BYD will not build the wholly owned assembly plant it announced for Malaysia a year ago and will instead put its cars together through a local contract manufacturer, BYD Malaysia Managing Director Jacob Ma said on Thursday, without naming the partner.
“To clear the air on this, the Tanjong Malim facility will not proceed. However, this decision does not mean that BYD has cancelled its plans for local assembly in Malaysia. Our commitment to local assembly remains,” Ma told reporters at a BYD media event in Kuala Lumpur, according to local media outlets.
“We are working with an established local assembly partner that has the capacity and the capabilities to meet BYD’s requirements and can support our full local assembly operations. Discussions are already at a very advanced stage and we are finishing the necessary documentation, and we will make an official announcement once everything is in place,” he said.
The remarks answer the question VP Liu Xueliang set up in Shenzhen last week, when he told Malaysian reporters to “wait another week.”
Ma said the partner’s identity and the start of local assembly would be disclosed once the agreement is signed.
Every Malaysian outlet points to the same candidate.
Sime Motors, BYD’s sole distributor in the country since 2022, owns the Inokom contract-assembly plant in Kulim, Kedah, which builds the BMW i5 and Chery’s Omoda E5 and added a third paint shop in August.
Liu visited Inokom in May and Sime Motors’ leadership visited BYD’s Shenzhen headquarters on September 4.
Neither company has confirmed a deal.
Why the Plant Died
Ma framed the decision as a change of approach rather than a retreat. “We want to ensure BYD can move in tandem with the local automotive ecosystem. We started discussions with vendors in the country last year and want to see how we can work with them and become part of the ecosystem,” he said, according to Free Malaysia Today.
The plant he cancelled was announced on August 22, 2025 at the Malaysian launch of the updated Seal: a fully BYD-funded completely-knocked-down facility on 150 acres of KLK Land’s TechPark in Tanjong Malim, Perak, with production promised for the second half of 2026.
BYD received an interim manufacturing licence for the site on September 29, 2025.
The licence came with conditions the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry disclosed on March 31, after talks had stalled.
Domestic sales were capped at 10,000 vehicles a year, a fifth of the plant’s projected 50,000 capacity, with the rest for export. Locally assembled cars sold in Malaysia had to carry a minimum on-the-road price of RM100,000 ($24,600). Body, paint and trim work had to be done in the country.
Trade Minister Johari Abdul Ghani told the Senate on August 4 that the ministry had received no notice on whether BYD would proceed.
Contract assembly carries none of those conditions, and it sidesteps a second obstacle. Since July 1, newly approved imported EVs must carry a minimum declared cost, insurance and freight value of RM200,000 ($49,100) and a motor of at least 180 kW, after Malaysia’s tax exemption on fully imported EVs expired at the end of 2025.
Most of BYD’s Malaysian range, from the Atto 2 and Seal 6 at about RM100,000 to the Sealion 7 at RM163,800, fails both tests.
The ministry said in May that it prefers EV makers to use existing local assemblers rather than build their own plants, the route Leapmotor took in June when it began assembling the C10 at Stellantis’ Gurun plant in Kedah.
Stock and Sales
Ma said BYD had sold more than 35,000 vehicles in Malaysia since entering the market, including more than 7,500 in the first half of 2026, and that current stock is sufficient though some models are limited.
He said BYD had no immediate plans to import from its new plant in Indonesia, which will prioritise the Indonesian market, unless a model is unavailable in Malaysia and demand warrants it. Capacity planning is on a 10-to-20-year view, he said.
Adeline Lew, Managing Director of BYD Sime Motors, said stock on hand means prices should not change significantly in the near term, according to Motaauto.
BYD’s position has slipped this year. It led Malaysia’s EV market in 2025 with 14,407 registrations, or 15,607 including Denza, a 34.8% share, but Proton overtook it in 2026 on the strength of the locally assembled e.MAS 5, with 16,458 registrations in the first seven months against BYD’s 6,901, according to Road Transport Department data compiled by SoyaCincau.
The e.MAS 5 is built at Proton’s plant in Tanjung Malim, the same town BYD has now abandoned.
The same evening, BYD Sime Motors launched the Atto 3 Performance at RM149,800 ($36,800) with a RM10,000 launch package, limited to 69 units for Malaysia’s 69th independence anniversary, and said flash charging would come to Malaysia with details to follow.
A Malaysian assembly line would be BYD’s fourth in Southeast Asia, after wholly owned plants in Rayong, Thailand, and Subang, Indonesia, opened this month, and a facility in Cambodia.
Unlike those, it would be a contract arrangement in a partner’s factory.
