This New EV Is Less Than $20,000, But It Leaves Out The Most Expensive Part

• The Perodua QV-E is Malaysia’s first homegrown EV.
• The subcompact electric car starts from just $19,400, which is on par with most gas-powered alternatives.
• It’s powered by an LFP battery that enables 276 miles of range, but owners will need to pay extra for it.

Electric cars are not yet on par, price-wise, with some of their combustion-powered alternatives. And although EVs will save owners money over the course of a few years, some people often can’t get past the initial sticker shock.

Malaysia’s first homegrown EV wants to cure that with a starting price that’s really competitive, but with a huge asterisk that will hang on for almost a decade.

The Perodua QV-E, a subcompact EV made with help from Magna Steyr, broke cover yesterday, and it’s a pretty slick offering, albeit one that draws some inspiration from the refreshed Tesla Model Y, with a horizontal light bar at the front and rear. If you can’t beat them, join them, I guess.

It’s powered by a front-mounted electric motor that makes 201 horsepower (150 kilowatts) and 210 pound-feet (285 Newton-meters) of torque, which should help the Nissan Juke-sized EV sprint from a standstill to 62 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour) in 7.5 seconds. In other words, it’s a perfectly decent daily driver.

That electric motor draws power from a 52.5-kilowatt-hour lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery pack supplied by China’s CATL, enabling an estimated range of 276 miles (445 km) on the optimistic NEDC cycle. (On the EPA cycle, that estimate would be around 203 miles on a full charge.) That’s not exactly spectacular, but on the flip side, owners get vehicle-to-load (V2L) functionality, which means they can export power from the high-voltage battery to power laptops, tools and appliances. 

The car starts from the equivalent of $19,400 (80,000 ringgit), which is bound to attract some attention, but there’s a catch. Owners need to sign a whopping nine-year lease, and as part of that lease, they’ll have to pay an additional $67 (275 ringgit) per month just for the battery. That sounds pretty bad at first, but it means customers will end up paying an additional $7,236 after nine years for the battery, which is a pretty reasonable ask for what is traditionally the most expensive part of an EV.

The Perodua QV-E seems like a solid effort, with the company investing almost $200 million in research and development for its first proper EV. Local production set to begin soon. Perdoua said output will be limited to roughly 500 units per month before ramping up to 3,000 by the third quarter of 2026.

Battery subscriptions for EVs are not something new, with companies like Nio and VinFast using them as a way to soften the blow when buying a new car. Renault also implemented something similar in Europe when the Zoe was still around.