EVEN in the beginning, the partnership between DRB-Hicom Bhd and Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co turned heads with its plans to bring a wider impact to the automotive industry.
In a December 2018 issue of FocusM, there were talks of Geely developing its first ever sports utility vehicle (SUV) model. That led to the birth of the Proton X70, an iconic vehicle that became the talk of the country.
But before that, Proton posted a net loss of RM481 mil in its financial year ended March 2019, as reported in December last year.
At the time, the company was nearing its target of selling 93,000 cars by end- 2019 and expected sales to hit 100,000 units, an increase of 54% from 2018.
On this, Proton CEO Li Chunrong said Proton has set a target of a 30% rise in vehicle sales by end- 2020.
With the backing of its two shareholders DRB-Hicom and Geely, Proton Holdings Bhd experienced a jump of 55.7% earlier this year from 2018, driven mainly by the sales of the X70 among others.
According to Li, the Proton X70 sold like hotcakes because of the technology implemented in the design of the vehicle.
“If you look at the X70, you will find many technologies which you cannot find in our competitors’ models,” noted Li.
“Only Proton can produce this kind of complete product at a reasonable price in Malaysia,” he added.
As the icing on the cake, Proton launched its highly anticipated X50 on Oct 27, making it not only the second vehicle to be jointly developed by Proton and Geely, but to enable the first national automaker to compete in a new market segment.
Proton said order books which were officially opened on Sept 16 have garnered over 20,000 bookings to date despite the year being affected by volatile external factors.
Being Proton’s first B-segment SUV manufactured at the company’s manufacturing hub in Tanjung Malim, Perak, it leaves most of us to wonder what other possibilities will Proton be able to achieve even amid current challenging market conditions. – Oct 29, 2020
