Proton says their future plans will involve electric vehicles. Will these include Geely technology?
At a Chinese New Year celebration event yesterday, Proton shared a slide that indicated the company’s plans to introduce electric vehicles. While the slide mostly covered existing products and their journey with Geely as a Foreign Strategic Partner so far, there were also seven model silhouettes that were teased as part of their coming plans.
Proton indicates that they intend to upgrade their existing “X” models from Geely. These include the X50, X70, X90 and S70. Since the X70 already got its minor facelift and new engine option, perhaps the X50 will be next in line. Areas of improvement include styling, connectivity, features and technical spec. That may not sound very specific but we might see items like Android Auto and Apply CarPlay coming in, and there’s no need to wait for a new engine and gearbox, but perhaps some tuning changes will be introduced. It’s also possible that the X50 will lose its non direct injection powertrain.
Proton also mentioned “New Energy Vehicles” as a category on its own. In China, New Energy Vehicles include hybrid models, which technically would lump the X90 in. Proton’s slide puts the X90 outside of this category though. The slide shows two “NEV” models with the subtitle “kickstarting the development of the EV industry”. This to us indicates that Proton will introduce two Geely-based electric vehicles and begin local assembly in the short to medium term. There are two more models under the next generation portion with the subtitle “Local key EV component industry” indicating that Proton eventually aims to increase the proportion of locally-sourced parts that go into their future EVs.
Under “Home-Grown Models”, three covered models were teased. Our guess is that these are model upgrades or replacements for the Saga, Exora, Iriz and Persona. These four models were completely developed in-house and continued to be sold and updated even after Geely and Proton’s partnership began. Proton continues to sell the Saga, Iriz and Persona to this day in as this price segment is protected direct competition from non-national brands and only Perodua can field price-competitive rivals. The Exora was recently discontinued, likely because the car was introduced more than a decade ago and the new Perodua Alza was too much to compete against.
It’s likely that Proton will streamline the home-grown model stack. The question is which model will be axed? The Iriz is the only hatchback and doesn’t present a very strong case for itself. Last August, Proton sold 654 units of the 5-door while the Persona, which is essentially a sedan version of the Iriz, found 2,028 new owners. The Saga, Proton’s least expensive model, had no trouble at all with over 5,000 units sold in August 2023. We’re also fairly certain that Proton will look to Geely’s Jiaji for an Exora replacement.
