5031 Australian Tesla sales in first half of 2021; doubles all other EVs combined

• Battery electric cars now 1.28% of new car sales in Australia
• Tesla selling more than twice as many EVs as all other brands combined
• Model 3 now the second best-selling mid-sized car in the country behind the Toyota Camry
• Model 3 now the top selling prestige car in Australia
• Tesla now outselling Jeep and Land Rover and closing on Lexus

Tesla is smashing its electric car rivals for sales, according to the latest sales figures from the Electric Vehicle Council.

And the Tesla Model 3 is now the top-selling prestige car in the country.

The fast-growing EV brand is also providing serious competition for traditional ICE cars, blowing all luxury rivals out of the water with reported sales of 5031 cars, more than double that of its two most obvious rivals, the BMW 3-Series (2260) and Mercedes-Benz C-Class (2314).

It means Tesla is tantalising close to selling 1000 vehicle per month, which would put it somewhere around the 20-25th best selling car in the country.

Citing figures for the first half of the year, the EV Council says 8688 battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles were sold in the first half of 2021.

Of those, 1440 were PHEVs, as broken down in the official sales figures supplied by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries. That leaves 7248 as EVs, according to the EV Council numbers.

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EVs pass 1 percent of sales in Australia

Combined, EVs and PHEVs now make up 1.57 percent of the new-car market, however on their own EVs account for 1.28 percent of the market.

Still, that’s a major milestone passed, with cars powered purely by electricity now accounting for more than 1 percent of sales for the first time.

However, Tesla doesn’t play ball with supplying local sales figures, instead keeping them secret and reporting global figures, which for the first half of 2021 was reported as 386,181 vehicles.

But the EV Council calculates an “estimate” of the Australian Tesla sales figures, although it doesn’t explicitly say how it arrives at that estimate.

In reporting the EV sales numbers the EV Council doesn’t split those Tesla numbers out, instead lumping them in with the overall sales figures.

Whereas previously the EV Council has rounded the numbers, it’s now providing an exact sales figure, so with a quick calculation the Tesla figure can be extrapolated.

Subtracting the 2217 EVs reported as sold by the FCAI from the 7248 EV Council estimate means Tesla sold 5031 vehicles in the first half of 2021, almost all of them the Model 3 (there were a handful of Model S and X shifted before supply dried up while Tesla prepares updated versions, already on sale overseas but due here late in 2022).

If correct – the EV Council’s Tesla sales estimates have previously correlated with other data sources, including registration data supplied by the Australian Bureau of Statistics – it means Tesla as a single-model brand has now overtaken brands with much richer histories and showrooms bulging with more models.

Model 3 the top-selling prestige car

Tesla’s 5031 first-half sales put it ahead of Jeep (3969), Land Rover (3867), Renault (3483) and closing on Lexus (5392).

It also means the Tesla Model 3 is comfortably outselling every other prestige SUV and passenger car.

Using the EVC figures, the Model 3 is also the second most popular mid-sized car on the market, only falling short of the Toyota Camry (6260 first-half 2021 sales). It is easily outselling the Mazda6 (825), Skoda Octavia (749), Volkswagen Passat (247) and Hyundai Sonata (128). While some of those cars have had supply issues due to a global semiconductor shortage, the Tesla Model 3 still has a very comfortable buffer.

Jafari puts Tesla’s success down to availability and pricing.

“It’s helpful their vehicles are available … that’s been a big part of their success,” he says, hinting at the delays and short supply some brands are encountering; many brands are blaming overseas demand and economics as reasons for delaying the introduction of EVs in Australia.

“They also make a good product at a good price that people like,” said Jafari, citing recent price drops for the Tesla Model 3 that have made it 19 percent cheaper than in 2020.

As for how the EV Council gets those Tesla sales figures, the government’s National Transport Commission seems to be key.

“The National Transport Commission do get theirs [registration numbers] straight from every state’s registration data,” says Jafari, while not detailing how it arrives at the Tesla sales estimate.

“When we say that they’re estimates I think there’s a bit of an assumption there that’s it probably wrong by a bit here or there,” he says. “Whether it’s wrong by 30 [cars] or wrong by 9 … that’s why we put the caveat in there that it is an estimate.”

“It is possible to get [the sale numbers], it’s just slower, it takes longer to get it and it doesn’t come officially from Tesla, so everybody has to do a bit of a dance about what the numbers are.”

The EV Council says it is regularly talking to Tesla about making its figures available to simplify the calculations.

“If Tesla ever opens their books up … we might find out we missed a few cars somewhere, but we’re getting a lot closer.”