MG in India is carrying out a new Assured Buy Back Programme, will it work in Malaysia?
One of the biggest hurdles facing Electric Vehicle (EV) adoption in Malaysia isn’t range anxiety or charging infrastructure anymore—it is the fear of poor resale value. In India, MG is addressing this concern with its ‘Assured Buy Back Programme’ – a scheme that guarantees MG owners between 40-60% of the car’s original price after 3-5 years of ownership.
We wonder if such as scheme would work well in Malaysia too, given how obsessed our market is with resale value. After all, the entire Perodua QV-E project was designed around protecting resale value by doing something even more extreme – leasing the vehicle’s battery separately from the vehicle.
If MG Malaysia were to implement the same Buyback Model as their Indian counterpart, it would certainly boost customer confidence in their otherwise competent and competitive products like the MG S5. Premium makes like Mercedes-Benz and BMW already offer similar buyback schemes but these brands are large enough to offer their own in-house financing for such schemes. They’ve even got enough of an established after sales network to take on and make money from their used vehicles post buy-back.
The issue is that MG in Malaysia is small in terms of volume and ambition. Sure, they’ve made some moves in the last few years, but they’ve yet to crack the mass market game the way Chery has, nor have they found specific niches for themselves the way GWM Motor has. Plus, if the used EV market collapses in 3-5 years, MG may be forced to take in a bunch of customer cars at a massive loss. They’ll probably have to attach a clause that only guarantees resale value if customers come in for a trade-in for ANOTHER MG vehicle.
Still, it might be the one strategy that could help set MG apart from its many Chinese rivals in Malaysia. They’ll have to double down on the Malaysian market with more capital injected in from their HQ in China to make it all work though. As it stands, JPJ’s registration data shows just over 3,000 units of MG vehicles on our roads. For context, Chery ended 2025 with more than 64,000 units registered in Malaysia and GWM with more than 13,500. These are up to November 2025 as December numbers have yet to be published.
