With smart#1 arriving, Proton needs to have reliable EV charging infrastructure nationwide soon.
In June this year national petroleum company Petronas launched a new business called Gentari. At the launch, the company shared its goal to become a ‘green mobility solutions provider’.
To do this, Gentari management said that they will capture 10 percent of the market share of charging points across Asia Pacific by 2030 with Malaysia and India being two key markets.
Their estimate is that they will need to build 25,000 charging points in the next 8 years in both countries to hit this ambitious target.
Meanwhile, Proton Cars with their partnership with Geely has been pushing high sales volume with their Proton X70 SUV and the best selling Proton X50 Crossover. Both are petrol powered vehicles that came from Geely.
It is a well known fact that Geely has electric vehicles in its portfolio and also with other brands that it owns, one being smart Cars. With the global introduction of the smart#1 electric crossover, Geely has decided to work with Pro-Net to distribute the smart#1 in Malaysia and Thailand.
This Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) was signed in August 2022 and it confirms Pro-Net will be the importer, distributor, and dealer for smart vehicles in Malaysia and Thailand.
Some of you might be a little confused about the above statement as smart cars were once before on sale here in Malaysia under Mercedes-Benz. Yes, smart is a small car manufacturer by Mercedes-Benz. They happened to also be co-owned by Geely and their smart #1 vehicle is built on Geely’s SEA (Sustainable Experience Architecture) platform for electric vehicles.
So, if you plan to sell a lot of electric vehicles and give confidence to your buyers in a battery charging infrastructure, you need to make sure you either setup charging stations all over the country, east coast Malaysia and Sabah and Sarawak also included which involves huge investment and a lot of time.
To jump start this need for nationwide charging stations, you need to work with a partner that already has key locations around the country and is planning to already have 9,000 charging points by 2026 which is just three plus years away.
This is why it makes great business sense to partner with Gentari and Pro-Net sales people will have no issue convincing smart#1 buyers to take home this Geely/Mercedes-Benz engineered electric vehicle.
The only issue left to consider is this, will the average Malaysian be able to afford the smart#1 when it arrives as the proposed selling price in the United Kingdom is £35,000 which is about RM186,000 even before you add Malaysian profit margins.
