks to selling a respectable 116 EVs, is outside the top 10 where YTD is concerned, because it did two-digit EV sales every month for the first four months of the year.

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