Who are you kidding?
The rural folks again?
By setting a higher minimum vehicle value for imported EVs is to encourage development and strengthen localisation and domestic EV manufacturing in Malaysia?
After over 40 years of operation, Proton's impact on developing a self-sustaining Malaysian automotive vendor ecosystem remains, the best, mediocre.
Yes, for the past few years, Proton did bolster vendor confidence, shifting toward high-tech, localized production (e.g., in Tanjung Malim) and increased RM3.2B in local sourcing in 2025 but all these happened post the Geely partnership.
Proton, established in 1983 as Malaysia’s national carmaker, started ahead of China's domestic automotive boom, launching the Proton Saga in 1985.
The initial objective for the set up of Proton was for the establishment of a fully competitive, local automotive industry.
Since its inception, Proton was protected – even up to now - and had a price advantage that was unfair to the other car manufacturers and importers.
That being so, Proton could possibly have felt that it was too strong, too well-placed, too invincible and so became callous in their approach towards long-term marketing.
Thereafter Proton drifted off tangent.
It did not focus and meet the quality requirements of the market, what the consumers want.
The cars it sold have a lot of issues.
Finally, realising that they couldn’t do it on their own, eventually, it enter into a partnership with China's Geely, who started making making passenger cars only in 1997, in 2017 to modernize.
It has been over 40 years but Proton never grow up and remained a baby.
It became common now that if we can’t compete in any industrialisation projects, the government will introduce new regulations to protect the failing project.
Since we can’t produce Olympic winners, we go for Paralympics.
This same malaise afflicts many other projects aside from Proton.
Just take a look at those few big GLC banks and see how they work.
Lackadaisical.
Yes, they report huge numbers in its profitability but they are operating in a near `monoplistic’ environment in Malaysia.
Open up the banking sector and see how they perform.
A service transaction that needs only 10 minutes can take half and hour or more.
Perwaja.
Silterra.
Humongous amount of tax payers monies was poured in to prop up these 2 projects.
Both were set up with the objective of propelling the country into industrialisation with an accompanying ecosystem.
Perwaja was liquidated while Silterra was sold off for a song.
Malaysians are proud of our local products.
But how many people have you heard going around telling others of how proud they are of having bought a local product which was defective?
Local manufacturers must be proud of the quality of the goods that they sell.
They need to be committed not only to customer satisfaction but to customer delight.
When that happens, the hope for efficient automotive vendor ecosystem that produces world class products will then evolve.
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