Continuing with the road transport department’s (JPJ) registration data for October, we now take a look at the top 20 EV brands to see how they performed last month. As you can imagine, many brands have seen an uptick in sales as buyers cash in on expiring tax incentives, and the biggest beneficiary by far is BYD.
The Chinese EV specialist has been consistently outselling Proton throughout this year, but the gulf has now grown into a chasm – despite the national carmaker’s sole offering up until the end of that month, the eMas 7, continuing to be Malaysia’s best-selling EV.
Last month, BYD sold a deeply impressive 1,748 vehicles, helped by October being the first full month of sales for the new Seal 6 EV and the updated Seal. That’s way more than double the 742 units of the eMas 7 that Proton pushed out, enabling BYD to cross the 10,000 mark for the first time with year-to-date sales of 10,165 units (versus 6,954 units for Proton). The fight at the top is set to become much closer in the months to come, given that the national carmaker has recently launched Malaysia’s cheapest EV, the eMas 5.
Behind them, Tesla’s topsy-turvy year continued with registrations falling to 320 units – allowing Zeekr to overtake it by a razor-thin margin (390 units) to take the final step on the podium, buoyed by the 7X‘s continued sales momentum. Tesla remains a distant third in the year-to-date standings, however, with 4,167 registrations versus 1,362 for Zeekr.
The Silicon Valley firm very narrowly avoided being relegated to fifth by the upstart Chery brand iCaur, which sold an astonishing 310 units of the 03 last month. Xpeng continued its strong showing with 162 units sold, followed by Denza (82 units), BMW (79 units, still fifth YTD with 1,294 units registered) and Leapmotor (73 units). Porsche completed the top ten with 62 units of the Taycan and Macan registered, with the usual caveat that many of these will have been grey imports.
The rest of the list is as per the status quo, apart from two standouts. Maxus makes a surprise appearance with exactly 50 units registered, all of them being the T90 pick-up truck – likely to a fleet customer such as Tenaga Nasional. Lexus has also somehow emerged in the nether reaches of the list, registering 18 units of the RZ. The result of these new entrants is the disappearance of Honda and Audi.
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The New Generation Vehicles for Malaysia is growing.
Maybe we could have the NxGV sales chart following MARii
https://searssabrina.netlify.app/2025/05/14/marii-introduces-next-generation-vehicle-nxgv-labelling-scheme-autonomous-level-fc-emissions/
unlikely because previous marii boss was arrested for corruption so ..
icaur selling so well even with short range EV cars having poor aerodynamic, looks like many buyers prioritize looks over functionality
lexus sold 18 EV cars? which EV model is this again?
cant wait for yangwang to enter malaysia so that t20 can drive at 499 kmph on highway using lingloong tyres
Really need to find out who are the Neta buyers. Got to shake their hands.
All the brand below top 10 next year can gulung tikar already…
a lot of the minor brands are actually sub-brands of the parent company . you need to figure out who is related to who, then produce the cumulative totals.
BYD because of many models, Proton because of cheap. Zeekr is the real player with just 3 models now. Most go to MPV and 7x. X is small and yet so expensive.