Malaysian Automotive Industry Changes Gear

Here is something from Paul Tan's blog : 

My comments : Paul Tan says car sales are down 9% for February. No surprise there at all. Only Toyota registered an 11% increase in sales in February 2018.  But take a look at the table here :

 

Perodua again occupies pole position.  Proton is No. 4 - behind Honda and Toyota.  Proton only sold 3,857 units in February 2018.

The THREE major "local" car companies are now not local anymore. 

No. 1  Perodua has long been majority owned by Daihatsu of Japan which is part of the Toyota stable.

 

No. 2 Proton has now been taken over by Geely of China - which has also acquired Lotus cars along with Proton. 

And here is more trivia - Lotus has now turned profitable - for the first time in many, many years. Lotus will soon sell a Lotus SUV based on a "Geely platform".  

Can you believe that?  The Chinese teaching the grand children of Stirling Moss how to build and sell cars.   If you dont know who is Stirling Moss, please Google it. Geely expects Lotus to hit the billion pound sales level not too far from now.

No. 3    The third sizeable car company in Malaysia - Naza has recently SOLD their Shah Alam car manufacturing plant to Peugeot SA of France.  The Shah Alam plant has a capacity of 15,000 units and was being used to assemble Peugeot cars anyway.

Peugeot of France hopes to ramp up production at the Shah Alam plant for the local as well as the Asian market. 

Peugeot builds marvellous French cars but sadly their sales and service network in Malaysia is weak. My friend's Peugeot broke down in Pahang, they towed the car (under warranty)  all the way to Kuala Lumpur to be fixed. And it has been almost one month and the car still cannot be fixed. 

With Peugeot SA taking over production of the cars in Malaysia, hopefully the quality of their after sales service will also improve for Peugeot in Malaysia.

So all three major local car makers Proton, Perodua and Peugeot Naza are now owned by foreign car companies. 

The rule-of-thumb now requires a minimum volume of THREE MILLION cars sold a year for a car company to make money and remain in the game.   If you do not have this amount of volume, you are screwed.  Car manufacturing is a big boys game. It is a global business.

With Geely, Peugeot SA and Daihatsu-Toyota now taking over car manufacturing in Malaysia the Malaysian auto industry does not need any type of protection anymore. I hope our gomen can understand just a little bit about business.

These are global players who thrive on open competition. Let them do what they do best and DO NOT INTERFERE. 

Let them compete and manufacture and sell cars at MARKET PRICES. Thats all we should ask. Just sell their products at real market prices. 

Not at some artifically inflated price, determined by some tak tahu kira, tak tahu niaga Civil Servant,  that has nothing to do with anything useful.   BRING DOWN CAR PRICES.

The Malaysian automotive industry is set to take off.  

The manufacturing plants can now operate at higher capacities. 

More jobs will be created for our local engineers and technicians. 

There will be more parts manufacturing locally as well. 

If we plan this right, this will be a growth industry in Malaysia. 

Let us prepare our boys and girls to become productive workers, clever technicians and creative engineers who can be a part of this global business - without even having to leave home. The global auto  players have decided to come here.

The airline industry has been deregulated. We have the Air Asia, Malindo miracle.

The universities have been deregulated. We are now an international education hub.

The car industry is being deregulated. The global players are already here.

The banking industry must be deregulated.  The banks are making our people poorer.