By Santhia Panjanadan
SERI KEMBANGAN, May 14: The government is looking at incentives including tax exemptions to encourage operators to adopt electric vehicle (EV) trucks, Transport Minister Anthony Loke said today.
He said the EV Task Force will be meeting next week, where the Ministry of Transport (MOT) will present its views on incentivising businesses to adopt EV trucks.
“We have an EV Task Force and will be meeting next week. MOT will present our views to convince our colleagues in other ministries that we should look at how do we incentivise businesses to adopt EV trucks.
“We know EV trucks are much more expensive per unit and we need a lot of investment in terms of charging stations, facilities, and how do we convince the operators to adopt EV trucks. But in the long term, this is something which I think is necessary,” he said in his speech at the Malaysia Commercial Vehicle Expo (MCVE) 2026 here today.
Loke said EV truck adoption in Malaysia remained low.
“There are a couple of units of EV trucks in Malaysia, but by and large we are not taking off anything yet in terms of EV trucks,” he said.
“I know it is not going to be easy, I know it will take a very long time, I know that we need to have a lot of push, a lot of incentives to incentivise and to motivate the operators to adopt EV trucks,” he added.
“The government is spending 2.5 billion a month just on diesel subsidy. Not just that we have to achieve our net zero target by 2050, but in terms of fuel efficiency, in terms of the cost to the government, it is better for the government to incentivise the operators to operate EV trucks.”
Loke also expressed hope that manufacturers and companies in the industry would start looking into this.
— WE