Proton Poised To Release Up To 7 New NEVs?

Proton is poised to ramp up its electrification efforts with no less than 7 new New Energy Vehicles (NEVs), as revealed recently by CEO Dr Li Chunrong.

At its annual Chinese New Year press appreciation soiree held this week, national carmaker Proton detailed its on-going plans to electrify and future-proof itself. Central to which are of course new energy vehicles (NEVs) and, ambitiously, no less than 7 of which are in the pipelines.

These will be a mix of both homegrown and Geely-derived products, and the automaker’s CEO Dr Li Chunrong further added that a research and development (R&D) outpost will be established in Guangzhou, China – close to Geely’s home base – for this effort too.

“Later, we will also do new energy models (Proton’s lingo for electrified vehicles) based on current combustion (ICE) platforms. This is a priority. Secondly, we will also introduce four models, all developed by Geely, that we will update,” continued Dr Li further.

The presentation slide used by Dr Li Chunrong that we obtained thanks to an insider source. Clearly, it shows no less than 7 NEVs being planned by Proton, and 4 of which will be and likely sourced from Geely.

The exec didn’t get into specific details, but based on the presentation slide he used, we’re led to believe that Proton plans to introduce 4 all-new electrified – both partial and fully – models, which will be complemented by electrified iterations of its core foursome – Persona, Iriz, Exora, and Saga.

It’s unclear at present if the latter four – fondly dubbed as PIES by Proton – will be electrified fully or partially, but it’s relatively clear electrification is set to occur for them. This also likely suggests that the discontinued Exora MPV will perhaps see a successor soon enough too.

Also unclear presently are what the four new NEVs will be, but we’re led to believe these will likely be rebadged iterations of existing NEVs from Geely massive arsenal. In fact, we’re not discounting the possibility of seeing Proton rebadging offerings from Geely brands like Zeekr or perhaps Geometry.

Proton's homegrown PIES (Persona, Iriz, Exora and Saga) foursome are also poised for electrification in the near future. The surprising note here is the prospects of seeing a successor to the discontinued Exora MPV. 

As for the execution timeline for all of which, we reckon it will still take a couple of years at least before we see any of the four new NEVs planned. Instead, we will likely see the electrification of the homegrown PIES foursome first, which will also take some time.

More immediately though, heavily revised iterations of both the Geely-sourced X50 and X70 crossover SUVs are expected to happen – likely this year, in fact. This is also fuelled by the fact that camouflaged prototypes of both have been spotted undergoing road-tests in recent months.

More immediately, Proton is expected to released heavily revised iterations of the X50 and larger X70 crossover SUV models, likely within this year.

Overall, it appears Proton is set to have its hands full not just this year, but in the immediate years that follow too. We’ll have more details on all once they’re made clearer. In the meantime, what’s your take on Proton’s accelerated NEVs development plan?

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