EV Sales in Malaysia Hits a Road Bump Totalling 1% of Car Sales in 2023

Though you may have seen a surge in Teslas on the road recently, reports have shown that EV Sales in Malaysia have stagnated.

The report showed that though EV sales increased by 11% year-on-year in 2023, accounting for 10,159 units sold, this only accounted for barely 1% of the 800,000 new vehicles sold in 2023 (according to data from the Malaysian Automotive Association).

“Sales have hit stagnation,” said David Tiah, a senior engineer with Smart Malaysia, which was among dozens of car makers making a case for their EV offerings at the five-day Malaysia Autoshow 2024.

“The main thing for consumers would be affordable EVs. A lot of people say they would buy an EV if it’s within 70,000 ringgit to 80,000 ringgit. Anything over 100,000 ringgit is just too pricey for them.”

Though we’ve reported previously about the sales of BYD worldwide and the popularity of Teslas, in Malaysia, the goal is to transition to 15% of cars on the roads being EVs by 2030, and with 6 more years to go, the 1% increase isn’t very encouraging.

Why are EV Sales in Malaysia slow?

Well, if you ask us, the lag in the sales of EVs directly corresponds to the sluggish pace of charging stations being built and the even slower rate that EVs take for a full charge.

The goal for charging bays in Malaysia was 10,000 by 2025, an arbitrary number that looks impressive, but according to MEVnet a dashboard of all the charging bays in Malaysia, we’ve only hit 2,288 bays.

Mind you, these are bays, not stations, like a petrol station.

So we’re talking about 2,288 bays to service across Malaysia servicing over 13 million Malaysian who will potentially own an EV in 2024.

To make matters worse, 1,785 of these public bays are AC chargers, the ones that take 3 hours (or more) to fill up your car to maximum capacity.

For now, owning an EV is a rich person’s flex (or a poor person’s even poorer decisions), so it’s no wonder that sales aren’t reaching astronomic heights.