Based on JPJ statistics, more and more electric cars are being registered and if in the Klang Valley alone, we now see electric cars being driven more often. However, when compared to public charging, it has not yet reached the MITI target of 10,000 charging stations by the end of 2025. Therefore, more parties and companies need to play a role in electric car charging infrastructure and today DRB-HICOM introduces a new joint venture company, New Energy Asia Sdn Bhd, in collaboration with Hangzhou Flash Charge, which is also a subsidiary of Lotus Technology.
The New Energy Asia Sdn Bhd company will begin providing AC and DC car chargers under the Lotus brand. They will sell 4 types of chargers, 2 of which are AC 7-22kW and two of which are DC 30-60kW and DC 120-240 kW. The charger is also built with a ventilation system adapted to the Malaysian climate, and can operate in a variety of conditions including when placed outdoors. They also have a charger that uses liquid cooling, which allows charging as high as 450kW to be done and this allows electric cars that support the 800V charging architecture to charge 10-80% in 14 minutes.
Through this partnership, New Energy Asia also sees several collaborations with Malakoff Green Solutions, Future Fuelling Malaysia, as well as Pro-NET who are also responsible for marketing SMART electric cars. The distribution agreement will be done by DRB-HICOM Mechatronics, and this distribution rights also covers the ASEAN region where they are responsible for this charging infrastructure. Moreover, New Energy Asia will also be involved in marketing energy storage systems, so perhaps we can also see this partnership can fuel the energy transition in Malaysia.
As a joint venture that is also a subsidiary of DRB-HICOM, it is likely that we will be able to see the integration of New Energy Asia's offerings into other companies such as Pos Malaysia which is also intensifying their zero carbon initiatives in their postal fleet, their holdings in other automotive industries, and this includes EON which also markets electric cars such as Smart, Audi, and many more.