Unlikely heroes: Porsche Taycan and MG ZS EV

Any suggestion Australians wouldn’t embrace electric vehicles has been short-circuited by brands at both the entry point to the market and the upper echelon – and this was no more obvious than with the 2021 Porsche Taycan emerging in March as the nation’s top-selling large luxury sedan.

Highly Commended in the 2020 carsales Car of the Year awards handed down recently, the Taycan’s first full month on sale brought 161 new registrations, which was enough to overtake the Mercedes-Benz E-Class (155) and take line honours in the segment.

With pre-launch deliveries to customers included, Porsche has sold 225 Taycans so far this year.

A Porsche Cars Australia spokesman has confirmed to carsales today that “we don’t have supply to sustain monthly sales numbers at the level seen in March”.

However, interest and demand in the German sports car marque’s super-high-tech electric car – which is priced between $190,400 and $338,500 (plus on-road costs) – remains strong.

The order bank and local allocation numbers are not being divulged, but if you were to order one today you’d be facing a six-month wait.

“If you were to order a ‘build-to-order’ car right now – when you select all the specification of the car yourself, [which is] the most common type of order for Porsche – delivery would most likely occur in early Q4 2021,” the spokesman said.

At the other end of the scale, the battery-electric version of the 2021 MG ZS – which at $43,990 plus ORCs is the cheapest EV on the market – has helped the Chinese brand’s small SUV to the top of the fast-growing, high-volume segment after the first quarter of trading this year.

The ZS has racked up 4065 total sales (EV and regular versions combined) to the end of March, which is a massive 302.5 per cent increase over the same period last year and sees it outgunning big-name rivals including the Hyundai Kona, Toyota C-HR, Mazda CX-30, Nissan QASHQAI, Mitsubishi ASX, Honda HR-V and Subaru XV.

The EV has accounted for almost nine per cent of total MG ZS sales this year, with 359 thus far – 169 in January, 70 in February (when some are understood to have been held up in quarantine) and a further 120 in March.

An MG Australia spokesman has told carsales that “there are no restrictions on ZS EV supply at the moment – no production cap for our market, either”.

In overall terms, total EV sales across the industry – with the glaring exception of the market-leading Tesla, which does not report its figures – are at 969 sales after the first quarter, marking a 122.8 per cent uptick.

Yes, it’s only 0.3 per cent of the total market – and the majority of those (60.2 per cent) are of the Porsche Taycan and MG ZS EV.

But consider also that 629 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have also been sold so far this year – a rise of 79.7 per cent – along with 16,128 regular hybrid vehicles (+24.8%).

There’s also a large number of all-new EVs charging forward towards Australia that will keep pushing the numbers higher.

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