Do Malaysia need another Proton
on the 17th July 2018, our beloved PM Tun M, he had an interview regarding the issue of Rakyat dont want a second Proton and was he has this reply “Malaysia becomes a consumer country, a paddy farming and fishing country. It’s OK. This is what we want and this is what we’ll get. Just forget about Vision 2020.” So without a new national car, our country cannot become a develop country? From my point of view, what Malaysia now urgently need is a good 5 - 10 years education plan, our education system wont give us smart and innovative ppl that may in the future help our country in developing advance state of the art cars. Then without this work force we may rely on having foreign engineers coming in to Malaysia just to work on the National Car project.
If you insist on making a new national car, we will fall back in to the state where heavy protection are required to let that national car brand to survive, as Malaysia is a small country with 30mil population, and those that will opt to purchase a local brand cars may be around 10 - 20% of the total population (Mostly youngster who just graduated), the cost of developing (R&D) a vehicle to cater this small percentage of ppl alone is a big loss for any private / public sector to go in.
Besides, as the globalization continues, it is not feasible to start developing our own gearbox or engine anymore, even the car chassis may be share with multiple manufacturer. So if we were to start a new national car, most likely you will sourcing 80% of parts overseas, then the only thing local about it will most likely be the brand only. Makes no different from a fully imported car.
However, currently is also the best timing for development of EV cars where purely run on Electric instead of the petrol, making brands such as Tesla being able to challenge 100 years old big daddy like the Daimler group, I agreed with the perspective out that there if Malaysia were to really go in to a new National car it needs to be EV and something green as this is global trend, also AI driven vehicles. This type of vehicle require government to help (or in other words protection from government) in order to survive in the competitive environment. if Malaysia new national car were to really start, we have a very short time period to get all this started up and as soon as possible export it to the world of right hand driving, this may really help Malaysia. But to succeed in this part our government must be very focus on the task and not repeating the Proton 1.0 mistake.
To conclude, there is no absolution of right and wrong, Malaysian dont want a Proton 2.0 (New national car) because they are fed up with what Proton bring to our country for the pass 30 years, and currently if our mind are set to doing another National Car that is just to compete in the local sector I would said just forget it as it will not yield any benefit long term or short term for Malaysian. But if a new National car is really gonna to be setup, then i seriously hope that our government is focus and strong in developing a future EV car that maybe able to export to worldwide market or just the South East Asia Right Hand Driving market, this will really benefit us and move Malaysia to become a develop country.