Tesla Might Be Gearing Up To Roll Out Its Electric Vehicles In Malaysia

Tesla Inc. has recently listed Tesla Sdn. Bhd. as one of its subsidiaries in the FY2022 annual report filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The screenshot of the filing has been circulated among local netizens which naturally caused some excitement but believe it or not, Tesla has actually been in Malaysia for the past few years.

Just that the company did not originally enter Malaysia to launch its electric car. Instead, its Malaysian journey started in 2017 with the establishment of Tesla Services Sdn. Bhd. all the way up north in Penang.

According to its Jobstreet profile, Tesla Services is a Finance Shared Service Centre that is responsible for Tesla’s accounting and finance activities in EMEA and Asia Pacific region. However, the Penang office was then closed sometime in 2019 or early 2020 according to a Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM) filing in August 2020.

Despite that, Tesla Services Sdn. Bhd. continued to appear on Tesla Inc.’s annual report until FY2021 as its Malaysian subsidiary. In October 2022, the company then submitted a notification to SSM to inform them of the change in its business nature.

According to the notification, the business nature of Tesla Services is now:

1. Wholesale and retail of new motor vehicles
2. Other service activities incidental to land transportation n.e.c
3. Maintenance and repair of motor vehicles

A few days later on 21 October 2022, Tesla Services Sdn. Bhd. then officially changed its name to just Tesla Sdn. Bhd. That was the very name that ended up in Tesla Inc’s FY2022 annual report filing to SEC on 31 January 2023.

Before you get excited though, do note the company did not talk about market expansion in its investor’s presentation deck for Q4 and FY 2022 [pdf]. So, for now, it remains to be seen whether we are finally going to see Tesla officially bring over its EVs to Malaysia anytime soon.

Nevertheless, it is quite hard to ignore the recent changes that Tesla has made to its sole Malaysian subsidiary. Even though the changes were just involving some regulatory documents.

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