You can now easily discover the most popular automakers and car models in Malaysia through the Malaysian government’s Open Data Portal. This is made possible by a recent update on the portal which includes the implementation of several new data dashboards such as Car Popularity.
According to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, the update was implemented in just four months by the Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) and GovTech Malaysia’s Nucleus Unit. The data for the Car Popularity section of the portal was provided by the Road Transport Department (JPJ).
Just days after its existence was revealed to the public, the Car Popularity section immediately became the portal’s most popular data dashboard. Since we still have a few more months to go before the year is over, the status quo may change but for now, the Perodua Bezza is the best-selling car in Malaysia for this year so far.
There are also additional Perodua models that have made their way to the top 10 best-selling cars in Malaysia at the moment including Myvi, Axia, Alza, and Ativa. Hence, you should be surprised to see Perodua is leading the list of best-selling car brands in Malaysia at the moment.
As for Proton, they also have a few models in the top 10 list including the Proton Saga which is currently the fourth best-selling car of 2023. The company’s SUV, X50 alongside Persona have also made their way to the top 10 list.
Also part of the top 10 list is Honda City and Toyota Hilux at no 8 and 9, respectively. Through the same section, you can also check the popularity of your car models over the years as well as vehicle registration trends from 31 August 2021 onwards.
All the data within the Car Popularity dashboard is up to date until 31 August 2023. However, the portal did not mention how often the data will be updated.
While this is certainly a great effort by MAMPU, GovTech Malaysia, and JPJ, there is certainly a lot of room for improvement. For one, JPJ may want to clean up the database as we have noticed several data discrepancies.
For example, Atto 3 was somehow placed under Buick instead of BYD. In addition to that, several Proton models such as Iswara and Wira were somehow listed under Porsche although we suspect they were just test data as the portal said that there was only one “Porsche Iswara” and “Porsche Wira” registered with JPJ.
As a comparison, you can see that the amount of registered Wira is more than 480,000 when you go through Proton’s data in the portal. Similarly, the portal also said that over 370,000 Iswara have been registered with JPJ.
As noted earlier, there are also plenty of other new data dashboards that you can check out at the Open Data Portal. In addition to the Car Popularity, other sections that seemed to have gained quite some traction are the Income Taxation by Internal Revenue Board (LHDN), National Registration Department’s (JPN) Birthday Explorer, Department of Immigration, and Public Transportation by Ministry of Transport.
