The “10,000 EV chargers” figure has been floated around by our Malaysia government as early as 2021, but with only under half of those built as of today, many assume that the number is merely a hopeful wish, and not rooted in reality. Indeed, the Minister of International Trade and Industry (MITI), Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz himself said earlier this year that the target was “aggressive”, and a revision was in order.
But fast-forward nine months, and it seems that we are indeed again on-track to achieve the 10,000 EV chargers target by the end of 2025 according to Tengku Zafrul himself, during his speech at the launch of the Leapmotor C10 today.
According to PLAN Malaysia’s MEVNet dashboard, the government’s public portal for EV charger availability, there are currently 3,171 public charging bays (from 1,056 locations) in operation in Malaysia as of today. Among those, 2,358 are AC chargers, with the other 813 being DC fast chargers.
According to the dashboard, another 4,155 locations are already planned, some of them boasting as many as eight AC chargers. A detailed number of planned EV chargers are not readily available, however.
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The minister did not go into further details on how the 10,000 EV chargers will be distributed nationwide, but according to a guideline published by the MITI Malaysia EV task force last year, 4,000 of those will be located in Selangor; 900 in Kuala Lumpur; 1,100 in Johor, and 600 in Penang. Another 750 chargers are planned for East Malaysia, split between 400 in Sarawak and 350 in Sabah.
The Malaysia government will be revealing its plans for the country’s 2025 financial budget in the Dewan Rakyat tomorrow, and we expect to see several stimulus programmes to incentivise the installation of EV chargers. Currently, Malaysians are entitled to up to a RM2,500 income tax exemption for any spending on EV charging facilities. Separately, the government is also waiving the tax on statutory earnings for EV charging equipment manufacturers until 2032.
