Image: Riz Akhtar
The price war in the Australian electric vehicle market has had a significant impact on sales, at least for the country’s most affordable EV model, the MG4, which has become the best selling car in the country – knocking Tesla off its perch for the first time.
A near quadrupling in sales propelled the MG4 – which had its on road price slashed to below $31,000 in October – to become the best-selling electric car for the month, outselling Tesla as a brand for the first time in Australia. No other car maker has achieved that feat.
The latest data from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) and Electric Vehicle Council (EVC) shows that 6,414 battery electric vehicles were sold in Australia in October – a share that remained the same as the previous month of 6.4 per cent. That’s on the back of the total market approaching 100,000 vehicles for the second month in a row.
This October data compares better with sales in October 2023 where EVs made up 5.7% of the market, highlighting an improvement in 2024.
Looking at the data from a year-to-date perspective, the EV sales have accounted for 76,376 vehicles, up from 71,810 sold over the same period in 2023.
The data was once again separated with two suppliers, the FCAI shared 4,820 EVs – and those supplied by the Electric Vehicle Council – 1,594 – from Tesla and Polestar who quit the FCAI earlier this year because of its contrarian stance to the new vehicle emissions standards.
EV Sales Breakdown – October 2024
| FCAI vFacts | 4,820 |
| EVC (Polestar + Tesla) | 1,594 |
| EV Sales Total (FCAI + EVC) | 6,414 |
| Total Vehicle Sales (FCAI + EVC) | 99,969 |
MG overtook Tesla with the MG4 selling 1,486 EVs, followed by the Tesla Model Y with 1,042 sales in October.
The Tesla Model 3 took the third spot on the EV sales podium with just 422 sales, highlighting a big drop compared to September when it sold 1,151 units. It’s also Tesla Model 3’s lowest month of sales in 2024.
BYD took the fourth spot with the Atto 3 raking 330 sales while the Seal was in the fifth position with 313 sales.
With the Dolphin getting only 67 sales, this made October, the lowest month for BYD’s EV sales in 2024 with just 710 sales as the brand continues to focus on PHEVs with the Sealion 6 and recently launched Shark 6 ute.
Other notable EVs in October included the Kia EV5 which showed 97 sales after the official launch earlier in the month.
The best-selling EVs in October 2024 were:
The Driven is waiting to hear back from various manufacturers regarding sales of some EV models, and this list will be updated once they’re received. These include numbers for the Kona Electric and more.
“Many of these new EV sales are in the highly competitive medium passenger segment which already records almost fifty per cent of sales being electric but the segment accounting for just over four per cent of total sales.” FCAI CEO Tony Weber said in a statement.
With MG showcasing that aggressive pricing will move vehicles, other brands will be paying attention to this to see how affordable EVs can be bought to drivers sooner.
This is highlighted in the flurry of incentives being offered by existing and new brands entering the market. These range from price cuts, referral programs, charging equipment bonuses as well as free public charging offers.
The market is showing signs of resilliance as many new brands aim to deliver new models to drivers before Christmas, making it quite an exciting time in the EV transition.
See full details of EV sales for each month of the year in our database here.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.
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Of course they will sell more it's almost half the price. Guys c'mon. Your embarrassing yourselves here. Your better than this.
So is the Ora. A lot more goes into sales than price alone. It's a big increase in sales and noteworthy. Nothing embarrassing about reporting about it.
4500 increase over the year is a very small increase
No they’re not. They simply publish anything with Tesla or Toyota in the title to rev up predictable responses from the usual.
It was always far cheaper than a Tesla, and no BEV has outsold Tesla in Australia before.
PS "you're" in both cases.
what are you talking about? of course they will sell more, it just means other people in Ausi want an affordable ev that is fun to drive, what the hell is wrong with that?
Yeah the MG software is pretty rubbish but the car is a delight to drive. Our household has a Model Y (mine) and a MG4 (wife) and the Y wins in lots of areas but the MG4 is the nicer drive
Good to know
Nicer to drive.
A lot of Tesla owners are going to tell you how Tesla benchmarks against BMW 3 series
Both vehicles are well accessorised. So what could cause one car to be twice the price of the other. Maybe it's about so called status being exploited by the richest person in the world.
What have they preached:
Tesla owners are still wondering why people buy Kia Piccantos.
Any sale taken off Tesla is a good thing in my books.
Anyone who does a lot of city driving and has off street parking and even better, solar, the MG4 51kWh with LFP battery chemistry is a no brainer.
Hopefully sales will continue to be strong with the price still good at now $33k. They could make number 3 sales spot in 2024.
This has to be the first time Driven has reported fcai monthly sales before any other site. Well done.
Car Expert does this, but be good for someone to chart the relative month by month percentage of petrol, diesel, HEV, PHEV and BEV sales (Hydrogen I think we can safely ignore) over the last couple of years to see where the trend is.
I expected 10% BEV by now, but BEV has sort of stalled a bit this year, and 2024 has turned out to be the year of HEV and PHEV. I think that's going to continue in 2025, but BEV could start rising again too.
It's probably going to be down to affordability, range, and how Australia's charging network pans out next year.
Entire car industry has stalled.
It's not just EVs.
Toyota is down globally 20% last quarter or something
Agree. I think the rollout of a resilient charging network is crucial for more uptake of BEVs.
We need to see a minimum of six charges at charging sites to cater for out-of-order and holiday surges.
The Chinese will cover every sector with no ideological preference. PHEVs threaten EVs AND the supporting infrastructure. The embedded forces will be relieved.
Again BEVs + Phevs = EVs Or plug in Evs
Evs October last year 7795
Evs October this year 8821.
What's down?
It turns out ICE demand is cooling by approximately 13,000 units!
PHEV's and EV's are not bundled together....
Best Run and tell the Society of Automotive engineers, The IEA, JD Power, RHO Motion.
Try looking how many petrol cars sold for the year.
633412 of which 50219 sold so I very large. Gap of 580000 extra petrol car sold over your ev
Cool story.
Your original comment is still wrong.
NVES exists. EVs will take over. It's inevitable. So grow up yeah?
BYD had no new Dolphins for sale last month.
BYD Dolphin ade model 70kW is priced all wrong. They could price it with a 2 at the start and still make a margin.
Hence the puny sales numbers.
Now do ICE sales using the same metrics!
580000 petrol cars sold over the same period
In 1 month?
Um. No. That's completely wrong.
The truth was pointed out over 12 months ago.
You couldn't handle the truth
What "Truth"?
NVES exists. Grow up.
On the contrary, you can't handle that ICE sales are going DOWN and ppl are seriously considering and replacing these vehicles with BEVs.
I always find these figures incomplete, yeah BEVs are going up year on year but would like to see what the whole.market is doing, ice v hev v PHEV v bev, where can you get the stats of month on month ?
Car Expert. But someone needs to go through each month to compile a longitudinal chart to show the transition from petrol/diesel to HEV, PHEV and BEV over a longer time period, like a few years.
Unfortunately it's not going to be me.
BYD Sealion 6 PHEV sales Oct 24: 1022.
Not bad, not bad...