Peter Lyon
January 14, 2024
The world of electric vehicles and their all-important charging networks will see some major developments in the coming year. Here’s the lowdown. The Malaysian Budget 2024, which was presented in late 2024, included a number of initiatives aimed at stimulating the country’s electric vehicle (EV) market. The salient features focus on a total of RM170 million that has been pledged by Gentari, TNB, and Tesla to develop 180 additional stations and extend their EV fast-charging networks.
As of November 2023, the comprehensive Malaysian EV Charging Network website MEVnet stated that there are some 1,434 charging stations across the country situated in 620 locations. At the same time, the City of Putrajaya said it aimed to install 10,000 EV stations by 2025 which will stimulate EV growth significantly.
In 2024, the electric vehicles market in Malaysia is projected to reach a revenue of US$176.5M (RM 820M), and is expected to exhibit an annual growth rate of 4.98%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$214.4M by 2028.
So how many EVs were sold in Malaysia last year? Over 9,000 electric vehicles were registered in Malaysia in 2023 alone, and more than 12,000 EVs in total were registered since 2011. EVs expected to debut in Malaysia by February 2024 include the Neta V, Volvo EXZ90, MG4 and ZS EV, BYD e6, Chery EQ1 and GWM Ora Black Cat, just to name a few.
Investment, Trade and Investment minister Tengku Zafrul commented, “The electrical and electronics products (E&E) sector, which is a major part of the EV parts supply chain, contributes 40% out of the 80% of Malaysia’s exports from the manufacturing sector.” There is therefore a lot of potential in the new-generation vehicles where more components are required in a single car, he added. “When you look at EVs, [the total number of chips] can go up to at least 3,000 chips in one car, and these chips come from the E&E sector.”
OUR THOUGHTS
Even though the website MEVnet has a detailed charger map, we are warned not to use it to try to find EV chargers because it’s not intended for that use. While it may locate the position of a charging site near you as well as the amount of charging bays there, MEVnet does not provide vital information such as the charging speed and costs as well as chargers availability. We recommend you use a reliable EV charger search or route planning app—something like PlugShare or A Better Route planning (ABRP), to locate the nearest charger.
