Interest rates might be rising and real estate cooling but strong November new car sales in the mining states of Queensland and Western Australia helped push Australia’s year-to-date sales to just under a million units, representing a 17.9% increase on the same month in 2021.

November 2022 new vehicle sales figures released by the FCAI, the peak body for Australia’s automotive industry, showed a total of 95,080 vehicles were sold in November, bringing the year-to-date total to 993,509.

Sales across all states and territories were up with sales in Western Australia increasing by 36.5% to 9,668 vehicles, while Queensland was up 28.9% to 20,621.

New South Wales (29,545) and Victoria (25,534) remained the two biggest states by sales volume, although their percentage gains weren’t as high as the mining states. 

Rental fleets also showed strong gains in November, up 36.3% to 6,599 vehicles sold nationally, as operators prepared for the first major holiday period since border restrictions eased.

“The automotive sector is continuing to recover from pandemic-related shutdowns, a global shortage of microprocessors and the general supply chain uncertainty we experienced over the last two years,” FCAI Chief Executive Tony Weber said.

“The industry will deliver the one millionth vehicle to the market in 2022 next week.

“While this is positive news, many customers are still facing extended wait times for their vehicle, with expected delivery dates for some models beyond 12 months.”

Sales of battery-electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid vehicles also continued to rise with a total of 13,415 zero and low-emission cars sold in November.

These were made up of 4,457 battery-electric, 8,529 hybrid and 429 plug-in hybrid vehicles.  

The FCAI noted the Federal Government was considering a three-pronged approach to further increase this uptake, including purchase incentives such as the Treasury Law Amendments Bill (Electric Vehicle Discount), increased fuel quality standards and an emissions target for the light vehicle sector.   

“Purchase incentives for zero and low-emission vehicles, and increased fuel quality standards are both important levers in reducing CO2 emissions from Australia’s light vehicle fleet,” Mr Weber said.

“These need to be combined with a federally led emissions target for the light vehicle sector.

“One which is ambitious, yet achievable and is cognisant of vehicle price, model availability, battery supply and infrastructure requirements.”

Internal combustion-powered vehicles still made up most new vehicle sales, with the Toyota HiLux ute the country’s highest selling model at 5,440 sales, followed by its Ford rival the Ranger which achieved 5,073 sales.

 The Toyota Corolla, which includes a hybrid option, was third with 3,732 sales, followed by MG’s ZS which is available with both petrol and electric powertrains on 3,051 sales.

Tesla’s Model Y medium SUV was the biggest selling electric vehicle for the month, it’s 1,805 sales securing 10th position on the sales ladder, just 39 units behind Kia’s Sportage.  

Toyota retained comfortable market leadership for the month with a total of 20,107 vehicles sold, followed by Mazda (7,549), Ford (7,165), Kia (6,120) and Mitsubishi (5,559). 

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