Image: MG Australia
2024 has been a mixed year for the electric vehicle market in Australia, with only modest sales growth – despite the introduction of 12 new brands and over 20 new battery electric models going on sale.
Some of those brands are also completely new in Australia such as Deepal, Leapmotor, XPeng and Zeekr.
Sales of electric vehicles in Australia this year are expected to finish marginally higher than 2023 when 87,000 battery electric cars were sold. The tally to the end of November 2024 is nearly 83,000, so December sales will likely push the full yearly figure to somewhere around the 90,000 mark.
The Electric Vehicle Council includes plug-in hybrid sales in their electric vehicle sales figures and is predicting a total of 110,000 units by year end, according to their State of Electric Vehicles 2024 report released earlier this week.
Contributing factors for modest growth were a significant (20 per cent) slump in Tesla sales, cost of living pressures, reduction or removal of EV incentives, people potentially holding off due to the wave of incoming models and also a lack of clarity around recently introduced new vehicle to grid (V2G) standards.
Along with an increase in available models, positive factors helping EV sales this year were big price cuts from several brands, including Tesla making their vehicles the cheapest ever, MG dropping the MG4 price to as low as $30,990 driveaway and discounts from BYD, GWM, Nissan, Ford, Polestar, Fiat and Peugeot.
While sales growth has slowed this year, the choice of EV models and brands entering the Australian market has grown significantly year over year. Comparing snapshots of The Driven’s EV Models page between now and December 2023 allows us to see exactly how many new models and brands have arrived in the country.
At the end of 2023 our popular EV Models page listed 60 different models available to purchase new. This figure has grown by 37% in 2024, with 82 models currently listed.
Several of these new models are also from entirely new brands to Australia, as the number of automotive brands selling at least one electric vehicle has risen from 25 to 36, a huge 44% increase.
The full list of new brands selling EVs in Australia are Chery, Deepal, Jeep, Leapmotor, Lotus, Rolls-Royce, Skoda, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen, XPeng and Zeekr. Despite a total of 12 new brands, the list only grew by 11, as Mazda left the Australian EV market when they stopped selling their MX-30 EV earlier in the year.
Most of these new vehicles arrived in a big wave towards the end of this year, giving EV buyers more choices to consider over the holidays and into next year. The arrival of 22 new EV models was also above what we were expecting at the end of 2023, with 18 models listed in the coming soon category a year ago.
The wave of EV model growth will not only continue into 2025, it will be even bigger, with 37 new models expected to arrive before the end of next year, and likely a few more surprises given what has happened this year.
In terms of the new models, the vast majority of newcomers were in the popular SUV segment including the BMW iX2, Deepal S07, Kia EV5 and XPeng G6. However, there were some entrants in new categories such as the MG Cyberster and Ford F-150 Lightning through AusEV, which is being imported and converted to right-hand drive.
See the EV Models page for the full list of currently available electric vehicles plus those we are expecting here within the next 12 months. Newly available vehicles are summarised below, along with existing model updates or refreshes and new variants joining the lineup.
New EV models that arrived during 2024:
EV model refreshes:
New variants for existing models:
To learn more, please go to our EV Models page, for a full list of current and future models. And to see how they are tracking, check out also our month by month sales data charts.
Tim has 20 years experience in the IT industry including 14 years as a network engineer and site reliability engineer at Google Australia. He is an EV and renewable energy enthusiast who is most passionate about helping people understand and adopt these technologies.
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