DRB-Hicom looking to add two more auto brands to its portfolio – EV possible, ‘commercial quite interesting’

DRB-Hicom is looking to add two more automotive brands to its portfolio, and the conglomerate is also considering an entry into the commercial vehicle sub-sector. This was revealed by DRB-Hicom’s head of automotive distribution Akkbar Danial at the recent EON & Sahabat Media Getaway 2024 event.

In a core offerings presentation slide showing ‘new dealerships’, there were two ‘new brands’ next to smart, and when quizzed on the matter, Akkbar said that Proton’s eMAS sub-brand isn’t one of the mystery brands (DRB-Hicom will of course have Proton eMAS dealerships) and that the group is looking at distributor-level partnerships, not merely opening dealerships.

Any hints? “It could be commercial (vehicles), it could be passenger (vehicles), we’ll study the market. Passenger, the discounting is too massive now, I think to go into passenger is a bit challenging. Commercial is quite an interesting area to go into as you don’t have to deal with B2C, it’s more B2B – it’s quite interesting,” said Akkbar, who is also CEO of EON, DRB-Hicom’s auto dealership group.

You’d think that Malaysia’s EV sub-segment is pretty saturated now, with more offerings than buyers in the current market, but the former Honda exec isn’t ruling an EV brand out. “It is saturated, but you have to remember that we have quite a huge presence in the fleet market,” Akkbar said, adding that there are products that can supplement the offerings of its existing brands.

By the way, car rental giant Avis’ Malaysian business is under the DRB-Hicom umbrella and the Avis fleet might have a future need for EVs. Currently, of the DRB-Hicom brands, smart is a pure EV company with two models (#1 and #3) and Audi has a couple of e-tron models, but they’re all rather fancy, and in Audi’s case, very high-end too.

The DRB-Hicom auto distribution chief then willingly came back to commercial vehicles, which we’ll take as a strong hint. “For me, commercial is quite an interesting area. It’s not to say that I’m tired of doing retail for passenger vehicles – it is very challenging – but yes, it (commercial vehicles) is an angle that we’ll look into,” he said.

Currently, DRB-Hicom’s automotive distribution portfolio has EON (dealerships for smart and Proton), EON Auto Mart (Mitsubishi), Euromobil (Audi), Hicom Auto (Volkswagen), ACM (Isuzu) and DRB-Hicom Commercial Vehicles (DHCV, Daihatsu).

Also under the auto division is financing arm EON Capital, DRB-Hicom Auto Solution (DHAS), Avis and EON Petromin. A JV with Saudi Arabia’s Petromin Corp, the latter is the group’s relatively new venture to enter the workshop and car servicing business.

Away from retail and services, DRB-Hicom is also the local partner for several Japanese OEMs – it has a 34% stake in Honda Malaysia, a 48% stake in Mitsubishi Motors Malaysia and controls 49% of Isuzu Malaysia. There’s also the 51% stake in Proton, of course.

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