Myvi oh Myvi

The lucky 18,000^th customer of the New Myvi received his car yesterday, during a special occasion in conjunction with Perodua Annual CNY Luncheon with Media and Business Partners. It was a “delayed” delivery session actually, as we already delivered to the 20,000^th customers a day before yesterday. Why the 18,000^th? Because it is 2018. So we thought it is a good gesture to have an event for the 18,000^th customer.

Since 2005, we have produced and delivered more than a million units of Myvi. We are now selling the 3^rd Generation Myvi and proudly to say, a purely Malaysian product for Malaysian. Myvi or My Vehicle or My Vision was first mooted in 2002 with three companies, namely Daihatsu, Toyota and Perodua were jointly involved in what was called “simultaneous engineering” project in Japan. For Daihatsu brand in Japan, it was known as Boon and for Toyota, it was Passo. When Myvi was launched in Malaysia, it was slightly different in design and features compared to Boon and Passo as Perodua wanted to include some of the Malaysian unique requirements into its product. That was the beginning of what is now known as “Malaysian Unique” introduced in most of Perodua products since after.

And it was the beginning of many histories too. Myvi led Perodua to take over the pole position in the market place. Myvi stayed as the best seller model in Malaysia for eleven years in a row. Myvi is now re-badged and exported to Indonesia as Daihatsu Sirion.

In 2015, during its 10^th year anniversary, Myvi was dubbed as new Malaysian Icon. It was the name that all Malaysian remember and it still is.

Not exaggerating too, Myvi is the pride of the nation.

Unluckily though, as a result of overwhelming demand for the New Myvi 1.5 AV, many of our customers have to wait more than 3 months before they can receive their cars. At planning stage, based on sales trend of the 2^nd Generation Myvi, it was projected a ratio of 50:50 between the 1.3L and 1.5L variants. The actual booking received was totally different with 1.5L orders went as high as 90 percent. Now it is reducing to around 80 percent.

The imbalance between booking and production created a long waiting period for 1.5L customers. Perodua reacted to this almost immediately by increasing the capacity and adjusting the ratio of 1.5L to 75 percent. Target is to further increase to 90 percent by early March. This need to be done carefully as Perodua want to maintain its quality level and will not sacrifice anything in the expense of quantity. Perodua is now working around the clock to expedite deliveries and Perodua’s vendors too have been doing their parts to increase the supply of components. They need to recruit more workers. They need to invest on new mold to cope with the demand and above all, they need to ensure consistency in quality.

Two days ago, Perodua issued an apology statement to all its customers seeking for understanding and patience, while Perodua is doing their best to speed up the delivery. Yes, it is only a gesture BUT Perodua is not hiding from its shortcoming. 20,000 units delivered over a span of slightly over two months’ period is already a record and Perodua is doing its best to even break that record further.

For me, breaking record is not a point. Fulfilling the orders is the point. I feel them, thus the recent “apology” statement. From the bottom of my heart…I humbly apologize.