Tan Chong Motor Holdings Berhad is joining forces with SGM Wuling to create the TQ Wuling brand in Malaysia.
Chinese automotive giant Wuling has finally officially revealed what its plans for Malaysia will entail and the key to these plans lie with Tan Chong Motor Holdings. Rather than compete against the likes of BYD, Tesla, MG, and countless other brands, they’re going to try and enter the Malaysian market with a sub-RM100,000 electric vehicle. The two entities (SGM Wuling and Tan Chong Motor Group) today formalized a strategic partnership that will see the creation of a new ‘TQ Wuling’ brand for the local market. The ‘TQ’ stands for ‘Trust and Quality’,
The first car that will be launched in Malaysia will be based on the Wuling Bingo and while the final specification hasn’t been stated, they did have 2 units to preview. The Malaysian spec TQ Wuling Bingo will be launched in Q4 2025 and a sub-RM100,000 price point has been promised, which is something the Malaysian government has prohibited thus far for non-national brands. The fact that the Minister of Transport Anthony Loke was present might indicate an ‘opening up’ to cheaper EVs if more serious local assembly or localised brands are created. The Wuling Bingo’s price in Indonesia starts at around RM81,000 and goes up to about RM95,000 on higher specification models which aligns with the brand’s ambitions to launch an EV here below that magical RM100,000 mark.
We got some hands-on time with the Wuling Bingo at the ceremony and the car looks to be roughly Myvi sized. The boot doesn’t look particularly large but when you remove the dual boot floor and you’ll find two storage bins. With these out of the way the boot is much larger, vertically. The rear seats feature a 50:50 split and can fold down to expand the boot space horizontally too. The floor is a little higher than expected at the rear and there doesn’t seem to be a middle seat belt, so this looks to be a 4 seater for now.
The seats and door cards were upholstered in beige and brown leather of decent quality and you also get dual 10.25″ displays which aren’t common in sub-RM100,000 cars. Air cond controls are still physical, and we take this to be a pretty important strength of the vehicle. You also have an electronic parking brake and auto brake hold function. The driver’s seat is powered but the front passenger seat is manually controlled.
Under the hood there isn’t a frunk. The wheels fitted on the previewed models were 15″ across, which are an uncommonly small size for an EV though this is what you might expect in a budget-oriented vehicle of this size. We spotted two airbags in the vehicle and the charging ports were seperated between DC on the passenger side and AC on the driver’s side. The DC fast charging port is NOT CCS2 but GB/T style. There are adapters for this, but we’re not sure how this will work with the common CCS2 chargers we have in Malaysia.
