No to new national car

Dr M has a lot of goodwill on his side. People see him as the saviour who finally managed to free Malaysia of BN control after more than six decades of uninterrupted rule. But there's only so much leeway that goodwill will buy you. Building another national car is not something the public will go for and it's highly unlikely that PKR, DAP or Amanah would go for it too.

KJ, playing the role of the faithful opposition, actually has some good points when he says:

“Unless the project results in a fully electric car, I don't see any benefit to the people, the economy and the environment."

A few generations of Malaysians have had to endure high car prices due to the high excise duty charged on other non-Malaysian car makers.

Some people might say, oh but Singapore car prices are just as high or even higher. That's true but the reason Singapore imposes extra charges on cars is that they want to control the number of vehicles on the island. That's not the reason why our car prices are high. Over here, it's to protect the national car.

Let's not have any more of that. Here's hoping that Dr M's remarks in Japan about a new national car was just an off-the-cuff remark. It's highly unlikely that this has been discussed at the Cabinet level. And if it does actually gets raised there, let's hope the other Cabinet members (and possibly including Muhyiddin) will highlight that this is not a good project to go into.