Geely’s all-electric brand Zeekr has announced future plans for the ASEAN market, leaving Malaysia out.
Geely is one automotive conglomerate that has ambitions to put larger rivals to shame. They’ve got more car brands under their umbrella than one can keep track of and each of those brands seems to have a life of their own. Take Zeekr, their all-electric marque.
Rather than follow in smart’s footsteps, they’re setting up their own operations in Thailand and working with local distributors there to get sales up and running by the first half of 2024. If you’ll recall, smart is the Geely subsidiary that partnered up with Proton’s Pro-Net to tackle both the Malaysian and Thai markets. Looks like Pro-Net missed out on the Thai distributorship for Zeekr, but perhaps they’ll get it for Malaysia.
Besides the plans for Thailand, Zeekr also announced plans to start selling cars in Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines, all with local distributors. Sales in those markets will begin in the second quarter of 2024. Early this year, the Zeekr brand also entered into Singapore with the X and 009 as their first two offerings there. The latter of these forms the basis of the Volvo EM90 MPV.
Zeekr’s plans for South East Asia have omitted Malaysia altogether. Given that the brand is already is no many other markets, including Europe, we wonder why ours has not been put on the radar. In Malaysia, our favourable tax policy has allowed plenty of players to set up shop overnight to sell fully-imported EVs here for very competitive prices. In the last two years alone, we’ve seen the introduction of GWM Malaysia, Chery Malaysia, BYD Malaysia and very soon SAIC Malaysia will begin operations as well with the MG brand.
Zeekr, whose name is a combination of ‘Generation Z’ and ‘Geek’, aimed at the luxury EV market unlike Geely’s other all-electric brand Geometry. Its target is younger buyers who see EVs as the new norm rather than the alternative to traditional ICE vehicles. Perhaps they’re waiting for the EV market in Malaysia to really mature before they set up shop here.
