Tesla has tumbled out of favour as Canberra's star brand, overtaken in the first half of this year by national market leader Toyota and its growing array of hybrid vehicle offerings.
The US-headquartered, Chinese-built electric vehicle brand had been the surprise ACT new car market leader at this time last year, accelerating ahead from the traditionally strong Canberra brands of Toyota, Mazda, Hyundai and Kia.
For the first six months of 2023, Tesla had led with 1162 sales, tailed by Toyota with 971, Kia with 735 and Mazda with 734. Even more surprising was that Tesla was able to achieve market leadership with just two models as opposed to Toyota's 19.
But in a highly volatile new car market in which supply is much less of an issue now than it was a year ago, new trends and brands are emerging.
The latest half-yearly ACT sales data released on Wednesday has Toyota - the world's largest vehicle producer and manufacturer of hybrid (integrated battery electric and combustion engine) cars - back on top as the local market leader with 1551 units sold - a 60 per cent gain on last year - well ahead of Tesla on 989, and Mazda holding on at 724.
Toyota's ace sales card in the ACT has been the hybrid RAV4 SUV, which before this year was limited by supply constraints out of Japan. Now that those restrictions have eased, a third of all Toyota sales in Canberra were RAV4s, which was better than the national average. More than 94 per cent of all RAV4s sold were hybrids.
In June, Toyota racked up 100,000 hybrid vehicle sales nationally for the first time over a 12-month period.
The fastest-growing brand in the local market is EV newcomer BYD, which at this time last year had just one model available - the Atto 3 hatchback - and had sold a modest 159 vehicles.
But in the first six months of 2024, BYD sales in Canberra have increased 160 per cent over the same period last year as three more models - the Dolphin, Seal and Sealion 6 - have arrived. The ACT growth rate of BYD has far outstripped the brand's national growth rate of 54 per cent.
In relative terms, BYD's local sales are still modest - around the same as Mitsubishi and Nissan but more models are coming - including a dual-cab plug-in ute called the Shark - to support the company's aspiration of toppling Tesla as the EV market leader within the next few years.
Despite Tesla's minor slump locally, the BYD growth in the ACT helped sales of new EVs rise by 14.9 per cent from January to June. But the ACT is no longer such a dominant EV player across the country; nationally, average EV market growth was 2 per cent higher.
That EV growth appears to be at the expense of petrol combustion vehicles rather than diesels. The sale of petrol-powered vehicles slumped 22.1 per cent in the ACT in the first half, and 7.3 per cent nationally.
Despite cost of living and interest rate pressures, the ACT market is up by 6 per cent year to date, against an average 8.7 per cent new car market increase across the country.
