National Automotive Policy 2014 - My Opinions

Malaysia's National Automotive Policy (NAP) 2014 is finally announced after much delay, so call to in-depth study the framework, and it ended up craps. This is my blog, so I will just point out my view over the new NAP 2014.

1. CBU Hybrid and EV incentives is terminated.
Means all CBU hybrid that's enjoying all the cheapo price is going to say good bye. This is a very bad news for Hybrid car owner, as they all think the party will go on forever, but it just given me another reason to advice people against buying a hybrid in Malaysia. Why? With a drop of hybrid cars on the road, the after sales is going down with it. No car sales, no profits, no investment for after sales service, problematic maintenance. The investment by car dealer is always with the money flow. So good luck with that, you only hope more will invest for CKD hybrid, but why would they do hybrid when they can have EEV model?

2. CKD EEV fully open market.
This is good news, for good technology car, example like Mazda Skyactiv technology. Unknown yet if Volkswagen / BMW / Honda / Toyota qualified, time will tell. Big impact would be the smallest CC car that meet the EEV will also be available, so that's good to encourage investor to put money in for EEV assembly plant in Malaysia, but how much impact will yet to be see.

3. No news on Open AP.
After much delay, nothing at all for open AP issue. All car manufacturers already stressing that they are putting millions into the country to invest for manufacturing plant, but they are killed off by the grey import, which only let the cronies earn money. This actually put off lots of investor, scaring them off from investing. Pretty stupid. And another committee suppose to do another "in-depth" study, your guess is as good as mine -_-

4. No news on Euro 4.
Enough said, we are still stucked with lowest grade of fuel, and limited us to the diesel model available. I think biggest problem is we have too many commercial "black smoking" truck / bus on road, which this will basically kill them off. One of the pain to take on if want to move the country forward, again the cronies controlling those company pressure the government I suppose.

5. No news on Car Price Reduction.
MITI said they have a framework ready for 5 years reduction plan, but nothing announced. Might as well say you don't have the framework?? And being in Malaysia, they can get away with it, nice! The presentation even explained that car price reduced last few years, sounded very much like what we saw on "newspaper" earlier, what's the point?

6. No news on Reduction of Excise Duty & Tax.
And what pissed me off is, government is in 4% deficit and need the tax now. So if government continues to be in red, we will never see sunlight?? That's really pretty stupid. They screw it up, and we citizens have to pay for it. Our Prime Minister promised to reduce car price by 30% is still hanging until now.

Others that's not mentioned which I think should be included.

7. Adjust the road tax in accordance to car price / power / emission. People are buying expensive cars but paying little road tax, why don't have a more fair system to tax the higher earner more?

8. Impose additional safety equipment as basic to car offer, like traction control and etc. I'm sure most people don't mind to pay same price for additional safety features. Why is Toyota still allow to get away with little safety features on the mainstream model that top the sales chart? Protect the citizens!

9. No news on older cars, good news for me, so I can continue to enjoy my Fiat Coupe =)