Tesla only reported sales figures up to June last year, after spitting the dummy with the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI). Photo: James Coleman.
Canberrans bought fewer new cars in 2024 compared to 2023, according to new sales figures. Or did they?
The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), based in Barton, has published data on exactly how many – and what type of – cars Australians bought over the course of last year.
But there’s a conspicuous absence.
Tesla, a top seller across the country and especially here in the ACT, fell out with the FCAI in June over what it labelled “demonstrably false” reporting on the Federal Government’s new emissions targets.
The New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES), which comes into effect from 1 July, is said to encourage greater uptake of EVs by either through giving credits – or monetary fines – to car manufacturers based on the CO2 emissions of every new car they sell.
The FCAI warned this would slug many of Australia’s top-selling vehicles with price rises of up to $25,000 by 2029.
Tesla argued this was misleading, and the brand announced it would pull out of its membership with the FCAI come the end of the financial year on 30 June 2024, and no longer report its sales figures to the chamber.
The Tesla Model 3 still made it into the list of top 10 cars Canberrans bought in 2024, even with half a year of sales data missing. Photo: James Coleman.
This explains why the FCAI’s figures record a drop in the ACT’s total new vehicle sales from 18,531 in 2023 to 17,586 in 2024, and also why Tesla has slumped from our second favourite brand in 2023 to sixth in 2024.
The figures also show a 12 per cent downturn in the number of EVs sold in the ACT (2974 in 2024, compared to 3396 in 2023).
But taking into account figures from the Electric Vehicle Council (EVC), we know EVs enjoyed a greater national market share last year – up from 8.45 per cent in 2023 to 9.65 per cent in 2024 – and made up about 25 per cent of all new vehicle sales in the ACT.
Up to June, Tesla recorded 989 new vehicle sales, compared to 1802 over the entirety of 2023, so it’s safe to say the brand exceeded this figure in 2024.
The Model 3 and Model Y also still made their way into our top 10 cars for 2024, in third and fourth place, with 502 and 487 sales respectively.
Toyota easily remained Canberra’s favourite car brand (2944 new vehicle sales), followed by Mazda (1435), Hyundai (1112), Volkswagen (1007), Kia (1001), Tesla (989), Ford (970), BYD (869), Mitsubishi (846) and Subaru (774).
By models, the Toyota RAV4 remained in the lead for 2024 with 1105 sales across the year.
The Toyota RAV4 Hybrid – still our favourite car. Photo: James Coleman.
The Ford Ranger has overtaken the Toyota HiLux as Canberra’s favourite ute, now in second place on the top 10 list with 592 sales.
The rest of the list is rounded out by the Mitsubishi Outlander (384), Toyota HiLux (362), Mazda CX-5 (322), Isuzu D-Max (313), Hyundai Kona (301) and Toyota Corolla (278).
As a category, SUVs still easily led the pack at 62 per cent of all new car sales.
Across passenger cars, SUVs, and light-commercial vehicles, petrol was also still the fuel type of choice at 40 per cent of sales (or 6,933 sales).
Hybrids were up by a whopping 71 per cent (3160 sales in 2024, compared to 1842 in 2023) and the figure for plug-in hybrids not far behind at 65 per cent (926 sales in 2024, over 560 in 2023).
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