With 282,019 vehicles sold in 2022, Perodua continues to have a long waiting list (220,000 outstanding orders to fulfill) starting 2023. That might be considered a ‘good’ start to the year to already have such a huge order bank, but the Malaysian carmaker is not exactly happy either because it means customers have a long wait to get their new vehicles.

Since July last year, the priority has been to deliver vehicles to those customers who had booked before June 30, the date when the exemption of sales tax ended. By right, anyone who registers their vehicle after that date would not be entitled to the exemption. However, understanding the difficulties faced by the industry due to disruptions and parts shortages which affected output, the Finance Ministry gave a 9-month extension for delivery of vehicles which would be entitled to the exemption.

So Perodua, like many other companies, has been working flat out to fulfill those back orders – while new orders have also been building up in a buoyant market that saw the year’s Total Industry Volume (TIV) rocket past the 700,000 level for the first time ever.

Perodua will soon launch the next generation of the Axia, its entry-level model. The first generation was launched in September 2014 to take the place of the Viva. Up till the end of 2022, the total production volume of the model was almost 587,000 units.

The new model, coded D74A, is a larger model and uses DNGA (Daihatsu New Global Architecture) which is also used for the Ativa and Alza. The new architecture has high rigidity and is engineered for manufacturing efficiency as well as better build quality. It also offers designers more flexibility as it is versatile and can be used for different bodystyles.