More than 40 per cent of car-buyers exclude Tesla and BYD from searches

A new survey by carsales has revealed Tesla and BYD to be the two most commonly disregarded brands by car-buyers and among the most commonly excluded from classifieds searches, with price and perceived quality being the biggest qualms.

According to carsales’ latest Consumer Sentiment Survey – based on responses from 2000 users – Tesla and BYD were the brands most frequently ruled out by shoppers, despite being the leading sales lights in the electrified space.

Jeep was the third-most commonly ignored make, but there was a surprising reshuffle when it came to the most commonly excluded brands – as in, the ones that were manually omitted from searches via the new ‘exclude’ feature.

Near enough half of survey respondents revealed they manually exclude BYD and GWM while more than 40 per cent also crossed off Holden, Tesla and Audi.

“Most people exclude a brand due to aesthetics or reliability concerns,” analysts said.

“When comparing exclusion reasons between BYD and Tesla, buyers were more likely to exclude BYD due to reliability of build concerns, while concerns around Tesla was more around the price.”

But while the above details are prompted or front of mind exclusions, the actual exclusions read rather differently.

Toyota, MG, Holden, Mercedes-Benz and Ford were the five most commonly excluded makes according to raw search data, with Tesla ranking 17th and BYD not even appearing in the top 20.

“Buyers will be more likely to exclude popular makes such as Toyota due to having already reviewed them in an initial search, as opposed to being against buying that particular brand,” analysts said.

“Similarly, brands such as Tesla and BYD appear low or not at all on this list due to not being a popular make which people actively have to remove to clear their search findings.”

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