Is It Groundhog Day for the Australian EV Market?

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

There are times when I review the electric vehicle penetration rates for Australia that I feel like I am stuck in Groundhog Day. Each month, new models are spotted — this month, it is the MG Cybster and the Xpeng G6 that have sneak photos on Facebook sites — yet sales still hover at about 10% of new vehicles having a plug. However, more and more chargers are being installed. Many are preparing for an electric future.

For the month of June, over 120,000 new cars were sold in Australia. If we count all vehicles with a plug, PHEV plus BEV, penetration hovers about the Groundhog Day 10%. In June, 9,583 battery electric (BEV) vehicles were sold, and then 1,949 plugin hybrids as well for a total of 11,532 out of the aforementioned 120,000. Year-to-date sales figures were 58,442 for plugins, also near the 10% rate out of the 632,412 new vehicles sold in H1 2024 in Australia.

It is worth noting that PHEVs have doubled their sales in Australia. According to zecar, there are 47 different PHEVs available in Australia. There were only 18 the last time I looked. Yes, I was surprised about that! BEVs were outselling PHEVs at a rate of 8:1. Now it is at a rate of 4:1. Battery range is quite broad amongst these — from 33 km (Porsche Cayenne Turbo S E-Hybrid) to 113 km (Range Rover).

The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries says it expects that over 100,000 EVs will be sold into the car market this year — compared to about 80,000 in all of 2023. EV sales year to date are up 16.5%. “Though electric vehicle (EV) sales increased over the month prior, they were down 13.2 per cent on June 2023.” The Tesla Model Y is the fifth best-selling car year to date, behind the Ford Ranger, Toyota HiLux, Toyota RAV4, and Mitsubishi Outlander.

There is a lot of speculation in the Australian EV community about why the market is stagnating. Is it fear amongst the next level of adopters, pushing them to buy hybrids? Is it that charging stations are invisible until you get an EV and start using the app? Is it that there is a lingering mistrust of Chinese products? Is it the ever-increasing chaos of confusing FUD on mainstream media?

We encountered all these and more when we presented at recent regional EV exhibitions. There are no simple answers to this question in a country that has a reputation for embracing new technology.

The top selling BEVs in Australia in June 2024 were:

1. Tesla Model Y (2,906 sold in June) — year to date: 12,516
2. Tesla Model 3 (1,777 sold in June) — year to date: 10,600
3. BYD Seal (706 sold in June) — year to date: 4,012
4. Volvo EX30 (420) — year to date: 886
5. MG4 (395) — year to date: 2,871
6. Polestar 2 (356) — year to date: 950
7. BYD Atto 3 (351) — year to date: 3,717
8. BMW i4 (316) — year to date: 1,177
9. BYD Dolphin (204) — year to date: 1,248
10. Kia EV6 (158) — year to date: 1,060

Comparing this to the leaderboard from May, there is very little change in the participants — yep, Groundhog Day. It is good to see Polestar 2 back in the charts. Just off the chart are the Mercedes EQA with 121 sales and the GWM Ora with 114 sales. The Volvo EX30 is climbing slowly.

There still appears to be great excitement in Australia as we prepare for more electric vehicles using the roads. Rod Walker of Kerb Charge in Victoria rang me the other day to inform me that his company’s trial of pop-up kerbside chargers has been a success and now has received approval for 100 more inner city installations. This is expected to result in a municipality-wide rollout in the city of Port Philip. He told me that other councils in Victoria and New South Wales will feel confident that they can now go ahead. This is the solution for inner city residents’ charging needs. No more extension cords over the fence or across the footpath. Kerb Charge is legal and covered by insurance.

Rod expects to move into production and provide employment in his local area. A further review will be conducted in four years, or when 100 installations are completed. Rod informs me that Kerb Charge utilises the car owners’ home power supply and charges four times faster than a 10-amp power point. It has a cost and convenience advantage over commercial high-speed chargers. He draws a comparison with mobile phone uptake: “We get it, if we were reliant on solely charging our mobile phone at a café, with no access to charging at home, we probably wouldn’t have brought that technology either.” This explains the reluctance of some inner city residents to go EV.

In a further blow to the FUD that electric vehicles are a passing FAD, the New South Wales state government has released a new round of funding for destination chargers at tourist spots in the regions. The government website says: “An EV charger can get your business on the map. Literally. More and more drivers are switching to electric vehicles (EVs) and they’re planning their trips around EV charging locations.”

The NSW state government is also supporting fleets to transition from fossil fuel vehicles to electric. They claim that, “After 3 rounds of funding, the electric vehicles (EV) fleets incentive has helped over 41 organisations transition their fleet vehicles into battery electric vehicles. So far, the incentive has supported the purchase of over 3,500 battery electric vehicles.”

Still in New South Wales, Chargefox has announced the commissioning of 75 EV chargers at the Westmead Children’s Hospital. If we are to believe the FUD, this seems like a very dangerous place to put fire-prone electric cars! The charging station is covered with a canopy of 1400 solar panels. Well thought out.

At a recent end of financial year sale, BYD reports that it took orders for over 120 vehicles one Saturday in southeast Queensland alone. The company exhibited a Sea Lion 06 and a Seal at the RACQ MotorFest and provided 30 test drives on the day. I will be keeping a keen eye on the stats to see these numbers come through on the roads.

So, the sales statistics appear to create a feeling of Groundhog Day, yet preparations for more electric vehicles on the roads continue through the increasing installation of various charging modes. Anecdotal evidence suggests interest, but we await that interest to translate into sales as more and more models become available.