VFACTS 2023: More than 87,000 EVs sold last year

Australians bought more than one million conventional petrol and diesel-powered new vehicles last year, but there’s no denying the rapid growth of electric cars in our market, which topped 87,000 units in 2023.

This new record marker of 87,217 EV sales represents a 161 per cent increase over 2022 – almost 54,000 cars – and accounted for 7.2 per cent of total industry sales in what was an all-time record high of 1.217 million units across all types of new vehicles.

What’s more, once you add unprecedented plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) sales of 11,212 (+88.8%) and regular series/parallel hybrid car sales of almost 100,000 (98,439, +20.3%) – plus half a dozen specially leased hydrogen-fuelled cars – the number of electrified vehicles making their way into Australian homes and businesses last year reached 196,874 units.

That, in turn, made for a 16.2 per cent slice of all new vehicle sales in Australia going the way of cars with only low or no tailpipe emissions.

These inroads will continue as car-makers – those new-to-Australia as well as the more established – move quickly to meet ever-growing demand for new hybrid cars and EVs. See our story on the top 10 new EVs coming in 2024, for example.

A long-awaited mandatory fuel efficiency standard should also be finally nailed down this year, helping reduce CO2 emissions by prompting the launch of new EVs and powertrain technologies.

Australia is currently one of only two developed nations that does not have such a standard in place (the other being Russia), which has put us at least a decade behind the progress made in other markets such as Europe.

So the sales results for 2023 are really only the tip of the iceberg, driven by a relatively small number of progressive brands who have tapped into the incredibly strong demand evident among private and business buyers.

The number-one EV last year was the Tesla Model Y with 28,769 sales (+230%), followed by the Tesla Model 3 with 17,347 sales (+59.5%).

Tesla’s total sales of 46,116 units was enough for eighth position in the overall market, and its two electric cars accounted for more than half (52.9%) of all EV sales across all brands combined.

Other notable numbers racked up by dedicated EV model lines last year included:
• BYD Atto 3 (11,042) and Dolphin (925)
• MG4 (3134) – carsales’ 2023 Car of the Year
• Volvo XC40 Recharge Pure Electric (2846) and C40 Recharge PE (1103)
• Polestar 2 (2463)
• Kia EV6 (1831) and EV9 (208)
• Mercedes-Benz EQA (1196) and EQB (783)
• Hyundai IONIQ 5 (947) and IONIQ 6 (623)
• BMW iX (822) and i4 (353)
• Cupra Born (887)
• Porsche Taycan (535)
• GWM Ora (526)
• Nissan LEAF (484)
• Audi e-tron GT (339)

Toyota, which will launch its first electric car (the bZ4X) early this year, dominated hybrid car sales with 72,064 units in 2023 – almost three quarters (73.2%) of the overall hybrid market.

The market-leading car-maker says its hybrid share over conventional engines was above 80 per cent for Corolla sedan (84.3%), Corolla hatch (85.2%) and RAV4 (86.6%), and above 90 per cent for Camry (92.3%).

Toyota Australia has now sold 387,151 hybrid cars since the first Prius arrived in 2001, and the company claims to have reduced tailpipe CO2 emissions by the same amount as approximately 115,000 battery-electric vehicles.