Analysing the Analysis: How Australia’s Automotive Media Covered 2025’s Record Year

Australia’s 2025 “record” car sales hide the real story: fleet buyers now run this market, and Chinese brands are eating everyone’s lunch. TheAutoExec looks into who reported it best.

The 2025 Australian new car sales results delivered a third consecutive record year with 1,241,037 units sold – but that headline figure requires an asterisk. The “record” only materialises when data from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries is combined with Electric Vehicle Council figures to capture Tesla, Polestar and other non-reporting brands. The VFACTS-only total of 1,209,808 actually shows a slight decline from 2024.

Behind the modest 0.3% overall growth lies a market undergoing profound structural change: fleet and business buyers account for more than half of all sales, plug-in hybrids have doubled their volume while battery electric growth has stalled, and Chinese manufacturers are reshaping the competitive landscape at an unprecedented pace.

For industry executives trying to make sense of these results, the challenge isn’t finding coverage – it’s finding the right coverage. Australia’s automotive media each brought different strengths to the story. Here’s what the numbers actually tell us, and who did the best job of unpacking them.

The Numbers That Actually Matter

Strip away the record-breaking veneer, and the 2025 market reveals several inflection points that should have every OEM and dealer group reassessing their strategies.

Fleet is now the market: Business and fleet purchases accounted for 50.36% of all new vehicle sales. Business and fleet grew 10.6% while rental increased 3.5% to 70,677 units. The private buyer sector actually fell by 1.8%. Government fleet collapsed by 15.3% and heavy commercial dropped 11.6%. This is unlikely to be a temporary shift – fleet buyers (however you define that term) are now the primary customer for the Australian automotive industry.

The PHEV surge is real: Albeit from a small base, plug-in hybrid sales more than doubled by 130.9% to reach 53,484 units. We’d wager the growth figure will be even bigger in 2026. Meanwhile, battery electric vehicles crossed the 100,000-unit threshold for the first time at 103,269 deliveries – but with growth of just 13.1%. BEV market share has increased by only 1.1 percentage points over two years, leading FCAI chief executive Tony Weber to label the trajectory “anaemic.”

Conventional hybrids also performed strongly, up 15.3% to 199,133 units. Australian buyers are clearly choosing transitional electrification over full commitment.

China’s rise – with caveats: This is where data aggregation matters. The FCAI officially positions China as Australia’s third-largest vehicle source, accounting for approximately 18% of sales, behind Japan (30%) and Thailand (21%). However, when Tesla’s Shanghai-manufactured vehicles are included via EVC data, China leapfrogs Thailand to claim second position at roughly 20%. Both figures represent substantial growth from 14% in 2024. BYD rocketed from 17th to 8th place overall with 52,415 sales (+156.2%), while Chery nearly tripled to 34,889 units (+176.8%). Even MG’s 18.4% decline couldn’t dampen the broader Chinese ascendancy.

Tesla’s erosion: Tesla delivered 28,856 vehicles, down 24.8% year-on-year, with its Australian EV market share plunging from 41.9% to 27.9%. The Model 3 bore the brunt, collapsing 61.3% to just 6,617 units – its worst result since 2020. BYD outsold Tesla in December for the first time (4,113 vs 2,585). Elon’s moat is gone.

Passenger cars are disappearing: SUVs now represent 60.7% of all sales. Passenger car volume dropped 22.6% to just 13% of the total market. Light commercials hold steady at 22.6%. The traditional sedan is becoming irrelevant to the Australian new car buyer.

The Data Aggregation Problem

Before assessing media coverage, industry executives need to understand a fundamental limitation in Australian automotive reporting: the official VFACTS data from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries excludes some brands.

Tesla and Polestar don’t report through FCAI channels. Brands like XPeng, Smart, and Cadillac also withhold local figures. This creates two different versions of the market: the VFACTS-only figure of 1,209,808 units (a slight decline) and the aggregated FCAI plus EVC total of 1,241,037 (a modest record).

This matters because it affects everything from market share calculations to country-of-origin rankings. Media outlets varied in how transparently they handled this distinction. For executives making strategic decisions, understanding which figure any given outlet is using – and why – is essential context.

The Media Report Card

The Driven: Best for Data Transparency

If you need granular EV data, The Driven is one to watch. It publishes exhaustive monthly model-by-model and brand-by-brand breakdowns that no other outlet matches. More importantly, it explicitly calculated the “Gap between totals”—showing exactly how much data is missing from individual manufacturer reports compared to the aggregated FCAI/EVC figures.

