EVs accounted for nearly 8% of all new cars sold in Malaysia in H1 2026.
Despite the lack of tax incentives nowadays and the flip-flopping surrounding EV pricing policies, it nevertheless appears that these tailpipe-less automobiles are establishing a firm foothold in Malaysia. A total of 31,738 fully electric vehicles were registered between January and June 2026, up 85.1% from the 17,143 units recorded during the same period last year.
Perhaps more impressively, every single month of 2026 has outperformed its equivalent in 2025. January’s 6,239 registrations were up a staggering 269% year-on-year, while even the narrowest gap came in May, which still posted a healthy 21.3% increase over the previous year.
And as alluded to in the headline of this piece, all these registrations now mean that roughly one in every 13 new vehicles registered in Malaysia this year has been fully electric, compared to about one in every 23 last year. EVs currently account for 7.8% of all new registrations during the first half of 2026, up from 4.3% a year earlier.
Turning to which brand is driving this surge (pardon the pun), it comes as little surprise that Proton is now firmly the king of Malaysia’s EV hill. Thanks to the success of the e.MAS 7 and e.MAS 5, the national carmaker delivered 13,530 EVs in the first half of the year, up 238% from 4,003 units a year ago. In fact, Proton alone contributed around 9,500 additional EV registrations year-on-year, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the market’s entire increase.
The previous EV sales leader, BYD, meanwhile now unfortunately trails Proton by quite a sizeable margin, although it still managed to grow sales by 5% to 5,675 units. And really, this is especially impressive given all the recent brouhaha surrounding the marque and MITI.
Interestingly too, its American rival Tesla saw registrations fall 18% year-on-year to 1,962 units. The all-electric T marque is now relegated to fifth place on the mid-year EV sales leaderboard locally… despite maintaining broadly the same pricing after the EV tax incentives were phased out.
As for who is bested it for the podium place here, iCAUR managed to nab that third place spot after registering 2,573 units of its 03 and V23 during the first half of the year. Fourth place in turn went to Zeekr, whose popular 7X and 009 helped the brand almost quadruple its first-half sales compared to last year.
Finally further down the rankings, several other automakers also posted significant gains between their first-half 2025 and first-half 2026 results. MG recorded a 278% increase, with registrations rising from 274 to 839 units. Though it came to truly stellar sales growth, Leapmotor takes the cake, with registrations surging almost 1,000% from just 87 units to 956.
