When Proton launched the e.MAS 7 on the finish of 2024, the concept of a nationwide model main Malaysia’s electrical automobile market would have sounded far-fetched. In any case, many individuals think about EVs as a luxurious merchandise, a T20’s toy. Would they wish to drive a nationwide model?
A yr and a half later, that’s precisely what has occurred. JPJ registration information reveals Proton has not simply joined the EV race, it has run away with it.
Begin with the headline quantity. Proton registered 8,890 battery-electric autos in the entire of 2025, a strong end result that put it second behind BYD’s 14,407. Within the first 5 months of 2026 alone, it has already registered 11,642, comfortably beating its complete 2025 tally with seven months of the yr nonetheless to go. No different model available in the market is rising wherever close to that shortly.
The turning level was the arrival of the e.MAS 5. The bigger e.MAS 7 had been a gradual performer by way of 2025, averaging just a little beneath 750 items a month.
Then the smaller, cheaper e.MAS 5 reached showrooms in November 2025 and altered every little thing. In January 2026 it racked up 3,068 registrations in a single month, greater than 4 instances what the e.MAS 7 had ever managed, and it has stayed in four-figure territory since.
It helps that the e.MAS 5 is a rebadged Geely Xingyuan, and its donor mannequin is not any unusual small automotive: in China it has change into the only best-selling mannequin of any sort, electrical or in any other case, on the earth’s largest automotive market. Malaysians, it appears, have taken to it simply as enthusiastically.
One other issue that drove the adoption of EVs are almost definitely geopolitical turmoil which drove gasoline costs greater and a quota for subsidised Budi95 petrol. Many are simply seeing the swap to an EV as a hedge for future rising gasoline costs.
The result’s a genuinely outstanding image on the high of the EV desk. By means of Might 2026, Proton is the best-selling EV model within the nation by a distance, with its 11,642 items greater than double the 4,599 of second-placed BYD. The Chinese language giants that dominate headlines, BYD, Zeekr, Xpeng and the remaining, are all chasing a Malaysian nationwide model. Put one other means, 45.6% of each EV registered in Malaysia this yr has been a Proton, up from 19.8% throughout 2025.
There are some things to bear in mind. The figures listed below are battery-electric registrations solely and don’t embrace the e.MAS 7 PHEV, which is a separate plug-in hybrid mannequin. A few of the early-2026 surge additionally displays order backlogs being cleared and the push of EV consumers forward of the expiry of import obligation exemptions for totally imported EVs on the finish of 2025. Even so, the trajectory is unmistakable. With an reasonably priced, locally-relevant EV within the e.MAS 5 and a extra premium possibility within the e.MAS 7, Proton has performed what nobody fairly anticipated, which is to make the nationwide model the face of Malaysia’s EV transition.
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