Mazda comfortable selling fewer cars as EV share grows

Mazda Australia says it is no longer treating 100,000 annual sales as its measure of success, with managing director Vinesh Bhindi acknowledging that the once-dominant Japanese brand may now have to settle for lower sales volumes.

Bhindi said a six-figure sales result was a vanity number rather than company policy.

“Vanity is a great word… we never woke up saying [100,000] is the number and that's what we should chase,” said the Mazda boss.

Mazda sales peaked in Australia at 118,217 in 2016 and hit 100,008 cars in 2023. But the brand slipped to a result of 91,923 last year, and this year, sales are down another 16 per cent through to September, with 58,865 deliveries on the tally.

According to Bhindi, a surge in new brands means the overall pie is being sliced more thinly because the number of Australians buying cars is not growing.

Returning to about 90,000 sales per year looks achievable for Mazda if its new EVs prove successful, but that is not likely to happen this year.

“What we're seeing in Australia is a saturation of more options for consumers, but none of that is creating new demand,” Bhindi reflected.

For Mazda, the big casualty has been the Mazda 3, which receded dramatically from 36,107 deliveries in 2016 to 10,291 in 2025.

The CX-3 small SUV has lost some of its momentum very late in its life, while the CX-5 remains Mazda’s biggest seller despite facing hybrid and electric alternatives in the mid-size SUV segment.

Even the BT-50 ute, which once regularly tallied more than 15,000 annual sales, is down 22 per cent so far this year – but like many Mazdas, it’s nearing the end of its lifecycle.

But Mazda Australia faces a bigger challenge than cooling sales, with the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) biting the brand hard due to a lack of EVs until recently.

NVES progressively lowers the average CO2 emissions permitted across carmaker ranges, with the limits tightening from 117g/km in 2026 to 58g/km in 2029, effectively mandating EVs and PHEVs.

Mazda registered the car industry’s worst provisional emissions shortfall in the first six months of NVES operation, in part because the CX-5 emits around 173g/km, and the CX-3 and Mazda 3 each produce at least 136g/km.

Selling a handful of EVs won’t be enough to solve the problem, which explains why Mazda Australia has priced its new 6e and CX-6e electrics so aggressively, from $49,990 and $53,990 respectively.

Mazda will need to sell tens of thousands of its new EVs in Australia to offset the CO2 impact of its petrol and diesel models.

That requires a major change in Mazda’s sales mix, with reduced reliance on the CX-5 and BT-50 and a big role for Mazda’s Changan-built 6e and CX-6e, which will be joined by at least two more EVs later this decade.

It’s unlikely those familiar Mazda nameplates will disappear entirely, but if the NVES regime is maintained, their role will be much more marginal.

Bhindi says the business must be able to “flex up and down depending on the opportunity”. Fewer total sales could coexist with a considerably healthier business that avoids NVES penalties, provided the electric Mazdas become serious sellers.

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