With the population of electric vehicles (EVs) set to increase at a fast pace from now on, there is an urgent need for the charging station network to also grow quickly. The government has set a target of 10,000 charging stations nationwide by 2025 and has asked the car companies selling EVs to also be involved in achieving this target.

Unlike cars with combustion engines which are sold and then providing fuel is left to the petroleum companies and their networks (which are the product of many decades), the EV charging network requires the involvement of the car companies, energy providers and other stakeholders to be established as quickly as possible.

As we have seen for a long time, the Japanese are masters at making compact cars. It has something to do with their road conditions which are narrow, and also led to the creation of the unique kei class in the country. The initial regulations in 1949 allowed kei car dimensions to be no more than 2.8 metres long and 1 metre wide. By the end of the 1990s, they were allowed to be up to 3.4 metres long and 1.48 metres wide.

Besides kei cars, which could only have 660 cc engines (in Japan), there was also a category of kei trucks which also had the same dimensional restrictions so they were pretty small. The Perodua Kancil was adapted from a Daihatsu kei car called the Mira so you can imagine just how small the kei trucks were.

While Toyota and Nissan did not make kei cars, the other carmakers such as Daihatsu, Mazda, Mitsubishi Motors, Suzuki and Subaru had kei cars as well as trucks (which generally used the same simple platform). They sold well during the 1990s and were even exported to other countries, including the USA, surprisingly.

Although the Sarawak and Sabah markets for new vehicles are smaller than in Peninsular Malaysia, many car companies still give the East Malaysian region a lot of attention. Those selling vehicles like pick-up trucks and SUVs, in particular, have a large potential market that continues to grow.

The potential of the market in East Malaysia has led companies like Mitsubishi Motors Malaysia (MMM) to develop its sales and aftersales network which now has 14 outlets (7 in Sarawak and 7 in Sabah), with the opening of a new outlet in Sarawak recently.

Following the appearance of a video on social media showing a car drifting and smoking its tyres near a toll plaza on the Damansara-Shah Alam Elevated Expressway (DASH), PROLINTAS, the concessionaires for the expressway, have issued a statement to say that they will be working with the police to investigate the matter which took place early yesterday morning.

The toll plaza is near Denai Alam on the western end of the 20.1-km expressway which was opened in October 2022. According to the statement, a crowd had gathered in the area leading to the toll plaza and illegal activities took place, referring to the drifting maneuvers of the car (gathering on the highway itself would also be illegal).