This transparency helps readers understand the limitations of Australian automotive data. For fleet managers and OEM executives tracking the electrification transition, The Driven’s granularity is valuable. Where it falls short is in broader market analysis—its EV focus means less attention to the conventional powertrains that still dominate the market.

CarExpert: Best for Critical Commentary

CarExpert provided the sharpest analysis of what went wrong in 2025. While other outlets celebrated the record numbers, CarExpert highlighted that EV growth was “anaemic” and dissected why specific models failed. Its coverage of the Lexus RZ (high price, low awareness) and Kia EV6 (cannibalised by the cheaper EV5) exemplified the kind of strategic failure analysis that OEM executives actually need.

CarExpert’s policy coverage was equally strong, particularly around the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) and why it failed to immediately accelerate EV uptake as predicted. For executives navigating regulatory pressure, CarExpert provided the most useful context.

carsales Business: Best for Trade Perspective

While Carsales’ main site is sacrificing editorial quality for social ‘shock’ value, the classified giant’s business arm offered coverage distinctly oriented toward dealers and trade stakeholders. Its China-source analysis was among the most detailed, explicitly noting that Chinese-manufactured vehicles hit 20% of total sales when fully aggregated. More valuably, it tracked the zero-sum dynamics within the Chinese brand ecosystem—observing that “gains for newer entrants were reflected in softer results for some existing players, including several Chinese brands.”

Forward-looking coverage of incoming brands (GAC, Denza, Wey, and Lepas confirmed for 2026) offered dealer groups advance intelligence on the competitive landscape ahead.

Fleet Auto News: Best for Buyer Segment Analysis

While consumer-focused outlets concentrated on top-selling models, Fleet Auto News provided essential context on who is actually buying. Its coverage of fleet dominance—over 50% of the total market—and the divergent trends within fleet segments (business up 10.6%, government down 15.3%) was largely absent from mainstream automotive coverage.

For dealer principals and fleet managers, this is arguably the most actionable coverage. Understanding that your customer base is fundamentally shifting from private buyers to business procurement changes everything from sales strategy to inventory planning.

Chasing Cars: Best for Chinese Brand Strategy

Backed by Budget Direct Insurance rather than manufacturer advertising, Chasing Cars claims editorial independence from OEM influence. Its comprehensive guides to Chinese brands—covering corporate structures, ownership relationships, and strategic positioning – provided good analysis of who’s who in the Chinese manufacturer ecosystem.

Its coverage of BYD’s stated ambition to crack Australia’s top three brands and the competitive implications for Mazda, Kia, Hyundai, and others, while not unique, offered a forward-looking strategic context that most outlets overlooked.

Wheels/WhichCar: Best for New Brand Tracking

With a dozen-plus new brands entering the Australian market in 2025, Wheels provided the best status report on which newcomers have cut through and which are struggling for traction. The evaluation of Geely (5010 sales), Omoda Jaecoo (3721), Zeekr (1994), and the various Chinese entrants still searching for volume gives executives another reference point for the emerging competitive landscape.

What Was Missing

Collectively, the 2025 coverage left several important questions inadequately addressed.

Dealer profitability: With aggressive Chinese pricing, fleet dominance, and margin compression becoming structural features of the market, the economics facing dealer networks received almost no analytical attention outside of GoAuto’s Pitcher Partners coverage. For an industry where dealer viability underpins the entire distribution model, this represents a significant blind spot.

Infrastructure-BEV connection: The relationship between public charging deficiencies and buyer hesitation toward BEVs was mentioned but lacked depth. FCAI chief Weber’s repeated calls for infrastructure investment were reported but rarely interrogated.

Government and heavy commercial fleet decline: The 15.3% government fleet drop and 11.6% heavy commercial decline received almost no analytical attention. What’s driving these declines? Budget pressure? Policy changes? Vehicle availability? The coverage didn’t ask.

Secondary market implications: The resale value trajectory and long-term servicing costs of the influx of Chinese brands remain largely unexplored—yet these factors will increasingly influence fleet procurement decisions.

The Bottom Line

The 2025 Australian automotive market wasn’t one story—it was several running simultaneously.

No single outlet captured all these threads equally well. Thus, for executives making decisions that will shape their businesses through 2026 and beyond, the lesson is clear: reading the 2025 results well requires reading multiple sources – sources which (cue shameless plug!) TheAutoExec.com aggregates and summarises.

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